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08 March 2011

Answer to the What Where Wall PizzaQ, and the Bonus Antipasto for its Roman Numeral

Click image, maybe gets larger.
The artist says he has no idea what the stamp means.

In a private e-mail, Ron Bizer, of the USA state shaped like the palm of a right-hand mitten, was the first to identify the stone wall, beating misterfathersir to the punch by 4 hours 16 minutes. Ron wins the Pizza.

Both had the correct answer: Troy.


Just "Troy" will do for the "What," but misterfathersir adds:

Forgot the What part of the question.
Eastern gate of Troy.
c.1700BC - c.1200BC.
One source says Troy VII another Troy VI\VIIa.


These ruins are today located in northwestern Turkey. British diplomat Frank Calvert and German merchant Heinrich Schliemann were both convinced that the Troy of Homer's Iliad was not just a fictitious myth and legend, and in the late 1860a began excavating, and unearthed the actual city of Troy.


In ancient times Troy controlled a chokepoint of an important nautical trade route, and became wealthy and powerful by extracting tribute from the merchant traffic.

Troy is a complex vertical Tell of many levels, each level representing a distinct historical human settlement, one built anew on top of the others.

The Troy of ancient legend, the Troy of the Trojan War, and the Troy of the excavated stone wall, is Troy VII. So Ron wins the Bonus Antipasto, too.


~ ~ ~

Ron B., misterfathersir, and the Vleeptron Dude were all US Army soldiers stationed together in Corpus Christi, Texas, during the Vietnam War. 


Ron and misterfathersir had the further pleasure of being deployed to Vietnam, on the Army helicopter repair ship, the USNS Corpus Christi Bay, usually anchored off the coast of Vung Tau, which the colonial French called Cap St. Jacques -- South Vietnam's resort beach on the South China Sea.

The Vleeptron Dude was designated too valuable a national treasure to send to Vietnam, so he remained in Texas. 


All this was a long time ago. Ron B. recently found a cache of 35mm negatives of those days, converted them to digital images, and they are very spooky.

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