Tea at Trianon: Did the Hittites Record the Fall of Homeric Troy in Cuneiform?

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

Monday, August 17, 2026

Did the Hittites Record the Fall of Homeric Troy in Cuneiform?

From The Collector:

Homer’s account of the Trojan War in the Iliad, written in the 7th century BC, is one of the world’s most enduring stories. But was it purely fantasy, or based on real historical events? In the search for confirming evidence, scholars have examined clay tablets containing the historical archives of the Hittite kings at Hattusa. They preserve details of Anatolian politics in the 13th century BC, the time when the Trojan War was supposed to have been fought. While these administrative texts do not speak of golden armor or meddling gods, they do record a century of real conflict over the legendary city the Hittites called Wilusa, which many scholars believe was ancient Troy.
The Hittite Empire ruled over much of Anatolia throughout the Late Bronze Age, the era between approximately 1550 and 1150 BC. Numerous Hittite documents have been uncovered and translated. In particular, thousands of clay tablets were unearthed at Bogazköy in modern Turkey in the early 20th century, containing administrative records kept by Hittite royal scribes of the Hittite capital of Hattusa. This collection contains diplomatic letters between rulers, quite a few of which refer to attacks on western Anatolia by a nation called the Ahhiyawa. While not universally accepted, the majority of scholars agree that the Ahhiyawa were the Mycenaean Greeks. The ethnonym “Ahhiyawa” is held to be a Hittite version of “Akhaioi,” the Greek form of “Achaeans.”

As soon as these documents were uncovered and translated, historians began to realize their potential significance regarding the Iliad. According to Homer’s epic poem, a thousand Greek ships were launched against Troy in western Anatolia in the 13th century BC. This was not a war against just one city but against Troy’s many allies all over western Anatolia as well. Hittite documents dating to the same period appear to confirm that the Ahhiyawa were engaged in large-scale warfare in western Anatolia at this time. (Read more.)