Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is finally in cinemas, and with it comes one of the most famous stories ever told: the Trojan Horse. Even if you’ve never read the poets Homer or Virgil, you’ve probably heard the tale. A giant wooden horse, Greek soldiers hiding inside, and a city that falls because its people unknowingly let the enemy through the gates.
But here’s a question that doesn’t get asked nearly enough: what if the oldest version of that story wasn’t Greek at all?
Ancient Egypt has a tale that’s centuries older, follows an uncannily similar strategy, and has led historians to draw comparisons with the Trojan Horse for generations. Once you hear both stories side by side, it’s hard not to wonder where history’s most famous military trick really began.
What Is the Story of the Trojan Horse?
The Trojan Horse comes from the legendary Trojan War, one of the best-known stories in Greek mythology.
According to Greek mythology, the war began when Paris, prince of Troy, carried off Helen—the queen of Sparta, wife of King Menelaus, and the woman said to be the most beautiful in the world—and took her back to Troy. In response, the Greek kings united and laid siege to the city. For ten years, they fought without managing to break through Troy’s towering walls.
That’s when Odysseus, the Greek hero known for his intelligence rather than brute strength, came up with a different approach.
The Greeks pretended to abandon the war, leaving behind an enormous wooden horse outside the city gates as what appeared to be an offering to the gods. Believing they had finally won, the Trojans pulled the horse inside the city. That night, the Greek soldiers hidden inside climbed out, opened the gates for the returning army, and Troy fell—not through force, but through deception.
It’s one of the most famous twists in world literature.
It’s also not the oldest.
Ancient Egypt Told a Similar Story First
Centuries before the earliest written versions of the Odyssey, Ancient Egypt had already told a strikingly similar tale.
Known today as The Capture of Joppa, the story survives on Papyrus Harris 500. Ironically, not only have the Greeks borrowed the story, but the British also took the manuscript, now kept in the British Museum. The surviving copy dates to the early 19th Dynasty, but the events are set during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III in the fifteenth century BC, when Egypt controlled much of the Levant.
One of those cities, Joppa—modern-day Jaffa—rebelled against Egyptian rule. Rather than launching a long siege, Pharaoh’s general, Djehuty, decided to win the city through strategy instead.
How Did Djehuty Capture Joppa?
Djehuty first persuaded Joppa’s ruler to meet him outside the city. During the gathering, the ruler asked to see the ceremonial staff of Pharaoh Thutmose III—a symbol of royal authority.
Djehuty agreed.
Then he used it to knock the rebel leader unconscious.
With the city’s ruler captured, Djehuty set the real plan in motion.
He ordered two hundred large baskets to be prepared, each hiding an Egyptian soldier. A messenger was then sent ahead to convince the city’s Mistress that Djehuty had surrendered and that the baskets were simply the first installment of tribute.
As the papyrus puts it:
Here are the first fruits of their servitude,” so (you) shall say to her regarding these two hundred baskets,’ ” which were (actually) filled with men and manacles and ropes.
Believing the Egyptians had been defeated, Joppa’s gates were opened and the baskets carried inside. Once they were safely within the walls, the hidden soldiers emerged, overpowered the city’s defenders, opened the way for their fellow troops, and secured the city for Pharaoh.
History… Or Just Really Good Storytelling?
Even the historical side of both stories isn’t entirely settled.
Archaeologists agree that Troy was a real Bronze Age city that suffered destruction more than once, but whether there was ever an actual wooden horse remains unknown. Joppa was also very real, and Djehuty himself appears to have been a real Egyptian official whose tomb and inscriptions have been found. Whether he genuinely captured a city using baskets full of soldiers is impossible to prove.
That uncertainty is part of what makes both stories so enduring. They sit somewhere between history and legend, where facts, memory and great storytelling all blur together.
Did the Greeks Actually Borrow It?
While the Egyptian story is centuries older than the earliest written versions of the Trojan Horse, we can’t say for certain that that is the case. Both tales belong to traditions that mixed history, myth and oral storytelling, making it almost impossible to trace where every idea began.
What we do know is that Egypt wasn’t isolated from the rest of the eastern Mediterranean. Civilizations traded, fought, travelled and exchanged ideas for centuries. Stories could travel just as easily as goods, especially ones dramatic enough to survive hundreds of years.
The Similarities Are Hard to Ignore
It’s impossible to read the two stories without noticing how closely they resemble one another.
In both tales, an enemy city proves impossible to conquer through direct attack. Instead, victory comes through deception. Hidden soldiers are concealed inside what appears to be a harmless offering, the object is willingly brought into the city, and the defenders unknowingly hand victory to their enemy.
The object itself is different—baskets in one story, a wooden horse in the other—but the military strategy is remarkably similar.
That resemblance hasn’t gone unnoticed. Historians have long pointed to The Capture of Joppa as the earliest surviving example of this type of military ruse, leading many to compare it directly with the Trojan Horse.
So, the next time someone calls the Trojan Horse the greatest trick in ancient history, you can smile and ask:
“Okay… but have you heard about Joppa?”
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