- The basic motif is a typical feature of ancient eastern Mediterranean stories about sacking cities.
- That’s the context in which to read the Trojan horse story. It isn’t an attempt to record a historical event: it’s a story built out of traditional motifs. Three stories in particular stand out as parallels:
- Hurrian-Hittite: the Song of release, about the destruction of Ebla in northern Syria, over the matter of remitting debt and freeing people who have been enslaved. The poem dates to sometime before the 1400s BCE and survives in Hittite. As well as divine involvement from the god Teshub, it also includes a supplication scene in assembly that will remind any Iliad reader of Chryses’ supplication of Agamemnon in Iliad 1, as well as other scenes later in the epic. (This text isn’t so easy to come by as a full edition only apeared in 1996; one version can be found in the 2nd edition of Harry Hoffner’s Hittite myths, in the SBL Ancient World series, pp. 65-80.)
- Hebrew: the sack of Jericho, in Joshua 6 (6th cent. BCE or later). Here the city is captured by divine intervention from Yahweh, with action at the human level revolving around the spectacular device of blowing trumpets to make the walls fall. The parallels between the Trojan War myth and Hebrew myth are extensive. Joshua spares Rahab, who had hidden Joshua’s spies, similarly to how the Greeks spare Antenor, who had ensured the safety of the emissaries they sent into Troy.
- Egyptian: the Taking of Joppa (ANET 22-23), where the Egyptian general Thuti, under the pretence of parlaying to surrender after his protracted siege of the city, uses the friendly parlay to trick the king into letting him bring in a deadly weapon, which he then uses to knock out the king. The deception carries on: Thuti pretends to offer tribute to the city, and sends in two hundred sealed baskets containing soldiers who leap out and capture Joppa’s soldiers. See further M. L. West, The east face of Helicon (1997), pp. 485-489. He wasn’t able to take into account the Song of release, but he does cite a bunch of other parallels in the Trojan War myth and stories from the Levant and Egypt.
- Hurrian-Hittite: the Song of release, about the destruction of Ebla in northern Syria, over the matter of remitting debt and freeing people who have been enslaved. The poem dates to sometime before the 1400s BCE and survives in Hittite. As well as divine involvement from the god Teshub, it also includes a supplication scene in assembly that will remind any Iliad reader of Chryses’ supplication of Agamemnon in Iliad 1, as well as other scenes later in the epic. (This text isn’t so easy to come by as a full edition only apeared in 1996; one version can be found in the 2nd edition of Harry Hoffner’s Hittite myths, in the SBL Ancient World series, pp. 65-80.)