Day Eight: Troy

In all honesty, I wasn't very excited to see Troy. When I heard about the trip I was extremely confused as to how it fit into our trip focusing around Paul and the 7 churches of Revelation, but I'm glad we went. It was incredibly fun to see and interesting to hear the story of Troy (what actually happened, the Brad Pitt movie, and the legend by Homer). They even had a giant Trojan Horse at the front before you actually moved into the Archaeological site! (A fake one. Apparently there is no evidence behind a horse being involved in the attack on Troy. All we know is that the harbor eventually closed because of a nearby river bringing in too much silt and filling in the harbor). However! We got to take pictures n' stuff; it was quite hilarious. Well, anyway, my two favorite parts. 

First, I really enjoyed the back story behind Troy. Right now Troy is in the middle of a bunch of fields when, a couple thousand years ago, it was actually a harbor. In the ruins there are shells every where in the dirt and it's so neat to see proof behind the evidence. This, actually, happened with Ephesus too which was a cool tid bit. Additionally Troy was such an old city that there are actually 9 different "levels." This, meaning, that Troy has had history reaching back into 3,000 years old and you can find different artifacts from the Archaic period, Roman, and so on and so forth within the same ten feet square. Which, as our tourguide, Cenk, explained, is why the excavation of the site is taking so long. There is so much work that needs to be done over such a long period of time that it is super hard to find the money and people willing to work on the site. 

My second favorite part was one section of the wall that dated back to around 2,000 BC just about. Before this site all of the walls we had seen were made out of stone, either placed together and forced to fit (by the Greeks) or carved by metal and shaped to make squares (the Romans) this section of the wall was completely made out of mud bricks. The stark contrast between the mud and the stone somewhat made my day. It was just incredibly neat to see that the archaeologists were able to nearly uncover the wall. We also got to play around on a reconstructed stadium but everything else in Troy was pretty much blocked off because Troy is still covered and pillaged for its treasures. 

Onto Day Nine (: 

Love y'all.