Troy and the Flood

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 765, 19 March 1954, Page 6

Troy and the Flood

ID the Flood really happen? Was there a siege of Troy? Are these well-known and_ well-loved stories legends or are they only myths? Last year the BBC broadcast a series of talks by archaeologists, scholars and others’ about the Flood, Troy, Knossos, Tara and other famous events and places of the past which tried to decide what was pure invention-mythi-_cal-on the one hand and what, on the other, was to some extent historicalor legendary. The first two of these programmes have been received on transcription by the NZBS and are to be broadcast from National stations, start‘ing with "The Flood," which will be heard from 3YC at 8.24 p.m. on Monday, March 22. Sir Leonard Woolley. the eminent archaeologist, who is known to a wide circle of readers for such books as Ur of the Chaldees and Digging Up the Past,

is probably better qualified than anyone else to say what is known about the Flood. Until a few generations ago, he points out, the story was accepted as. historical | fact

because it was part of the Bible. Then believers had two. shocks: scholars discovered that Genesis was a composite narrative, and archaeologists unearthed clay tablets on which were written another version of the Flood story. Since this new, Sumerian version was written before the time of Abraham, it was not Hebrew in origin at all, but a pagan legend-so why should we for a moment suppose that it was true? That is how Sir Leonard starts off; and he goes on to examine the rest of the evidence and to tell his story of the excavations he

conducted at Ur and the discoveries he made there. He ends by saying exactly what he thinks is the basis of the Flood of Sumerian legend and Biblical story. Until the middle of the 19th Century the story of the siege of Troy was known only through the Iliad, the oldest and among the greatest works in European. literature. In his talk about Troy in Myth or: Legend? Denys Page, Professor of Greek at Cambridge University, tells how Heinrich Schliemann, serving for 18 hours a day in his father’s shop, dreamed about the famous city and made a fortune so that he could go and look for it. The learned world was vastly amused when he began to dig, but he found nine cities of Troy, layer updn layer-though, as Professor Page goes on to Say, -it was left to someone else to find the Troy of the lliad after Schliemann died. "Troy" will be heard from 1YC at 8.0 p.m. on Monday, March 29.