Subject to serious historical controversy, the sequence of events in the Trojan War is actually more of a legend than a reality backed up by material evidence. Until now, no archaeological record of the fighting could be detected. A dormant doubt that could now finally be lifted, after the unexpected discoveries that have just been made in Greece by a team of archaeologists.
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According to a statement issued by the Greek Ministry of Culture, excavations carried out from September to early October in the southern Peloponnese region would have revealed ‘evidence of the existence of the ancient city of Tenea’. A city that was thought to have disappeared, only mentioned in ancient writings, and which could have sheltered the first prisoners captured during the Trojan plunder.
Remains galore
Walls, floors of buildings made of clay, marble or other stones... but also items of domestic pottery, dice to play games with made of carved bone, or more than two hundred coins dated from the fourth century before our era, the end of the ancient Roman period. This is the inventory made by archaeologists after several weeks of excavations that have only recently been completed.
Among the remains of the foundations of a building, the specialists also uncovered two human fetuses, locked in a terracotta vase. A strange discovery, especially knowing that the ancient Greek tradition wanted well-organised cemeteries to be established outside the city wall...
‘[The city] had pottery shapes of its own, marked by oriental influences, it kept in touch with both East and West... and it had its own way of thinking, which as far as was possible, forged its own [political] principles,’ Elena Korka, chief archaeologist for the excavation mission, told the Associated Press.
A prosperous city
‘The citizens seem to have been remarkably rich,’ says the specialist, who assumes that the city that has just been unearthed could have formed a strategic crossroads on the way that connected the famous cities of Corinth and Argos, in the North-East of Peloponnese.
To further clarify the mystery surrounding this hitherto legendary city, archaeologists are now engaged in excavations of the cemeteries of the ancient city - funerary spaces located today at a hundred kilometres South-West of Athens. All of this, perhaps, will definitively close the debate by bringing the material proof that ‘The Trojan War did indeed happen’.
