Below is map a that attributes itself to H. Schliemann. It uses the terms "Troyland," "Hissarlik," "Ilium," and "(Troy)," in addition to "Theatre," to mark the citadel hill. It also calls the water body on the east side of the plain "Ancient Scamander" and the body in the center of the plain "Modern Scamander".
I don't know where the map above comes from. I found it by searching for images of the plain of Troy.
Here is another map whose source I do not know.
An attribution in the lower right mentions Leipzig. The map uses 'Troia' and 'Ilion' to label the site at Hissarlik. It places the village of Kalifat significantly west of Troy, in the plain, which is a mistake. The Schliemann inspired map above does the same. Kalifat is not in the plain. It is above the plain, on the foot of the prominence south of Troy.
Kalifat is bounded on its western and southern edges by a road that runs along the length of the prominence above the floor of the valley. So, it is not in the plain. Furthermore, if you draw a straight line north and south from the easternmost point of the creek/canal in front of Hissarlik, you will see that almost all of the village of Kalifat lies to the east of that line. A similar line along the westernmost edge of the citadel will show you that most of Kalifat lies to the west of that line.
In both of the above maps, however, Kalifat is placed in the center of the plain. The Leipzig map places it at a point where some part of the Scamander parts with what appears to be a branch of itself. Below is another map that also misplaces Kalifat into the plain.
Above is a photo of page 149 of Eberhard Zangger's The Flood From Heaven (1992) showing an 1849 map of the plain by Henry Acland . It includes three arrows added by Zangger pointing at an old river bed. Acland placed Kalifat in the middle of the plain, just above the center arrow.
A few years before Acland's map, at least one map appeared from Thomas A. B. Spratt. It is not clear to me how many distinct Spratt maps there are. I will show you four of them, there may be more. Peter Forschhammer commented in English on one of Spratt's maps in 1850 in a lecture titled Topography of the Plain of Troy, which can be downloaded as a pdf that includes 4 versions of a Spratt map.
This map identifies Ilium Novum with Hissarlik, while identifying the bluff at the southern end of the plain as Troja vel Ilium Vetus (vel = or, vetus = original). It also places Kalifat in the plain, west of a circle of canals that is represented, as we shall see, in all of the Spratt maps.
This is another photo of a page from Zangger's 1992. I do not know the page number. It shows a Spratt map from 1877 that is distinct from the one above. That date is several years after Schliemann declared that he had found Troy, yet Hissarlik is still labeled Ilium Novum. Kalifat is again near the center of the plain, and west of a circle of canals.
Above is a third Spratt map, this one is not very large and its text is hard to read. The
Luwian Studies Website offers an enlarged view of the area around Hissarlik, shown below.
This map clearly shows that the ground is low on all sides of the mound in front of Hissarlik. That mound contains the main part of the city of Troy. Again Kalifat is placed much too far west of Hissarlik, in the center of the plain, west of a circle of canals. Kalifat seems to be surrounded by low ground, and perhaps by water.
Above is our 4th Spratt map. It places Kalifat in the plain, and shows a circle of canals to the east of it. This one has "Ilium Novum?" written on the hill at Hissarlik. It is often said that Schliemann found Troy on the basis of a Spratt map with a question mark over Hissarlik. In some versions of this tale, the question mark follows the word Troy, in others it follows Ilium Novum. I am uncertain where this story originates, but I believe it is false. Schliemann did not follow a map to Hissarlik, he followed Frank Calvert to Hissarlik. Schliemann's maps were old and took him to Pinarbasi, at the south end of the plain. Having struck out there, he was ready to move on. He met Calvert by chance while in the process of actually leaving the Troy area, and Calvert refocused Schliemann's energies and resources on Hissarlik.
Spratt's maps make clear that the current course of the Scamander/Kamandere follows what on our 4th map above is labeled the "Winter Channel," and seems to pass through the "Deep Beds" marked near Kalifat, before it runs past the buried city into the areas marked "Swampy Hollows" and out to sea. The modern, canalized river is running in that old course.
The Spratt maps are a valuable resource. They tell us a few things about the condition of the plain 150 years ago, and preserve things that decades of agri-business have now erased from the landscape, including old river beds and unexplained declivities and sand heaps. This one notes that the eastern channel rounding the buried city is nine feet deep as it enters the Dumbrek valley north of Hissarlik. It also identifies a "Deep Bed" at the mouth of the Lisgar Marsh, due west of Hissarlik.
Here is a curiosity from Forschhammer's lecture: "Where the winter stream of the Bunarbashi-Su joins the Mendere, there are some immense blocks of irregular shape;
they may have formed part of the wall of a small fortress" (p 39). He is referring to our first map above, and a spillway between the creek on the western edge of the plain and the main river. Below is a a close up of that area.
The winter channel of the Bunarbashi Su runs between the T and the R in TROY above, from west to east, connecting the western to the central river in the plain. Forschhammer is saying there were immense blocks there in his time. If not a fortress, perhaps those were part of a water control structure.
My questions about all of the Spratt maps:
1 Why is Kalifat so badly placed?
2. What did Spratt see that he represented as a circle of canals? regardless of where he places that feature, just what was he seeing?
In all but the third of the Spratt maps above, a channel of water seems to spring up from Kalifat in the plain, and head north east, toward Hissarlik. In the third of the maps, however, we see that the so called Winter Channel of the Scamander is feeding water around a circular area with a village in it. What on earth was Spratt looking at?
One possibility is that there was a village in the plain that was bulldozed or otherwise eliminated, and a new village was built on the foot of the prominence, as we see it today.
I cannot eliminate that possibility, but I doubt it. That old village would have been directly in what Spratt calls the winter channel. Possibly in the declivity that represents the old city's reservoir. I very much doubt a village would be there due to flood risk.
I suspect Spratt saw something else, and placed Kalifat badly as well.
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