explain the situation in the Iliad; for after passing Kum Koï ("sand village"), which lies a little to the northwest of Hissarlik, the small stream has made a sharp bend, and empties through a delta too far to the west to allow the position of the Greek fleet between its mouth and the sea.
The Homeric description needs the following: At Rhoeteum, near a mound, which is called to-day In Tepeh, but which tradition styles the "Tomb of Ajax," is observed a streamlet which almost joins in a direct line the Kalifatli at the point where the latter makes its bend to the westward. Here we may mark the mouth of the historic river. In that case the Scamander of Trojan times flowed along the eastern range of hills, passing under the mound of Hissarlik, and from thence making its course in a straight line to the Hellespont, which it joined at Rhoeteum. This would leave the bend of the sea from Sigeum to Rhoeteum free for ships, and would place the Greeks on the opposite side of the river to the Trojans. Demetrius of Skepsis, misinterpreting a statement in Herodotus,[1] supposed that the shore along the Hellespont had advanced. Virchow has made geological tests and failed to find anything to indicate that this portion of the plain is an alluvial deposit. He shows also how it is impossible for land to form against such a swift torrent.[2] Furthermore, in a work attributed to an old geographer, Scylax, the statement is made that Ilion is twenty-five stades from the sea, which is practically the distance of Hissarlik from the Hellespont
