John NOBLE-WILFORD,
Was Troy a Metropolis? Scientists disagree and Homer isn't talking.

A new Trojan War has broken out. 

In the warrior roles of Achilles and Hector are two respected professors on 
the same German university faculty who differ vehemently over what to 
make of the ruins at the presumed site in western Turkey of the legendary 
siege in the 13th century B- C- immortalized by Homer.

An archaeologist who has directed excavations there since 1988 contends 
that he has found telling evidence of Troy as a much larger and more important 
city than previously thought. 

Surveys and excavations, he says, disclose the outlines of a densely settled 
town reaching 1300 feet south of the hilltop citadel.

This greater Troy, with an estimated population of up to 10000, is now being 
portrayed as a thriving tenter of Late Bronze Age commerce at a stratetegic 
point in shipping between the Aegean and Black Seas. 

It seemed to have been a place worth fighting over (if indeed there is any historical 
basis to Homer's "lliad").

Where is the proof, asks the archaeologist's adversary, an ancient historian. 

Charging "willful deceit," the historien argues that excavations have 
turned up no firm evidence of such a large town outside the acropolis. 

At best, he insists, Troy in that period was only a princely seat, a castle and little 
else of consequence.

The argument between the two professors at the University of Tübingen, 
Dr- Manfred Korfmann, the archaeologist, and Dr- Frank Kolb, the historian 
of ancient times, may have little direct bearing on some of the longstanding 
questions about Troy. 

Was Homer's Trojan War part history or all poetry? 

Was there ever a woman like Helen, a woman whose face, however beautiful, 
could have launched a thousand ships?

The immediate cause of the dispute between Drs. Korfmann and Kolb was 
an exhibition, "Troy: Dream and Reality," organized by Dr- Korfmann to 
display results of his excavations. 

The exhibition opened in Stuttgart, near Tübingen, and moved to Braunschweig and Bonn.

When Dr- Kolb saw its elaborate model of what a greater Troy might
have looked like, he was incensed. 

Calling the model a fiction, Dr- Kolb, called Dr- Korfmann "the von Däniken 
of archaeology," referring to Erich von Däiniken, a popular writer who 
contends that ancient astronauts visited Earth from outer space and created
early civilizations.

In e-mail responses to questions, Dr- Kolb said that Dr- Korfmann "wants to 
present a great Troy at any cost" and in doing so, "his interpretations distort 
the evidence." 

Where the archaeologist claimed to find many houses and 
streets outside the citadel, the ancient historien said that there were few actuel 
excavations of house foundations and that much of the land was open 
agricultural fields.

Moreover, Dr- Kolb said, "no evidence at all" bas been found of trade 
goods and other artifacts to support a view of Troy as a major entrepôt.

Dr- Korfmann's team modified the model to show fewer houses in the lower 
city and reduced population estimates by several thousand. 

But Dr- Korfmann defended the research underlying his view of a greater Troy.

"Our work is reviewed by independent scholars every year, and we have 
never got a negative review," Dr- Korfmann said in a telephone interview from Tübingen.

Among Dr- Korfmann's allies is Dr- Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, director of 
the German Archaeological Institute in Athens. 

In a recent article in Archaeology Odyssey, Dr- Niemeier said 
that even though Dr- Korfmann had exaggerated and oversimplified some 
points, his main interpretation of a greater Troy seemed correct. 

There was, Dr- Niemeier added, more to Troy than a citadel.

Several prominent historians and archeologists side with Dr- Kolb.

"We are dealing with a principality of only regional significance, which 
would certainly have not been drawn into a major military conflict with the 
Greeks," said Dr- Dieter Hertel, a classical archaeologist at the University of Munich.

At least the disputants have steered clear of literary warfare.

"We find destruction and evidence of hostile activity, but we cannot excavate 
the Trojan War because it's literature," Dr- Korfmann said. 

"We will never find Helen and Hector."

Since scholars generally agree that the site is where Troy should have 
been, Trojan War or not, later excavators looked for ruins beyond the walls, 
but with little success. 

Historians began tu suspect, as Dr- Kolb wrote in 1984, that Troy was not a city, but a citadel. 

Dr- Korfmann was inclined to agree at the time.

Then Dr- Korfmann organized the first systematic investigation of the 
site in more than 50 years, conducted primarily by researchers from Tübingen 
and other German institutions, as well as the University of Cincinnati. 

A decade ago, they began finding reasons for Dr- Korfmann to change his 
mind, which led to his conclusions about Troy's size and significance.

Dr- Kolb pointed out that the Korfmann group had excavated just a 
small fraction of the disputed area, with inconclusive results. 

He told German newspapers that the exhibition model "falsely shows solid houses" 
where excavations actually revealed "only scattered wood and clay buildings 
and much free space."

Dr- Korfmann said he had invited the critics to visit the ruins to see for 
themselves the evidence of a greater Troy. 

No one has showed up, he said. 

Excavations have continued without interruption, and with no change in the 
focus on the extended city.

Other Troy scholars are waiting on the sidelines to see who, Dr- Korfmann 
or Dr- Kolb, will be Achilles, the victor in Homer's Trojan War.