Ricin

The book explains that ricin is a poison. Similarly Geoffrey of Monmouth traces the legendary kings of Britain to a supposed descendant of Aeneas called Brutus. One of these is a sticker reading "With all-natural ricin!". The most famous is undoubtedly that promulgated by Virgil in the Aeneid, tracing the ancestry of the founders of Rome, and more specifically the Julio-Claudian dynasty, to the Trojan prince Aeneas. The Penn and Teller book How To Play With Your Food (ISBN 0679743111) includes a "gimmicks envelope" of small objects related to the tricks inside the book. Such was the fame of the Trojan story in Roman and medieval times that it was built upon to provide a starting point for various legends of national origin. Ricin was mentioned in the "call me the prankster" comic at toothpaste for dinner. For many years also the site was unguarded and was thoroughly looted.

Ricin was used as the poison of choice of the murderer in the 1962 comedy film Kill or Cure. The archaeological site itself is, as a recent writer said, "a ruin of a ruin," because the site has been frequently excavated, and because Schliemann's archaeological methods were very destructive: in his conviction that the city of Priam would be found in the earliest layers, he demolished many interesting structures from later eras, including all of the house walls from Troy II. Ricin was the poison used in the Agatha Christie Tommy and Tuppence whodunnit The House of Lurking Death in a 1929 collection of short stories called Partners in Crime. The visitor sees a highly commercialised site, with a large wooden horse built as a playground for children, then shops and a museum. Several Senate office buildings were closed as a precaution. A large number of tourists visit the site each year, mostly coming from Istanbul by bus or by ferry via Çanakkale, the nearest major town about 50 km to the north-east. There were no signs that anyone who was near the contaminated area developed any medical problems. The archaeological site is officially called Troy by the Turkish government and appears as such on many maps.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office. Today there is a Turkish town called Truva in the vicinity of the archaeological site, but this town has grown up recently to service the tourist trade. This information was not made public until February 3, 2004, when preliminary tests showed the presence of ricin in an office mailroom of U.S. Even though Homer was Ionian, the Iliad reflects the geography known to the Mycenaean Greeks, showing detailed knowledge of the mainland but not extending to the Ionian islands or Anatolia, which suggests that the Iliad reproduces an account of events handed down by tradition, to which the author did not add his own geographical knowledge. Investigators said it was low potency and was not considered a health risk. Linguistically, a few verses of the Iliad suggest great antiquity, because they only fit the meter if projected back into Mycenaean Greek, suggesting a poetic tradition spanning the Greek Dark Ages. The letter contained a fine powdery substance that later tested positive for ricin. Such a historical background gives a credible explanation for the geographical knowledge of Troy (which could, however, also have been obtained in Homer's time by visiting the traditional site of the city) and otherwise unmotivated elements in the poem (in particular the detailed Catalogue of Ships).

The letter containing it was intercepted at a mail handling facility off the grounds of the White House, and it never reached its intended destination. Much legendary material would have been added during this time, but in this view it is meaningful to ask for archaeological and textual evidence corresponding to events referred to in the Iliad. in November of 2003. In this view, the poem's core could reflect a historical campaign that took place at the eve of the decline of the Mycenaean civilization. Ricin was detected in the mail at the White House in Washington, D.C. Another view is that Homer was heir to an unbroken tradition of epic poetry reaching back some 500 years into Mycenaean times. All others accused in connection with the Wood Green flat were acquitted on all counts. The identification of the hill at Hissarlik as Troy is, in this view, a late development, following the Greek colonisation of Asia Minor in the 8th century BC.

He was also jailed for life following a conviction for murdering the Special Branch policeman who went to arrest him. In this view, no historical city of Troy existed anywhere: the name derives from a people called the Troies, who probably lived in central Greece. In April 2005 31-year-old Kamel Bourgass was jailed for 17 years after being convicted of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance "by the use of poisons and explosives to cause disruption, fear or injury". In recent years scholars have suggested that the Homeric stories represented a synthesis of many old Greek stories of various Bronze Age sieges and expeditions, fused together in the Greek memory during the "dark ages" which followed the fall of the Mycenean civilization. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented those arrested as the "UK Poison Cell" of a global terrorist network in making the case for military intervention in Iraq to the UN Security Council [7]. Others accept that there may be a foundation of historical events in the Homeric stories, but say that in the absence of independent evidence it is not possible to separate fact from myth in the stories. On February 5, 2003, U.S. Some archaeologists and historians maintain that none of the events in Homer are historical.

