Troy (part 2) – The Greek and Trojan armies

Originally published in Slingshot issue 304, January/February 2016 – the Journal of the Society of Ancients

Statue of the Trojan Horse at Hisarlik, Turkey

The Greeks

The Mycenaean armies were mobilised using a mix of private and public/palatial means, with some warriors providing part of their kit at their own expense.  According to the Pylos tablets, every rural community (δᾱμος/damos) was obliged to supply a certain number of troops. The members of the landowning aristocracy supplied a number their own retinues to fulfil military service.

The Mycenaean palaces produced and maintained some of the equipment used in war, such as arrowheads, swords, spears, javelins, helmets, chariots and corslets.  Hence, in certain cases only parts of the necessary equipment were handed out, such as a single wheel or horse, rather than a complete chariot. Tablets show that palaces awarded some individuals land in exchange for military service, for which they were provided with at least part of the required equipment.

Sea power
The Greeks of the 1300s and 1200s BC were the first sea power in European history. They invented an oared, wooden ship, built for speed and mainly used for war and piracy: the galley. Early Mycenaean galleys were light and lean, with a narrow, straight and low hull to cut down on wind resistance and a flat keel line to ease beaching. Galleys had an open rowers’ gallery below the deck, through which oarsmen would have been visible. Viewed from the side, a series of vertical stanchions supporting the vessel’s superstructure created a horizontal-ladder like motif on many of these ships.

A pilot stood in the stern and worked the large-bladed single steering oar. Though in Homer’s days galleys used double-oared rudders, in the Iliad the author correctly refers to single-oared vessels as used in the thirteenth century BC. To make it watertight, the hull was tarred black, often decorated with a painted set of eyes in the bow and probably also adorned with an image of the ship’s name, such a lion, griffin or snake. Typically, on the curved stem post was a figurehead in the shape of a bird’s head.

Early Greek ships probably had a maximum of 46 oarsmen, with a captain, two attendants (a helmsman and a piper to keep time for the rowers) and a complement of extra warriors.  The captain’s cabin of wooden poles, with oxhide stretched between them, was placed at the back of the ship.  Each kingdom maintained pilots as well as weavers and other specialists, naval architects, skilled woodworkers and other specialists. It is estimated that it took six months for a team of a dozen carpenters to build a Bronze Age galley.

 A Greek galley (Peter Connolly)

When headed for Troy, the Greeks probably landed north of the city, at the Bronze Age Bay.  This stretched southward from the Dardanelles nearly all the way to the city of Troy.  Today, this bay no longer exists, as it has been silted in by the flow of the Scamander and Simoeis Rivers.  Troy’s regular harbour was located at around 4.5 km west of the city, at today’s Beşik Bay.  This location provided a favourable last possibility to moor one’s ship, before starting the difficult passage through the Dardanelles.

The Catalogue of Ships

A remarkably accurate list of Late Bronze Age Greek cities appears in the Iliad, the so-called Catalogue of Ships (II.484-760).  However, it is extremely unlikely that all Greek cities listed in this catalogue also took part in the Trojan War. We only need to consider the number of ships and troops involved. The catalogue mentions twenty-nine Greek contingents under 44 captains from some 175 towns and communities, accounting for a total of 1,186 ships.  According to a plausible calculation, this would result in a total of about 100,000 (!) men transported to the Troad.  Even only half that number would have posed an enormous logistical challenge.

Therefore, more likely, the catalogue is nothing more than an enumeration of existing Greek cities of the time and that the passage was interpolated by later writers.  Everyone visited by a wandering bard recounting the Iliad, would have wanted their ancestors to be included in the war, if Homer had not already put them in.  This is all the more probable, since important contingents listed in the Catalogue have no special part to play in the Iliad. Whatever the reason, it has been established that the majority of the place names listed were indeed occupied during the Late Bronze Age. 

The Greek soldier
Greek soldiers were the backbone of Greece’s land power. Troops were well organized into similarly equipped units. Spear and sword were the main weapons, though Homer also twice mentions a battle axe (XIII.612 and XV.711).  Given the fact that battle-axes were frequently used in Bronze Age warfare, both Trojans and Greeks must have used them.

