The Mask of Troy: Facts Behind the Fiction

For a synopsis of the novel and a link to an excerpt, go to the Books page.

Like my other novels, The Mask of Troy was very much inspired by my own experiences as an archaeologist and diver. I was fortunate to study at the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge under some of the foremost scholars of the Bronze Age Aegean and Near East. I first went to Mycenae on an undergraduate study tour, and I first dived on underwater sites of Bronze Age date at that time too. My first visit to Troy was in 1984 on a student scholarship from the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, which funded several months of research and travel for me across Turkey - from the Iranian and former Soviet borders to the Black Sea and the Aegean Coast. That was a formative experience for me, and several other sites I visited then have also appeared in my novels, including Neolithic Çatal Höyük in Atlantis and the Roman battlefield of Carrhae in The Tiger Warrior. My most recent visit to Troy was in November 2009, when I took the photographs here while researching The Mask of Troy.  I'm grateful to my brother Alan for joining me to shoot video, and to everyone at my Turkish publisher Altin for their hospitality during that trip and a very rewarding time signing books and meeting fans at the Istanbul Book Fair!

The Mask of Troy contains a section set in a Nazi concentration camp in Germany shortly after its liberation in 1945, as well as a present-day epilogue set just outside Auschwitz in Poland. I first visited a Holocaust site at Babi Yar, in Ukraine, the place where the SS murdered the Jewish population of Kiev, and I found myself overwhelmed by the sight of childen playing on the grassed-over ravine. The 1945 chapters were the most challenging fiction I have written, and were only possible because I felt I could write them from the point of view of an Allied officer entering a camp. To put myself in that position I read many eyewitness accounts, particularly of the liberation of Belsen, listened to oral histories, spoke to survivors, looked at images and visited sites. As you can see in these Facts behind the Fiction pages, my fiction can often be closely related to real-life artefacts, sites and images that have inspired me, and this is true for the 1945 chapters - I could have included about six images that were seared into my mind as I was developing those chapters: photographs of camp liberation, faces, even a painting. But these are all available in the many publications, museums and websites devoted to the Holocaust, and these are where readers should go. My research benefited greatly from the Imperial War Museum, London, which holds much of the material related to the British liberation of Belsen, and I would strongly recommend anyone wishing for more background to visit the Holocaust exhibit in the museum - one of the most powerful museum displays I have ever experienced.

The ancient island of Tenedos in the Aegean Sea, viewed from the Turkish shore.  The Greek forces under Agamemnon supposedly camped on Tenedos during their siege of Troy, which lies several miles to the north on the mainland, just inland from the coast - to the right in this picture. In The Mask of Troy, the fictional excavation of a fabulous war galley takes place somewhere on the horizon in this picture. In reality these waters are littered with shipwrecks and war debris dating from antiquity to the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, very possibly including undiscovered wrecks of the time of the Trojan War.

The East Tower and East Gate of Late Bronze Age Troy, showing the best-preserved section of wall at the site. These would have been the walls of Troy at the time of the Homeric story, about the 13th century BC. The wall has vertical offsets and slopes back, probably a precaution against earthquakes. On the far horizon in the middle can be see the Dardanelles Strait and the Gallipoli peninsula, site of the 1915 First World War campaign.

The blocked-up entrance to the so-called 'water-cave' of Troy, beyond the south-west part of the lower city. Long stretches of tunnel have recently been discovered, part of a water supply system from a subterreanean source. More tunnels may remain to be discovered, and a fictional extension of these forms a setting for action scenes in The Mask of Troy.

The Excavation House outside the East Gate of Troy, the setting for a scene in The Mask of Troy.

The fortification wall and south-eastern entrance ramp of Early Bronze Age Troy, from the 3rd millennium BC. These wall foundations would have been enclosed by the walls of the Late Bronze Age citadel and buried beneath buildings of that period, so would not have been visible during the period of the Homeric story. It was here that Heinrich Schliemann in 1873 discovered the 'Treasure of Priam', the great hoard of gold and other artefacts that went to Berlin and then Moscow after the Second World War.

The northern part of the great trench dug by Heinrich Schliemann through the mound of Troy during his excavations in the late 19th century. Above the trench to the right is the site of the fictional excavation of a house with an image of a lyre player in The Mask of Troy. Beyond the trench to the north lies the Plain of Troy, with the waters of the Dardanelles Strait in the distance.