A number of men who were apparently living at the mosque were arrested. It may be possible to establish connections between either story and real places and events, but these always risk to be subject to selection bias. On January 20, 2003 Finsbury Park mosque was raided by police, apparently as part of the investigation into the alleged discovery of ricin in Wood Green. In both cases, an ancient writer's story is now seen by some to be true, by others to be mythology or fiction. A Special Branch policeman, DC Stephen Oake, was fatally stabbed during the arrests, and three other officers were also injured, one seriously. The ostensible historicity of Homer's Troy faces the same hurdles as with Plato's Atlantis. Three more suspects were arrested in Manchester in England in connection with the investigation of the alleged ricin found in London, following a raid carried out pursuant to an investigation into immigration issues. No scholars assume that the individual events in the tale (many of which centrally involve divine intervention) are historical fact; on the other hand, no scholars claim that the scenery is entirely devoid of memories of Mycenaean times: it is rather a subjective question of whether the factual content is rather more or rather less than one would have expected.

They were not convicted of any poisons related crime. The story of the Iliad is not an account of the war, but a tale of the psychology, the wrath, vengeance and death of individual heroes that assumes common knowledge of the Trojan War to create a backdrop. Six more suspects were arrested in Bournemouth in England in connection with the investigation into the alleged ricin incident in London. The more we know about Bronze Age history, the clearer it becomes that it is not a yes-or-no question but one of educated assessment of how much historical knowledge is present in Homer. The analytic confusion was caused by the similarity of many plant proteins to one of the ricin components, which suggests that higher quality (better specificity and sensitivity) analytic tests for ricin are needed. The dispute over the historicity of the Iliad was very heated at times. Further analysis identified the material as ground wheat germ. Historical Wilusa was one of the Arzawa lands, in loose alliance with the Hittite Empire, and written reference to the city is therefore to be expected in Hittite correspondence rather than in Mycenaean palace archives.

A little later several arrests were made in France and a bottle of something that tested positive for ricin was found. The Mycenaean Greeks of the 13th century BC had colonized the Greek mainland and Crete, and were only beginning to make forays into Anatolia, establishing a bridgehead in Miletus (Millawanda). It appears that an individual conducting amateur research on poisons was found in this raid. A name Wilion or Troia does not appear in any of the Greek written records from the Mycenean sites. Some acetone, 22 castor beans, and poor recipes for ricin and other poisons copied from the Internet were found. But even if that is accepted, it is of course no positive proof of identity with Homeric (W)ilion. However at the trial of Kamel Bourgass in 2005 it became apparent that within a few days of the raid the leader of the Biological Weapon Identification Group at the Porton Down Defence Science and Technology Laboratory had concluded that ricin was not present at Wood Green [5] [6]. Our emerging understanding of the geography of the Hittite Empire makes it very likely that the site corresponds to the city of Wilusa.

Media reports stated that a group was suspected of intending to use the poison in an attack on the London Underground. A single seal of a Luwian scribe has been found in one of the houses, proving the presence of written correspondence in the city, but not a single text. It was widely reported in the media that traces of ricin were detected by British police in a flat in Wood Green, North London after a raid on a suspected ring of terrorists on 5 January 2003. This is probably due to the planification of the former hillfort during the construction of Hellenistic Ilium (Troy IX), destroying the parts that most likely contained the city archives. An aerosol powder may be prepared by spray drying or air grinding the purified ricin using cold air. No text or artifact has been found on site itself which clearly identifies the Bronze Age site. The final ricin precipitate is dried and then purified by floatation in carbon tetrachloride. The events described in Homer's Iliad, even if based on historical events that preceded its composition by some 450 years, will never be completely identifiable with historical or archaeological facts, even if there was a Bronze Age city on the site now called Troy, and even if that city was destroyed by fire or war at about the same time as the time postulated for the Trojan War.

The precipitated ricin may be reextracted once to further purify it. The identifications of Wilusa with archaeological Troy and of the Achaeans with the Ahhiyawa remain controversial, but gained enough popularity during the 1990s to be considered a majority opinion. After precipitation, the crude ricin cake is washed with a 16.7% solution of sodium sulfate to remove extranious nitrogenous substances. Hittite texts mention a water tunnel at Wilusa, and a water tunnel excavated by Korfmann, previously thought to be Roman, has been dated to around 2600 BC. The leachate is filtered to remove insoluble matter and the crude ricin then precipitated by the addition of a 12% solution of sodium sulfate with a pH of 7.0-8.0. Recent evidence adds weight to the theory that Wilusa is identical to archaeological Troy. Ricin is initially extracted from defatted castor beans by aquous extraction at pH 3.8 to yield a leachate containing solubilized ricin. Trevor Bryce in 1998 championed them in his book The Kingdom of the Hittites, citing a recovered piece of the so-called Manapa-Tarhunda letter, which refers to the kingdom of Wilusa as beyond the land of the Seha (known in classical times as the Caicus) river, and near the land of Lazpa (the Isle of Lesbos).