In view of Anatolia’s reputation as bow country, the Greeks would also have included contingents of archers and slingers. But the main answer to Anatolian superiority in archers (and chariots) was the still primitive form of the phalanx: a core of heavy spearmen, supported by swordsmen. By the standards of the Bronze Age, however, this was a formidable, cohesive, heavily armed and potent formation.

Mycenaean soldier, ivory

The Greeks fought in some ways like the Sherden or Shardana troops, whose images can be seen in Egyptian carved reliefs of the 1200s and early 1100s BC. The Sherden fought with swords and spears, had no bows, wore short kilts, horned helmets and carried round shields. Both Sherden and early Greek troops, wearing boar’s-tusk helmets and ox-hide tunics, are recorded to have fought in the Egyptian army.  Unlike the Sherden, some of the Greeks wore heavy armour and excelled in fighting in close formation, letting well-armoured champions take the lead.

dress

In the Annals of Thutmose III (r. 1479-25 BC), Greeks, Cretans and inhabitants of other Greek isles, are depicted with long black hair.  They have a curl over the forehead, straight or curled locks, clean shaven faces, gentle features and a soft, dark-brownish-red skin, like Egyptian men.  Their kilts are wrapped around the waist and elaborately embroidered and they wear sandals combined with leggings. Other types of shoes are small calf-length boots made of interlaced leather, mainly of black or dark-brown colour, fastened with string of the same material.  Some warriors on frescoes are depicted with completely closed white boots. A common characteristic of Mycenaean shoes is the typical curled-up toe, copied from the Hittites.  An Aegean garment in earlier representations is the breechcloth with “codpiece” and backflap, supported at the waist by a broad belt.  Clothing was made from wool or linen and was probably used as a sign of rank. Fully-clothed men may represent high-ranking individuals.  The documents confirm that the military officers (heqetai) were distinguished by special garments: woollen cloaks with white woollen threads or fringes, borders or ornamental bands and undergarments of wool covered with some sort of natural grease.

On the mainland, soldiers and retainers wore a short-sleeved (linen) tunic (often white) coming down to the knees and cut to taper in around the waist and then flare out again.  A garment worn by light infantry was a white cloth kilt, with a protective leather overlay cut so that it ends formed pointed tassels hanging down.  Rank-and-file soldiers are always shown bare-chested and probably belonged to the lower classes. After 1200 BC warriors usually wore some kind of tunic and there was a great variety of helmet types, while shields in various shapes and sizes are standard (cf. the “warrior vase”).  Kings, princes and members of the ruling family were often distinguished by the colour purple, as often mentioned in the Iliad and from documents in Ugarit. 

Arms and armour
shields, spears and javelins
Already long ago, archaeologists confirmed that the arms and armour described in the Iliad were indeed used in the Bronze Age, even though it is apparent from certain details that Homer described things he did not know. For example, in the Iliad the typical full-body shields are said to have a central boss, which was common only with smaller shields.  Late Bronze Age full-body shields were shaped like a half-cylinder and protected the whole body of the fighter. The “figure-of-eight shield” and the “tower shield” of Ajax, however, predate the traditional setting of the Trojan War between 1250 and 1200 BC, and had been replaced long before the thirteenth century.  The same goes for the “silver-studded swords” of various heroes, as described in the Iliad.

Figure-of-eight shields

Full-body shields were composed of multiple layers of raw-hide or leather, probably stretched and then sewn, and glued over a wicker frame. Sometimes reinforced with bronze plates, they were hung from the shoulder on a strap that passed diagonally over the torso. When both hands were needed, the shield could be swung round onto the back. As the shield was meant for full protection, there was no real need for any other body armour, apart from a helmet. Hence, very few warriors holding a shield in the Iliad are described as wearing a metal breastplate. With the general introduction of bronze armour, the large full-body shields went out of use.

Another type of large shield was the proto-dipylon shield, a circular or oval body shield with two cuts on both sides, which allowed it to be more easily wielded.  Large or medium-sized square shields, generally with fringes and two large cuts on the sides, like those used by Anatolian populations, are depicted in some pottery fragments.  These shields were sometimes reinforced with metal elements and bosses.  The smaller and lighter circular shields often had a crescent cut out of the bottom, and were made of several layers of leather, with a bronze boss and reinforcements. 