The location in The Mask of Troy of the fictional excavation of the house with the painted lyre player, beyond the excavated walls to the upper right in the picture. Although much of Late Bronze Age Troy was swept away when the Greeks and Romans levelled the top of the mound to make their own city, unexcavated sections around the edge may contain structures dating to the time of the Trojan Wars. This picture also shows the Plain of Troy - the floodplain of the ancient river Scamander - as far as the coast to the north-west. During the Late Bronze Age much of this plain was underwater and shallow-draught galleys could have been drawn up to within a kilometre or so of Troy, in the middle foreground.

In The Mask of Troy, Professor Dillen makes an astounding discovery in the fictional Bronze Age house he is excavating at Troy - a wall painting with an inscription that vindicates his entire career as a scholar of Homer. That painting is fictional, but is inspired by the real-life wall-painting shown here: a lyre-player, probably a bard, found at the Mycenaean palace of Pylos in Greece. The five-stringed lyre in this painting was the basis for a reconstructed lyre that Dillen keeps in his excavation trench and occasionally plays when he thinks he is alone, sitting on the wall as he imagines a bard might have done, seeing the army of Agamemnon assembled below. The Pylos bard appears to have been associated with scenes representing a feast, suggesting that he was singing to the king and his warriors of deeds of glory - a true predecessor to Homer, and an image that gives substance to the idea that the bardic tradition of which Homer was part stretched far back into the Bronze Age. The palace of Pylos was built about 1300 BC and destroyed by fire about a hundred years later, about the same time as the fall of 'Homeric' Troy, part of the general wave of destruction that ended Bronze Age Aegean civilization.

This photograph shows me shooting a .455 Webley Mark 1 revolver. In The Mask of Troy, Jack shoots this revolver for target practice from their research ship near Troy, and feels a connection with the past as it is a British naval issue revolver refurbished in 1914 - as is the one I am shooting here - and could have been used in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, within sight of Troy. In a later chapter of the novel set in 1945 a British officer uses a Webley against an SS guard, in a forest setting like this. The Webley in this picture was made in 1890 at the end of the black powder era, and is shown shooting 15 grains of Goex 3F behind a 265 grain lead bullet (photo: Alan Gibbins).

The golden Mask of Agamemnon, one of the most famous archaeological treasures of all time. When Schliemann raised this mask in 1876 from a Bronze Age grave at Mycenae he thought he had gazed on the face of the great king. Today it 's on display in the Athens Archaeological Museum, where this picture was taken (photo: Ann Verrinder Gibbins).

A view from the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae in Greece towards the sea, where King Agamenmon may have set off with his ships to Troy. In The Mask of Troy Heinrich Schliemann stands on this spot one night during his excavations in the 1870s, pondering on the historical reality of the Trojan War and wondering whether Agamemnon too might have stood at the same spot before setting out, contemplating the war ahead.

The Bronze Age 'grave circle' at Mycenae, where Heinrich Schliemann uncovered a fabulous royal grave containing the golden Mask of Agamemnon. The Mask of Troy opens with Schliemann and his wife Sophia digging secretly at this spot one night, uncovering the mask but also revealing something extraordinary beneath it, an artefact that will resonate through history to the darkest days of the Second World War ...

A first edition of W.H. Auden's poetry collection The Shield of Achilles, published in 1955. The image on the front is one of many attempts to depict the shield, based on Homer's detailed description. This book features in The Mask of Troy when Jeremy and Costas realise that they have both been fascinated by Auden and the Homeric imagery in his poetry.

Two of the lavishly produced volumes by Heinrich Schliemann recounting his famous excavations. This edition of Ilios: the City and Country of the Trojans was published in London in 1880. The volume of Mycenae is the American edition, published in 1878, and was once in the library of U.S. Senator George Hoar. Schliemann is often criticised for his methods and interpetations, but these are marvellous volumes of erudition and passion and imagination, more stimulating than many modern excavation reports and showing standards of description and illustration equal to anything in their day.

A large fragment of black-burnished pottery from Troy, and smaller sherds of painted Mycenaean pottery. In The Mask of Troy, Professor Dillen discovers charred and fire-blackened pottery in a late Bronze Age deposit, evidence perhaps for the violent end of the Homeric citadel at the conclusion of the Trojan War.

In The Mask of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann and his wife Sophia dig secretly one night in 1876 at the ancient site of Mycenae, and discover the golden Mask of Agamemnon. That much is history - one of the most extraordinary tales of archaeological discovery ever. But what Jack and his evil opponents know is that something else was found, an object of such astonishing history and power that Schliemann hid it away from the world. The truth about that object and what happened to it will be revealed in my next novel, The Gods of Atlantis ...