What really happened at Troy?

Heinrich Schliemann had always hoped he’d find Homer’s Troy. Although he had no archaeological background to speak of, he did have money, and spades, and in the 1870s this would do. Tipped off as to the probable location of the ancient citadel — beneath Hisarlik on the west coast of modern Turkey — the Prussian businessman got zealously to work, pushing through the soil until he struck what he assumed to be the treasure of King Priam himself.

In the Iliad the Trojan king lived lavishly. His palace was ‘surpassingly beautiful’. Its 50 rooms were built of ‘polished stone’. The terracotta wares Schliemann lifted from the ground did not quite evoke such splendour. There were fat-bellied pots with nipples and navels and rustic two-handled cups. They were clearly ancient. As was the gorgeous gold diadem in which Schliemann famously dressed his wife. But as he later realised, much of what he’d found was too ancient, dating to around a millennium before the Late Bronze Age, when Homer’s epics are set. Eager Schliemann had dug too deep.

A cross-section of the ancient mound is recreated at the centre of the British Museum’s dazzling new exhibition, which opens next week. The oldest finds are displayed at the bottom. The richest are far higher up on shelves representing the layer known to archaeologists as Troy VII. If Homer’s Troy was to be found, it was here, in the earth Schliemann rummaged through in his race to reach the bottom.

This exhibition doesn’t come down on one side or the other in the great debate over the reality of the Trojan war. The explorations of Schliemann and the archaeologists who anticipated him in locating ancient Troy at Hisarlik (widely now agreed to be the right spot) are dealt with separately from the stories of Achilles and Odysseus.