Reconstructed shield and bronze sword 
(Koryvantes Association of Historical Studies)

The Greek soldier carried either one thrusting spear, or two smaller throwing spears, like javelins. Spears with six-inch bronze cast-socket leaf, or flame-shaped heads, were sometimes more than three meters long.  These were used for thrusting and normally handled with both hands.  Spears were preferred to swords, as the older pre-Naue II type swords (see below under “swords and daggers”) tended to break off at the hilt.  Some spears were provided with a piece of cloth to form a standard (the Homeric φᾱροσ/pharos).  Javelins came in three types: the long javelin, the short-and-heavy javelin and the light javelin for long-distance throwing. Javelins were usually equipped with smaller points.   Some javelins and spears had
butts.

armour and helmets
Elite troops would have worn a loose-fitting bronze breastplate and backplate, which could be extended by pieces covering the neck, lower face, shoulders, thighs and lower arms (cf. the Dendra Panoply).  This type of armour seems to have been pretty widespread between 1500 and 1400 BC.  Metal corslets were probably lined with leather, while holes were drilled in the composing plates to bind the constituent elements together, most likely with leather thongs.  The plates of a complete panoply could move in an “accordion” like manner, while protecting the groin and upper legs and still allowing manoeuvrability. The front and back suspended plates were not bound together.  The entire original suit of armour weighed less than 15 kg and both arm and leg movement was restricted only to a small degree. It is believed that it was difficult for the contemporary low-poundage bows to penetrate this 1mm to 1.5 mm thick armour, even at point-blank range.  An alternative was a leather or stiff linen linothorax-like tunic reinforced with bronze scales to serve as a breastplate.  An elaborate belt, perhaps red or purple, and decorated with gold or silver, would be worn over the tunic or breastplate.

Because a lot of excavated bronze greaves are broken off at the top, we do not know if they stopped just below the knee or whether they extended upwards to form a kind of kneecap.  The bronze is thin and there is a series of small holes along the side for the attachment of an internal lining.  The Dendra greaves held on to the warrior’s legs only by the elasticity of the metal, though additional thongs below the knees and around the ankles may have been used for the fastening.

Reconstructed Dendra armour (Koryvantes

Association of Historical Studies)

Ordinary troops consisted of various kinds of light-armoured soldiers, wearing linothoraxes without armour, a leather helmet and a kilt.  Later Mycenaean troops commonly wore leather or stiff linen greaves, tied at the ankle and below the knee, and often reinforced over the shins with a bronze plate.
The warriors in the Medinet Habu reliefs all wear the typical Aegean-Anatolian feathered headdress, consisting of a bronze headband embossed with rings, triangles or vertical bars and notches, from which protruded flexible strips of leather, horsehair, straw or perhaps feathers.
Helmets generally were of perishable material, most likely leather or felt, with tubes projecting at the front like horns. Some helmets were reinforced with bronze discs, others were completely made of bronze and most probably had a felt inner lining. Helmets could have a central plume and/or (a) crest(s) of different shapes and sizes.

swords and daggers
Swords were suspended from a baldric, often described by Homer as decorated by silver bosses (ὀμφᾱλόι/omphaloi).  Early swords had blades similar to a spit and were very sharp with a central rib. From the sixteenth century BC on swords with a rounded tip began to appear, having a grip that was an extension of the blade.  In the fifteenth century BC two types with a stronger grip slowly substituted these early models.  Successive evolution under the influence of the Anatolians led to a shortening of the blade.

After 1300 BC elite Greeks warriors wielded a new type of Aegean sword, which was bronze and two and a half feet long.  Much more efficient at inflicting slash-wounds than its predecessors, its blade also had roughly parallel edges for most of its length, rather than the tapered edges of a dagger, so that it was also good at cutting.  With a single piece of metal for both blade and hilt, it was less like to break than old type of sword.  This so-called Naue II or grip-tongue sword originated from central Europe (Northern Italy and the Balkans) and had spread to Scandinavia and the British Isles, before it began to appear in Greece, Crete, the Levant and Egypt between 1300 and 1200 BC.  Two ivory hilt plates are the earliest remains of a Naue II sword in the Aegean. Similar swords are worn by the Sea Peoples on the Medinet Habu reliefs of Ramses III.

