BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Mapping Troy’s Luwian Context

Study maps Bronze Age Anatolian sites

This fingernail-sized bronze seal is the only written document ever recovered from Bronze Age Troy. It is inscribed with Luwian hieroglyphs. Courtesy Alper et al.

For some, the first thing the name “Troy” brings to mind is the 2004 Brad Pitt film, if not the ancient Homeric epic, the Iliad, on which the movie is loosely based. But one thing people generally do not think about is the Luwians, who inhabited most of western Anatolia during the Bronze and Iron Ages. And that is a problem, because no matter how they might be portrayed in modern pop culture, the Trojans were not Greek. Nor were they Hittites, the imperial power that dominated Anatolia for much of the period. Instead, the Trojans belonged to the oft-forgotten Luwian civilization.

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Identifying a Civilization

In a paper published in the journal Nature Scientific Data, an international team from the Luwian Studies Foundation provided the most up-to-date map of Middle and Late Bronze Age (c. 2000–1200 BCE) Luwian settlements ever catalogued, which includes ancient Troy. The study, comprising 483 settlements, illuminates the cultural landscape around Troy and challenges long-standing scholarly assumptions. Alongside the scientific article, the team also published an interactive settlement map that provides an incredible wealth of information on each site, including archaeological and chronological data.

Map of the cultural spheres surrounding Luwian territory. Courtesy Alper et al.

To capture the information, the team participated in dozens of excavations and surveys, producing more than 400 scientific publications on the various Luwian sites they studied. The sites are spread across much of western Turkey and cover an area roughly the size of Germany. The study pushes back against the standard view that ancient western Anatolia was simply a land caught between Hittite and Mycenaean influence, despite the region’s wealth of resources, as evidenced by the many important cities that later emerged there in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

A remarkable vessel from Seyitömer Höyük reflects the distinctive artistic traditions of the Luwian cultural sphere. Courtesy Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums, Department of Excavations and Research.

The site of Troy, widely identified with modern Hisarlık in northwestern Turkey, lies just south of the Dardanelles Strait. In Hittite writings, the city was known as Wilusa, a name related to the classical Greek Ilios (Iliad), a secondary name for the more familiar Troia (Troy). Troy would have been one city among the wealth of Luwian sites. As Eberhard Zangger, President of the Luwian Studies Foundation, told Bible History Daily, “We consider Troy to be the epitome of a Luwian town.”

Aerial view of the citadel of Troy. Courtesy Alper et al.

Zangger was quick to point out, however, that modern cultural terms such as Mycenaean, Hittite, or even Luwian are ultimately no more than terms of convenience. “Some 3,000 years ago, identities of this kind did not exist in the clear-cut forms we use today. When we speak of ‘Luwians,’ we are referring to a region whose inhabitants certainly did not regard themselves as part of either the Mycenaean or the Hittite cultural spheres. Linguistically and ethnically, this area was home to numerous tribes and groups. People would have identified primarily with their city-state.”

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