Summary
Troy carries two names in the epic — Τροίη/Τροία and Ἴλιος (older Ϝίλιος, Hittite Wilusa) — and the Troy dossier reads each: Troy on ṭ-w-r as the mound-citadel (طور), a topographic name (grade ج); Ilios/Wilusa on w-ʾ-l as المَوْئِل, the refuge-stronghold (grade ج+), a reading that absorbs the Hittite-attested initial w- instead of ignoring it. (المصدر: raw/greek/طروادة_عقد_جذور.md)
Symbolic Reading
- The mount (م-١): the city is an acropolis on the mound of Hisarlik; Aramaic ܛܘܪܐ ṭūrā, Quranic الطُّور — the name describes the situation, not the lineage. Hittite Taruiša preserves the t-r-w skeleton. (المصدر: raw/greek/طروادة_عقد_جذور.md)
- The refuge (م-٢): the city's function across the whole epic is المَوْئِل — the god-built walls, the stronghold sheltering its people for ten years; the fall of the Refuge is the story. The loss of w- in Ἴλιος parallels the Greek-internal loss of digamma.
- The dual-naming witness (م-٤): Homer himself records the plain of Troy as a bilingual naming environment — the river "the gods call Xanthos and men Skamandros" (Il. 20.74) — the strongest internal evidence for the multilayered linguistic space the whole dossier presupposes. Grade أ as a sociolinguistic witness.
Linguistic Root
ṭ-w-r and w-ʾ-l. The Hittite treaty of Muwatalli II with Alaksandu of Wilusa (CTH 76) anchors the place-name's pre-Homeric reality — including ]-appaliunas (Apollo) among Wilusa's divine witnesses. (المصدر: raw/greek/طروادة_عقد_جذور.md)
Cross-Cultural Parallels
- Sacred Mountain — the citadel-height as the axis of its world
- بيت إيل، إيلياء، إسرائيل — the Semitic naming pattern the earlier "city of El" reading leaned on, now refined by the w-ʾ-l solution
- Trojan Onomastics and the Levantine Substrate
Open Questions
- Luwian toponyms in wil-/wal- should be surveyed to test the Anatolian rival for Wilusa. (المصدر: raw/greek/طروادة_عقد_جذور.md)
- The relation between the two names (Taruiša vs Wilusa in Hittite records; Troia vs Ilios in Homer) — two names for one place, or originally two places? Standing debate in Hittitology, unresolved.