Swords found in warrior graves and hoards of bronze objects have a strong blade with a low midrib and elliptical section.  The handgrip and the hand guard are flanged.  Microscopic examination has shown that two individual parts across the swords were initially cast in separate open moulds, and were afterwards welded with hammering.  The hilt plates, made of wood or ivory, had a forked wishbone shape and were held in place by rivets on the handgrip and the hand guard.  The scabbards were made of wood and leather, sometimes decorated with cut-out metal pieces and strips.  Daggers were probably owned by a few rich and high-ranking
people and came in various sizes and shapes.

slings, bows and arrows, axes and hammers
Slingers are shown on thefamous silver rhyton from Mycenae. They do not wear any helmets, no shields, nor any spears; only their bows and slings of springy, twisted wool. Sling bullets were made of bronze, led or stone, while many early arrow-tips appear to have been made of flint or obsidian. Apart from sling bullets, throughout battles all sorts of larger and small stones were fired in every possible way.  Bowmen are depicted as firing from behind the front lines or from behind large shields.

Boar tusk helmet (Mycenae Museum)

Mycenaeans used double-edged axes, hatches and pickaxes. Bronze axes with a semi-circular blade dating from the thirteenth to the eleventh centuries BC have been found in some Cretan settlements. Bronze maces or hammers have been found on the Greek mainland and on Crete. In the Iliad Areithóous is described as fighting with an iron mace (Iliad VII, 138-41).

cavalry and chariots  
There is little evidence for cavalry troops, though there are indications that mounted troops must have existed. The plain of the “horse-pasturing Argos” (Odyssey 3.263) must have been able to field a great number of chariots. In Pylos, Linear B tablets mention wood for the making of 150 axles, 200 pairs of wheels and 120 chariots.
In Greece chariots were used as tank, jeep and armoured personnel carrier. Though the warrior might fight from his chariot, it is assumed that, unlike in the “chariot kingdoms” of the Near East, it was more usual for him to dismount and exchange blows on foot. This will not have been the case for chariots manned with archers. Drawn by a team of two horses, Greek chariots were wooden carts, covered with either oxhide or wicker work. Chariot crews consisted of a driver and a warrior. The four-spoke wheels were wooden; in the thirteenth century BC the original heavy box and so-called dual chariots gave way to the lighter rail chariots, which looked similar to the well-known Egyptian chariots and were more mobile. Unlike later Egyptian chariots which had the axle positioned very close to the rear to make it more versatile, Greek chariots had the axle placed in the centre. Greek chariots were sometimes painted crimson and inlaid with ivory and gold.

The Trojans 

A generation ago scholars still thought that the legendary Trojans were Greeks, like the men that attacked them. New evidence, however, suggests that around 1200 BC the inhabitants of Troy were an Anatolian people, who either spoke Luwian, the main tongue of southern and western Anatolia, or Palaic, the main language of northernAnatolia, which were both Indo-European languages closely related to Hittite. Greek is likely to have been a frequently used foreign language and there must have been many business ties between Greece and Troy.

Troy

The settlement called Troy has a long history. Founded by a Neolithic people from Kum Tepe near the Dardanelles in around 3600 BC, it was destroyed and resettled at least nine times, before being eventually abandoned a few decades after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD.  
Formerly it was thought that Troy was just a small citadel of only about five acres (20,000 square metres). Now we know, however, that Troy was about fifty acres (200,000 square metres) in size, and that its location was eminently suitable for agriculture, stockbreeding, fishing and hunting. It held 5,000 to 6,000 people, which made it a big city in Bronze Age terms and was a regional capital which was in its heyday during the Late Bronze Age.
Situated at the entrance of the Dardanelles, which links the Aegean with the Black Sea, Troy was strategically located.  For a long time, this would guarantee Troy its position as a wealthy commercial centre and a powerful political city.  In a purely material sense, Troy may well have been comparable with the largest of the Mycenaean palace centres.  Numerous spindle whorls indicate a flourishing textile industry at Troy.  Also horses may have provided the (ἱππόδαμοι, or horse-taming) Trojans with an important export market.