Modern extraction plants might use membrane filtration to make highly purified ricin isolates. These identifications were rejected by many scholars as being improbable or at least unprovable. The extraction of ricin from castor beans is very similar to the prepartion of soy protein isolates. This people have been identified with the Homeric Greeks (Achaeans). The patent was removed from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database sometime in 2004, but is still available online through international patent databases. 1320 BC wrote a letter to the king of the Ahhiyawa, treating him as an equal and implying that Miletus (Millawanda) was controlled by the Ahhiyawa, and also referring to an earlier "Wilusa episode" involving hostility on the part of the Ahhiyawa. Dieke, and Charlotte Karel. The Hittite king Mursili II in ca.

Corwin, Sally H. He further noted that the name of Alaksandus, king of Wilusa, mentioned in one of the Hittite texts is quite similar to the name of Prince Alexandros or Paris of Troy. Alderks, Alsoph H. In the 1920s the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer claimed that placenames found in Hittite texts — Wilusa and Taruisa — should be identified with Ilium and Troia respectively. Craig, O.H. Korfmann died on 11 August 2005, and since the digging permit was tied to his person, it is uncertain how and when the excavations will continue. Secretary of the Army, are Harry L. Possible evidence of a battle was also found in the form of arrowheads found in layers dated to the early 12th century BC.

The inventors named in US Patent 3,060,165 (granted October 23, 1962) "Preparation of Toxic Ricin", assigned to the U.S. It is claimed by Korfmann that the ditch may have once have marked the outer defences of a much larger city than had previously been suspected. The process for creating ricin is well-known, in part because a patent was granted for it in 1952. Remains found in the ditch were dated to the late Bronze Age, the alleged time of Homeric Troy. Ricin is actually several orders of magnitude less toxic than botulinum or tetanus toxins, but those are more difficult to obtain. In August 2003 following a magnetic imaging survey of the fields below the fort, a deep ditch was located and excavated among the ruins of a later Greek and Roman city. The major reason it is dangerous is that there is no specific antidote, and that it is very easy to obtain (the castor bean plant is a common ornamental, and can be grown at home without any special care). The question of Troy's status in the Bronze Age world has been the subject of a sometimes acerbic debate between Korfmann and the Tübingen historian Frank Kolb in 2001/2002.

Presumably it could be sealed inside some sort of dust particle that would dissolve in water, but this would be difficult. In 1988 excavations were resumed by a team of the University of Tübingen and the University of Cincinnati under the direction of Professor Manfred Korfmann. Since it acts as an enzyme, catalyzing destruction of ribosomes, even a single oxidation is likely to render the ricin molecule harmless. These excavations have shown that were at least nine cities built one on top of each other at this site. Pure ricin could be dispersed through the air, however it would tend to be oxidized and rendered harmless by ozone, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants in a matter of hours. After Schliemann, the site was further excavated under the direction of Wilhelm Dörpfeld (1893/4) and later Carl Blegen (1932-8). (Jan van Aken, an expert on biological weapons explained in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that he judges it rather reassuring that Al Qaeda experimented with ricin as it suggests their inability to produce botulin or anthrax.). Schliemann declared one of these cities—at first Troy I, later Troy II—to be the city of Troy, and this identification was widely accepted at that time.

Ricin denatures (ie, the protein changes structure and becomes less dangerous) much more readily than anthrax spores, which may remain lethal for decades. Here he discovered the ruins of a series of ancient cities, dating from the Bronze Age to the Roman period. Ricin is easy to produce, but is not as practical nor likely to cause as high casualities as other agents. In the 1870s (in two campaigns, 1871-73 and 1878/9), however, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated a hill, called Hissarlik by the Turks, near the town of Chanak (Çanakkale) in north-western Anatolia. Hence, a military willing to use biological weapons and having advanced resources would rather use either of the latter instead. With the rise of modern critical history, Troy and the Trojan War were consigned to the realms of legend. To put ricin used as weapon into perspective, it is worth noting that as a biological weapon or chemical weapon, ricin may be considered as not very powerful, if only in comparison with other poisons such as botulinum or anthrax. In Byzantine times the city declined gradually, and eventually disappeared.

