Hittite Empire Archives - Tales of Times Forgotten

No, Archaeologists Have Not Found the Trojan Horse

On 10 August 2021, the website Greek Reporter published an article written by a contributor named Philip Chrysopoulos titled “Archaeologists Claim They’ve Discovered the Trojan Horse in Turkey.” The article claims that archaeologists have discovered the remains of a wooden structure inside the ancient city of Troy that they think is the actual Trojan horse. On the same day, The Jerusalem Post copied Greek Reporter’s story, publishing their own article titled “Did archaeologists find the Trojan horse?” that cites the Greek Reporter article as its only source.

The problem is that the whole story is a steaming pile of horse manure. The Greek Reporter article contains obvious signs that it is a deliberate hoax written in order to attract views in order to drive up ad revenues. By publishing this ridiculous, easily debunked story, Greek Reporter and The Jerusalem Post are both showing that, at the very best, they do not conduct even the most basic fact-checking or source verification and that they are not trustworthy news sites.

King Midas Was Actually a Real Person

We have no evidence whatsoever for the existence of the vast majority of figures that appear in classical mythology. For instance, we have no evidence for the existence of Perseus, Herakles, Theseus, Achilleus, or Odysseus. Nonetheless, there is at least one major figure from classical mythology who was definitely a real person: King Midas.

No, really. I am not kidding. Believe it or not, King Midas—the king who, according to legend, was so greedy and foolish that he wished for everything he touched to turn to gold—was actually a historical king of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia who ruled in the late eighth century BC.

We know Midas was a real king because he is mentioned in contemporary Assyrian records as having attacked King Sargon II of Assyria and there are surviving inscriptions from his reign. Nonetheless, even though King Midas was a real person, the famous story of the golden touch is undoubtedly ahistorical.

Did the Trojan War Really Happen?

The Trojan War and the events ensuing thereafter are the subject of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two foundational epics of all Greek and, by extension, western literature. This one war has had more words written about it than probably any other war in the history of humanity. It has been immortalized through songs, poems, novels, and paintings. Yet, here is a startling question: did it ever really happen at all? We know Troy was a real city, but that does not mean the Trojan War itself really happened and very few Homeric scholars would try to argue that the Iliad or the Odyssey in any way resemble historical narratives—yet many laypeople still view them this way.