Map of the ancient Troad

Due to the strong counter-current in the Dardanelles over a distance of seven miles, combined with strong averse winds during the sailing season, ship captains preferred to wait in Troy’s harbour on the west coast – today’s Beşik Bay – until the wind fell (cf. Homer’s description “windy Ilion” as in e.g. Ilias III.305).  Beşik Bay, which is shallow with sandy beaches, remained of maritime significance even into the nineteenth century. In ancient times, ships laden with foreign goods and merchandise, forced to bide their time here, must have traded their goods in return for water and provisions, or even surrendered them as toll for passage through the straits.

Archaeological evidence is sufficiently strong to be sure that somewhere between 1200 BC and 1180 BC “Troy VI i” (formerly known as “Troy VIIa”) was destroyed by a raging fire.  The presence of arrowheads, spearheads, sling stones and unburied human bones points to a sack.  According to a recent archaeological survey, the other towns in the Troad may also have been abandoned around 1200 BC, which is consistent with the raids of the Sea Peoples.  “Troy VI i” may well be identical with the Troy that has been identified by archaeologists like Carl Blegen as “Homer’s Troy”. Probably first weakened by an earthquake, it was attacked by Mycenaean marauders, who removed the survivors, killing some and enslaving others, before putting it to the torch.

After its destruction “Troy VI I” was rebuilt, but the new “Troy VI j” was not as rich, and from the point of view of workmanship, there was a considerable drop in quality.  The new domestic structures were a lot shabbier and smaller, while the rebuilt houses are partitioned.  All the evidence points to an increase in population, similar to what can be observed in Tiryns, for instance, during that period.  The new city was not inhabited by the same
people, but by a mixture of old Trojans and newcomers from the Balkans.

Troy’s defences
Troy had two sets of walls: an outer perimeter protecting the lower town and an acropolis with an inner citadel called Pergamos, half an acre large, to which the defenders could retreat.  In the Iliad, the Greek Patroklos makes four attempts to mount Troy’s walls.  Had its walls been vertical, this feat had been beyond even the most agile warrior, especially one bearing weapons.  However, as we know now, the walls of Troy VI were indeed sloping, like those of some of the earlier levels of the citadel.

The walls of Troy

At its highest point, the Pergamos must have been well over 20 metres high.  It had an underground spring, reached via a network of manmade tunnels, dug some five hundred feet into the rock.  At nearly a mile in circumference, the 9 metre high outer wall was more difficult to defend than the compact circuit of the citadel. This wall consisted of a high stone foundation, on top of which lay sun-dried mud-bricks.  Made of a mixture of mud, sand, straw and manure, these bricks were cheap and easy to manufacture.  Moreover, they cushioned the shock of battering rams, but since mud-bricks are vulnerable to sappers, the higher the stone foundation of the walls the better.  Several watchtowers were built into these walls, while five gateways provided access to the citadel.  The most important was the southern gate, 3.3 metres wide, protected by a tower and giving access to a broad way ascending steeply into the citadel.  Bronze Age fortifications often had a postern tunnel, which provided the defenders access to and exit from a besieged city, either for gathering food or for making surprise attacks upon the enemy. However, no such tunnel has been discovered in Troy so far.  Troy’s lower city was surrounded with palisades and two trenches cut into the bedrock, eight feet deep and ten to eleven feet wide, probably built to stop siege towers and to make it difficult to use battering rams. At intervals the trenches were interrupted for access to the gates.

The wooden horse
Thanks to its massive defences, Troy must have been very difficult to take. Moreover, if Troy’s gates were all constructed like the east gate of Troy’s citadel, the use of battering rams at the gates would have been impossible. The east gate could only be entered through a 2m wide L-shaped corridor between two high overlapping walls, with the entrance placed at the “toe” of the L.  Still, some scholars think that the wooden horse may stand for a battering ram and archaeological evidence from Troy itself allows some room for the idea that the walls were breached. Battering rams were already widely used in the Near East, more particularly by the Hittites and the Assyrians. On the other hand, as Luce rightly states, “the whole point of the horse is that it was a vehicle of deception not violence”.