In August of 2002, US officials asserted that the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam tested ricin, along with other chemical and biological agents, in northern Iraq. The last city on this site, Hellenistic Ilium, was founded by Romans during the reign of the emperor Augustus and was an important trading city until the establishment of Constantinople in the fourth century as the eastern capital of the Roman Empire. Despite this, more than 1 million metric tonnes of castor beans are processed each year, and approximately 5% of the total is rendered into a waste containing high concentrations of ricin toxin [4]. 1020 BC) appear to have been destroyed by fires. Under both the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, ricin is listed as a schedule 1 controlled substance. 1120 BC) and Troy VIIb₂ (ca. Despite ricin's extreme toxicity and utility as an agent of chemical/biological warfare, it is extremely difficult to limit the production of the toxin. Troy VIIb₁ (ca.

Thomas, Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life, 368-378). However, only small portions of the city have been excavated, and the finds are too scarce to clearly favour destruction by war over a natural disaster. Earlier, Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also suffered (but survived) ricin-like symptoms after a 1971 encounter with KGB agents (D.M. Three bronze arrowheads were found, two in the fort and one in the city. He died in hospital a few days later; the pellet was discovered by chance during an autopsy and the poison linked back to the KGB. Partial human remains were found in houses and in the streets, and near the north-western ramparts a human skeleton with skull injuries and a broken jawbone. In 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by Bulgarian secret police who surreptitiously 'shot' him on a London street with a modified umbrella using compressed gas to fire a tiny pellet contaminated with ricin into his leg. Until the 1988 excavations, the problem was that Troy VII seemed to be a hill-top fort, and not a city of the size described by Homer, but later identification of parts of the city ramparts suggests a city of considerable size.

The best-known documented use of ricin as an agent of biological warfare was by the Soviet Union's KGB during the Cold War. It appears to have been destroyed by a war, and there are traces of a fire. Ricin was given the military symbol W. The archaeological layer known as Troy VIIa, which has been dated on the basis of pottery styles to the mid- to late-13th century BC, is the most often-cited candidate for the Troy of Homer. This conclusion was based on comparison of the final weapons rather than ricin's toxicity (LD50 <30 mg.min.m^–3). Only a single arrowhead was found in this layer, and no bodily remains. Though there were plans for mass production and several field trials with different bomblet concepts, the end conclusion was that it was no more economical than using phosgene. Troy VI was destroyed around 1300 BC, probably by an earthquake.

During the Second World War the United States and Canada undertook studying ricin in cluster bombs. During the Bronze Age, the site seems to have been a flourishing mercantile city, since its location allowed for complete control of the Dardanelles, through which every merchant ship from the Aegean Sea heading for the Black Sea had to pass. The War ended before it was weaponized. The first city was founded in the 3rd millennium BC. The dust cloud concept could not be adequately developed, and researchers believed the coated bullet/shrapnel concept was unethical. The layers of ruins on the site are numbered Troy I – Troy IX, with various subdivisions:. At that time it was being considered for use either as a toxic dust or coated bullets and shrapnel. Once Troy fell, the Trojans on the European shore fled northward and ended up as the Etruscans in Italy.

The United States investigated ricin for its military potential during the First World War. During the Trojan War, the Greeks used a naval blockade to prevent Trojans on the European shore and on Lemnos from coming to the aid of Troy. Use of ricin as an adjuvant has potential implications for developing mucosal vaccines. After attacking and destroying the Hittite Empire, they came to control the Straits. A promising approach is also to use the non-toxic B subunit as a vehicle for delivering antigens into cells thus greatly increasing their immunogenicity. Dillon argues [7] that the Trojans were originally a steppe people related to the Magyars. Genetic modification of ricin is believed to be possible to lessen its toxicity to humans, but not to the cancer cells. Historian Kenneth J.

Ricin could be linked to a monoclonal antibody to target malignant cells recognized by the antibody. Immanuel Velikovsky, while accepting the traditional geography of the Trojan War, argued [6] that the Greek Dark Ages never happened, and that the Trojan War was fought several centuries later than is now generally believed. Ricin may have therapeutic use in the treatment of cancer. Dr. In the United states, a person caught manufacturing or possessing ricin may be sentenced up to 30 years in prison. Neither theory is generally accepted by classicists. As little as one castor bean, about 0.5 grams, may be fatal in a child. Iman Wilkins has located Troy in England [4], while Felipe Vinci places it in southern Finland [5].

