Get it right, say archaeologists

Down in the dusty excavations where archaeologists are seeking to discover the truth about ancient Troy there is clearly a degree of irritation at the fuss generated by Troy the movie.

The souvenir-sellers may be buzzing as a result of the extra attention, hoping the link with Brad Pitt will boost visitor numbers the way a visit from Persian superstar King Xerxes did 2000 years before.

But the folk at Project Troia, run by the Universities of Tubingen, in Germany, and Cincinnati, USA - who have been excavating the site since 1988 - are not so happy.

Before the film was released, they issued a statement saying they would "make no statements or commentaries concerning the movie. We were not at all involved in the conception of the film and we are of the opinion that archaeologists should pass no judgment on this kind of film or on any other manifestation of contemporary art (ie theatre, literature or fine arts). This is the job of art critics".

The attempted distancing was presumably because they knew full well that the latest film version of Troy, filmed in Mexico and largely computer-generated, would bear no relation to any of the cities that have ever stood on the plains in what is now northwest Turkey.

A review of the film on the website of the Archaeological Institute of America (www.archaeology.org) is scathing on the lack of any correspondence between it and the real Troy.

"The city of Troy is increasingly well known and we have a good idea of its appearance, thanks to the Troia Project excavation ... The film-makers, however, must have wanted something more spectacular," says reviewer Mark Rose.

"Troy's intimidating outer wall in the film, which I take to be 40 or 50 ft [12-15m] in height with higher towers, is a fiction ... There's evidence for a ditch enclosing the lower city at Troy, but here drama trumps reality.

"Some of the inaccuracies are understandable from the point of view of the film-makers - having Achilles standing below 50-ft walls and calling out for Hektor may make for a better shot than having him stand on the far side of a ditch - but others of these errors are just ugly."

Rose is particularly incensed by the use of coins, even though they won't be invented for another five or six centuries, ships that are also from a different age, jewellery from the Early Bronze Age (a full millennium earlier) and "goofy" statues.

"They don't help the movie," the archaeologists cry plaintively. "Why not get it right?"