The Hollywood version at Canakkale, Turkey

Another theory is that the wooden horse was a life-size wheeled wooden libation vessel. A similar bull-shaped wheeled cult vehicle has been found on a relief in Alacahöyük, a former Hittite settlement in modern-day central Turkey.  Last but not least, the tale of the horse may be connected with Poseidon (Po-se-da-o), who used to be part of the Mycenaean pantheon. In Arcadia, in central Peloponnese, the god was always worshipped in the shape of a horse, in other parts as a horseman or master of horses.  For country folk he was Hippos, the horse. But Poseidon was also regarded as the originator of earthquakes.  Might the horse stand for an earthquake that breached the walls of Troy, throwing down the mud-brick superstructure of the main wall, so that the Greeks could enter the city and sack it?

The Trojan army

In preindustrial societies, typically a little more than twenty per cent of the male population was of military age (between 18 and 49), so that of an estimated population of 5,000 –6,000 people the Trojan army must have consisted of 600 to 700 soldiers.  According to Homer, the Trojans also had allies on their side. Homer states that some of them came from Europe (the Thracians and Macedonians), but most were from Anatolia.  The Iliad mentions fifty-men Trojan platoons and hundred-men Greek companies. Linear B tablets list what may be military units ranging from ten to seventy men, in multiples of ten.

Though Bronze Age warfare is very well documented and the richest evidence comes from the ancient Near East, we have hardly any information on the Trojan army. On the other hand, in the 1300s and 1200s BC Bronze Age civilisation was international and that there was a lot of cross-fertilisation through trade, diplomacy, dynastic marriage and wars.

Like the neighbouring Hittites, Trojan soldiers were probably black-haired, clean-shaven and might have worn their hair long at the back often in a thick plait, as an extra protection against arrows, spear thrusts and sword slashes from behind. They were probably equipped like the average state-of-the art Anatolian soldier, with sword, javelins and/or spear and/or battle-axe. Likewise, they probably wore neck-to-ankle sleeved garments, a long coat of scale armour, or short kilts, belted at the waist. They may have had medium large round or rectangular shields with concave sides, made of leather, stretched over a wooden frame, or of bronze or wicker. Helmets and greaves were made of leather or bronze with ditto cheek and neck-flaps. The richer soldiers probably wore gold earrings, an embroidered kilt and Hittite-style shoes with upturned toes. 

Dual horse chariot (Andrea Salimbeti)

Organic armours were probably more commonplace in the Late Bronze Age than metal ones. Due to the material used, organic armour is more perishable than its metal variety and hence fewer examples have survived. An exception is the well-preserved suit of raw-hide scale armour collection from the tomb of Tutankhamen, as well as a fourteen-layer thick fragment of linen from a shaft grave at Mycenae, broadly similar to the Classical linothorax. Similar armour will have been used by the Trojans.

Living on a wide plain, the Trojans must have been great charioteers. Trojan chariots presumably looked like their Hittite counterparts, which was a robust vehicle with a car mounted on a wide axle with six-spoked wooden wheels. Pulled by two stallions, Hittite chariots were manned with a driver and a fighter. By the time of the battle of Qadesh, the Hittites had introduced an extra shield-carrier to protect the driver and the fighter, so that both the driver and the fighter could concentrate on their main tasks with the shield-bearer fending off missiles and spear-thrusts. Though tank-like charges of a mass of chariots in order to break the enemy’s line played a big role in Hittite and Egyptian warfare, this was not to be found at Troy.

Future research should clear the still many outstanding issues regarding the Trojan War, as well as the reasons behind the destruction of the many palaces and cities in the eastern Mediterranean not long after 1200 BC. In essence, the highly developed systems of the globalised ancient Mediterranean world were not much less complex than those of our world today. When they eventually collapsed, they created a path for new developments.

Sources and further reading

• Ancient Warfare (AW) magazine Vol IV, issue 4 – Darkness descends: End of the Bronze Age Empires
• Mark Schwartz – Darkness descends, pp. 6-9
• Josho Brouwers – Palace Warriors, pp. 13-19
• Duncan Campbell – Homes for heroes, pp. 22-26
• D’Amato, Raffaele & Andrea Salimbeti – The war of the eighth year, pp. 27-33

• Binsbergen, Wim M.J. van and Fred C. Woudhuizen, Ethnicity in Mediterranean Protohistory, BAR International Series 2256, Archaeopress, Publishers of British Archaeology Reports, Oxford 2011
• Bryce, Trevor – The Kingdom of the Hittites, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998
• Bryce, Trevor – The Trojans and their neighbours, Routledge, London and New York, 2006
• Bryce, Trevor – Hittite Warrior, Warrior Series no. 120, Osprey Publishing Oxford 2007
• Cline, Eric H. – 1177 BC the year civilisation collapsed, Princeton University Press, Woodstock UK 2014
• D’Amato, Raffaele & Andrea Salimbeti – Sea Peoples of the Bronze Age Mediterranean c. 1400 BC – 1000 BC, Elite Series no. 204, Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2015
• D’Amato, Raffaele & Andrea Salimbeti – Bronze Age Greek Warrior 1600 – 1100 BC, Warrior Series no. 153, Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2011
• http://www.salimbeti.com/micenei/index.htm
• Desperta Ferro Antigua y Medieval no. 30 – La Guerra de Troya
• Thomas G. Palaima – La Grecia micénica, una sociedad marcada por la guera (pp. 20/5)
• Dan Howard – El armament micénico, Características y evolución (pp. 32/8)
• Jordi Vidal – Arqueología de Troya (pp. 40/5)
• Easton, Donald F, The Wooden Horse: some possible Bronze Age Origins, in Luwian and Hittite Studies presented to J. David Hawkins on the occasion of his 70th birthday, (pp. 50-63), Institute of Archaeology Tel Aviv University, 2010
• Fields, Nic – Troy c. 1700 – 1250 BC, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 2004
• Fields, Nic – Mycenaean Citadels c. 1350 – 1200 BC, Fortress Series no. 22, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 2004
• Grguric, Nicolas – The Mycenaeans c. 1650 – 1100 BC, Elite Series no. 130, Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2005
• Jung, Reinhard and Manfred Bietak – Pharaos, Swords and Sea Peoples, AHL, issues 26-27, 2007/spring 2008
• Kontorlis, Konstantinos  P., Mycenaean Civilisation, J. Makris SA, Athens 1974
• Koui, M., P. Papandreopoulos et al. – Study of Bronze Age copper-based swords of type Naue II and spearheads from Greece and Albania, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, Vol 6 no. 1, pp 49-59, Athens 2006
• Luce, J.V. – Homer and the Homeric Age, Evanston, New York -San Francisco-London 1975
• Mellink, Machteld J., Troy and the Trojan War: A Symposium Held at Bryn Mawr College, October 198
• Hans G. Güterbock – Troy in Hittite texts? Wilusa, Ahhiyawa, and Hittite history (pp. 33-44)
• Manfred Korfmann – Troy: topography and navigation (pp. 1-16)
• Calvert Watkins – The language of the Trojans (pp. 45 – 62)
• Emily D.T. Vermeule – “Priam’s Castle Blazing” (pp. 77-92

• Molloy, Barry – The Origins of Plate Armour in the Aegean and Europe, TALANTA XLIV (2012), pp. 273-294
• Panagiotopoulos, Diamantis – Foreigners in Egypt in the Time of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, in E.H. Cline and D. O’Connor, A New Biography, Ann Arbor 2006 (pp. 370-412)
• Peatfield, Alan et al. – 1200 BC, War, Climate Change & Cultural Catastrophe – Abstracts, UCD School of Archaeology
• Roebuck, Carl – The World of Ancient Times, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1966
• Strauss, Barry – THE TROJAN WAR, A New History, Arrow Books, London 2008
• Waterson, Patrick – The Trojan war – Moved!, Slingshot 292, pp. 37-40
• Willcock, Malcolm M. – A Companion to the Iliad, The University of Chicago Press, London 1976
• Woudhuizen, Fred C. – The Ethnicity of the Sea Peoples, PhD thesis for Rotterdam University, 2006
• Wood, Michael – In search of the Trojan War, BBC Books, London 1985