Since 0.2 mg of purified Ricin constitutes a fatal dose, this is a considerable amount of ricin. A small minority of contemporary scholars dispute the Anatolian location of Homer's Troy. The seed-pulp left over from pressing for castor oil contains on average about 5% by weight of ricin. Their conclusion was that there is regularly a consistency between the location of Troy as identified by Schliemann (and other locations such as the Greek camp), the geological evidence, and descriptions of the topology and accounts of the battle in the Iliad. Ricin is easily purified from castor-oil manufacturing waste. The geologists compared the present geology with the landscapes and coastal features described in the Iliad and other classical sources, notably Strabo's Geographia. Since people do not get sick from eating large amounts of such products, ricin A is of extremely low toxicity if and only if the B chain is not present.. Luce from Trinity College, Dublin presented the results (see [1], [2], & [3]) of investigations into the geology of the region that had started in 1977.

Many plants such as barley have the A chain but not the B chain. Kraft from the University of Delaware and John V. Ricin consists of two distinct protein chains (almost 30kDa each) that are linked to each other by disulfide bond:. In November 2001, geologists John C. Typically 2.5–20 raw seeds can kill an adult human; 4 a rabbit, 5 a sheep, 6 an ox, 6 a horse, 7 a pig, 11 a dog, but 80 for cocks and ducks.[3]. Ancient Greek historians placed the Trojan War variously in the 12th, 13th or 14th century BC: Eratosthenes to 1184 BC, Herodotus to 1250 BC, Douris to 1334 BC. [2]. Alexander the Great, for example, visited the site in 334 BC and made sacrifices at the alleged tombs of the Homeric heroes Achilles and Patroclus.

Although one seed contains enough ricin to kill an adult human, they may pass harmlessly through the digestive system if swallowed whole. The Greeks and Romans took for a fact the historicity of the Trojan War, and in the identity of Homeric Troy with the site in Anatolia. Modern feed-making techniques break down the ricin in castor beans by heating at 140 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes, although some studies suggest that residual toxic effects may linger. The Homeric legend of Troy was elaborated by the Roman poet Virgil in his work the Aeneid. Although the castor bean plant has long been noted for its toxicity, ricin was first isolated and named in 1888 by Hermann Stillmark. Besides the Iliad, there are references to Troy in the other major work attributed to Homer, the Odyssey, as well as in other ancient Greek writings. (See abrin). The site of the ancient city today is some 15 kilometers from the coast, but the ancient mouths of Scamander, some 3,000 years ago, were some 5 kilometers further inland, pouring into a bay that has since been filled with alluvial material.

Ingested in larger doses, ricin causes severe diarrhea and victims can die of shock. The city of Troy itself stood on a hill, across the plain of Scamander, where the battles of the Trojan War took place. In small doses, such as the typical dose contained in a measure of castor oil, ricin causes digestive tract cramps. In the Iliad, the Achaeans set up their camp near the mouth of the river Scamander (modern Karamenderes), where they had beached their ships. Long term organ damage is likely in survivors. Aeneas landed there and Helenus foretold his future. There is no known antidote; only symptomatic and supportive treatment is available. Buthrotos (or Buthrotum) was a city in Epirus where Helenus, the Trojan seer, built a replica of Troy.

Ricin is poisonous if inhaled, injected, or ingested, acting as a toxin by the inhibition of protein synthesis. The altar of Panomphaean (‘source of all oracles’) was dedicated to Jupiter the Thunderer (Tonatus) near Troy. . Mount Ida ("Mount of the Goddess") in Asia Minor, is where Ganymede was abducted by Zeus, where Anchises was seduced by Aphrodite, where Aphrodite gave birth to Aeneas, where Paris lived as a shepherd, where the nymphs lived, where the "Judgement of Paris" took place, where the Greek gods watched the Trojan War, where Hera distracted Zeus with her seductions long enough to permit the taking of Troy, and where Aeneas and his followers rested and waited until the Greeks set out for Greece. It is considered to be twice as deadly as cobra venom. This law was adopted by King Dunvallo Molmutius (from Brutus) in his code and is still in effect today in Britain. Ricin can be extracted from castor beans and is known to have an average lethal dose in humans of 0.2 milligrams (1/5,000th of a gram), though some sources give higher figures [1]. Gordon allowed queens as well as kings.

