Tea at Trianon: Does King Priam of Troy Appear in Hittite Records?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Does King Priam of Troy Appear in Hittite Records?

From The Greek Reporter:

King Priam was the famous king of Troy during the Trojan War. It was his son, Paris Alexander, who took Helen back to Troy and inadvertently caused the enormous war with the Greeks. Priam himself was allegedly a powerful monarch. He was married to a princess from the nearby kingdom of Phrygia, which itself was a very wealthy and powerful kingdom.

The father of Priam was Laomedon, the king who had fortified the city of Troy. He was the last king in a dynasty going all the way back to Dardanus, some five generations prior to him. While many of the kings in this line had Greek names, scholars generally interpret Priam’s name to be Luwian. This was an Anatolian language common in the Bronze Age.
Traditionally, scholars believe Priam first appears in Homer’s Iliad. However, some researchers claim he appears in records, such as those of the Hittites, long before this.

What are the records in question? They are Hittite documents dating to the 13th century BCE, particularly the middle and late part of that century. These documents reveal that a certain war leader named Piyama-Radu was active in Western Anatolia in that era. (Read more.)