Its name comes from the seed's resemblance to the tick. A Trojan law mentioned by E.O. The protein ricin (pronounced rye-sin) is a poison manufactured from the castor bean (Ricinus communis). Pegsis was the naiad of the River Grenikos near Troy. Ricin B is important in assisting ricin A's entry into a cell by binding with a cell surface component. The Aisepid nymphs were the naiads of the Trojan River Aisepos. Ricin A is toxic to the cell by interfering with Ribosomes, responsible for protein synthesis. Some of the Trojan allies were the Hittites and the Amazons.

Kapys, Boukolion, Aisakos, and Paris were Trojan princes who had naias wives. Some famous Trojans are: Dardanus (founder of Troy), Laomedon, Ganymede, Priam, Paris, Hector, Teucer, Aesacus, Oenone, Telamon, Tithonus, Antigone, Memnon, Corythus, Aeneas, Brutus, and Elymus. The Persians invaded in 546 BC. The Ionians, Cimmerians, Phrygians, Milesians of Sinope, and Lydians moved into Asia Minor.

Trojan rule in Asia Minor was replaced by the "sons of Herakles" dynasty in Sardis that ruled for 505 years until the time of Candaules. The Trojan ships transformed into naiads, who rejoiced to see the wreckage of Odysseus' ship. The Maxyans were a west Libyan tribe who said that they were descended from the men of Troy, according to Herodotus. During his reign, the Mycenaean Greeks invaded and captured Troy in the Trojan War (traditionally dated to 1193 BC-1183 BC).

Priam later became king. One generation before the Trojan War, Heracles captured Troy and killed Laomedon and his sons, except for young Priam. Pestilence came and the sea monster snatched away the people of the plain. When Laomedon refused to pay, Poseidon flooded the land and demanded the sacrifice of Hesione to a sea monster.

Poseidon and Apollo built the walls and fortifications around Troy for Laomedon, son of Ilus the younger. Zeus gave Ilus the Palladium. Ilus, son of Tros, founded the city of Ilium (Troy) that he called after himself. Upon Dardanus' death, the Kingdom was passed to his grandson Tros, who called the people Trojans and the land Troad, after himself.

Eventually Dardanus married Teucer's daughters, and founded Dardania (later ruled by Aeneas). Teucer was himself also a coloniser from Attica, and treated Dardanus with respect. Dardanus, the legendary founder of Troy, crossed over to Asia Minor from the insland of Samothrace, where he met Teucer. The Trojan royal family was started by Electra and Zeus, the parents of Dardanus.

Troy was known for its riches, gained from port trade with east and west, fancy clothes, iron production, and massive defensive walls. According to Greek mythology, the Trojans were the ancient citizens of the city of Troy in the Troad area, in the land of Asia Minor (or Little Asia, now Turkey). The story of the Trojans first began in myth and legend. .

While such an identity is disputed, the site has been successfully identified with the city called Wilusa in Hittite texts; Ilion (which goes back to earlier Wilion with a digamma) is thought to be the Greek rendition of that name. One of the earlier cities (Troy VII) is often identified with Homeric Troy. Later excavations revealed several cities built in succession to one another. In the 1870s the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann excavated the area.

The Roman city of Celeia (now Celje in Slovenia) has been referred to by some writers as Troia secunda ("the second Troy"). It flourished until the establishment of Constantinople, and declined gradually during Byzantine times. A new city of Ilium was founded on the site that many believed to be the location of the legendary Ilion in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. Troy (Truva, Hissarlik 39°58′N 26°13′E) is also the name of an archaeological site, the traditional location of Homeric Troy, in Asia Minor or Anatolia, close to the seacoast in what is now northwest Turkey, southwest of the Dardanelles under Mount Ida.

Troy (Turkish: Truva, Greek Τροία Troia also Ἰλιον; Latin: Troia, Ilium) is a legendary city, scene of the Trojan War, part of which is described in Homer's Iliad, an epic poem in Ancient Greek, composed in the 8th or 7th century BC, but containing older material (Iliad means "epic of Ilion"). Troy IX: Hellenistic Ilium, 1st century BC. Troy VIII: around 700 BC. 950 BC.

Troy VIIb₃: until ca. Troy VIIb₂: 11th century BC. Troy VIIb₁: 12th century BC. 1300 – 1190 BC, most likely candidate for Homeric Troy.

Troy VIIa: ca. Troy VIh: late Bronze Age, 14th century BC. Troy VI: 17th – 15th centuries BC. Troy V: 20th – 18th centuries BC.

Troy I – Troy IV: early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC).