Heinrich Schliemann

“ If he has indeed found the fire-scathed ruins of the city whose fate inspired the immortal first-fruits of Greek poetry, and brought to light many thousands of objects illustrating the race, language, and religion of her inhabitants, their wealth and civilization, their instruments and appliances for peaceful life and war; and if, in digging out these remains, he has supplied the missing link, long testified by tradition as well as poetry, between the famous Greeks of history and their kindred in the East ”

“ Above the splendid, flowing, unparted, but not long hair on the head of the god, there is seen about two-thirds of the sun’s disc with ten rays 2-1/3 inches long, and ten others 31⁄2 inches long. The face of the god is very expressive, and the folds of his long robe are so exquisitely sculptured that they vividly remind one of the masterpieces in the temple of Νίκη ἄπτερος in the Acropolis of Athens. ”

“ I still think with horror of what would have become of the discovery of Ilium and of myself, had the six men been crushed by the wall which gave way; no money and no promises could have saved me; the poor widows would have torn me to pieces in their despair—for the Trojan women have this in common with all Greeks of their sex, that the husband, be he old or young, rich or poor, is everything to them; heaven and earth have but a secondary interest. ”

“ The next question is:—But how many centuries have been required to form a layer of débris, 40 and even 461⁄2 feet thick, from the ruins of pre-Hellenic houses, if the formation of the uppermost one, the Greek layer of 61⁄2 feet thick, required 1061 years? During my three years’ excavations in the depths of Troy, I have had daily and hourly opportunities of convincing myself that, from the standard of our own or of the ancient Greek mode of life, we can form no idea of the life and doings of the four nations which successively inhabited this hill before the time of the Greek settlement. ”

“ We cannot sympathize with the sentimental objection that, in proportion as the conviction grows that the Troy of Homer has been found, his poetry is brought down from the heights of pure imagination. Epic Poetry, the very essence of which is narrative, has always achieved its noblest triumphs in celebrating events which were at least believed to be real, not in the invention of incidents and deeds purely imaginary. ”

“ The most resolute deniers of any historic basis for the story of Troy will admit that neither the scene nor the chief actors were invented by Homer, or, if you please, the Homeric poets, who assuredly believed the truth of the traditions to which the Iliad gave an immortal form. Any discovery which verifies that belief strengthens the foundation without impairing the superstructure, and adds the interest of truthfulness to those poetic beauties which remain the pure creation of Homer. ”

“ It is impossible that a Byzantine town or a Byzantine village, nay, that even a single Byzantine house, can have stood upon this hilly and stone-hard ground, which covers the ruins of a primeval city, without leaving the most distinct traces of its existence, for here, where for nine or ten months of the year it never rains, except during rare thunderstorms, the productions of human industry do not become weather-beaten and destroyed, as in other countries where there is frequent rain. ”

“ I found no trace of a double cup among this people, but instead of it, those curious cups (vase-covers) which have a coronet below in place of a handle; then those brilliant red fanciful goblets, in the form of immense champagne-glasses, with two mighty handles on the sides: they are round below, so that they also can only stand on their mouths. Further, those small covers, from about 4 to 43⁄4 inches high, with owls’ faces, with a kind of helmet on the lower end, furnished with a high button or tuft, which is, no doubt, intended to represent the crest of a helmet and served as a handle. ”

“ I venture to hope that the civilized world will not only not be disappointed that the city of Priam has shown itself to be scarcely a twentieth part as large as was to be expected from the statements of the Iliad, but that, on the contrary, it will accept with delight and enthusiasm the certainty that Ilium did really exist, that a large portion of it has now been brought to light, and that Homer, even although he exaggerates, nevertheless sings of events that actually happened. ”

“ I therefore pay my workmen a reward of 10 paras (5 centimes, or a half-penny) for every object that is of the slightest value to me; for instance, for every round terra-cotta with religious symbols. And, incredible as it may seem, in spite of the enormous quantities of these articles that are discovered, my workmen have occasionally attempted to make decorations on the unornamented articles, in order to obtain the reward; the sun with its rays is the special object of their industry. ”

“ I cannot conceive how it is possible that the solution of the great problem, “ubi Troja fuit”—which is surely one of the greatest interest to the whole civilized world—should have been treated so superficially that, after a few hours’ visit to the Plain of Troy, men have sat down at home and written voluminous works to defend a theory, the worthlessness of which they would have perceived had they but made excavations for a single hour. ”

“ The paradox—that Troy never existed and that Bunarbashi was its site—was so far confirmed by Schliemann that he dug at Bunarbashi, and found clear evidence that the idea of a great city having ever stood there is a mere imagination. The few remains of walls, that were found there, confirm instead of weakening the negative conclusion; for they are as utterly inadequate to be the remains of the “great, sacred, wealthy Ilium,” as they are suitable to the little town of Gergis, with which they are now identified by an inscription. ”

“ In spite of the diligent search which my companions and I made on the extensive northern slope of the Balidagh, from the foot of the acropolis (of Gergis) to the springs of Bunarbashi, we could not discover any indication beyond the three heroic tombs, that might have pointed to a former human settlement, not even antique fragments of pottery and pieces of brick,—those never-failing, and consequently imperishable, proofs of an ancient settlement. ”

“ In the idol the figurative intention is forgotten, just as the sun is represented with a golden hand, whereas the ideal conception of ‘golden-handed’ was ‘spreading his golden rays.’ An owl-headed deity was most likely intended for a deity of the morning or the dawn, the owl-light; to change it into a human figure with an owl’s head was the work of a later and more materializing age. ”

“ It must in its best days have been very rich, and the plastic art must have attained a high degree of perfection here. Accordingly the site of the town, which is covered with abundant relics of grand buildings, is strewn with fragments of excellent sculptures, and the splendid block of triglyphs—61⁄2 feet in length and 2 feet 10 inches in height, with a metopé which represents Phœbus Apollo with the four horses of the Sun—is one of the most glorious masterpieces that have been preserved from the time when Greek art was in its zenith. ”

“ This Treasure of the supposed mythical king Priam, of the mythical heroic age, which I discovered at a great depth in the ruins of the supposed mythical Troy, is at all events a discovery which stands alone in archæology, revealing great wealth, great civilization and a great taste for art, in an age preceding the discovery of bronze, when weapons and implements of pure copper were employed contemporaneously with enormous quantities of stone weapons and implements. ”

“ A rude pre-historic people could by no means have made the beautiful terra-cottas which are found here immediately below the ruins of the Greek colony, and still less could they have manufactured the splendid pottery which shows such a high degree of artistic taste, and which I meet with here at a great depth. ”

“ The enormous quantities of stone weights and hand-mills of lava, continually brought to light, give an idea of the number of the houses, through the ruins of which I daily penetrate. I have placed great numbers of these mills and other stone implements in the niches of the walls in my excavations for the inspection of the admirers of Homer who may visit the Plain of Troy. ”

“ If the legend of the Trojan War preserves the tradition of a real conquest of the city by a kindred race, the very nature of the case forbids us to accept literally the story, that the conquerors simply sailed away again. ”

“ The great Indian scholar, Max Müller of Oxford, has just written to me in regard to the owl-headed tutelary divinity of Troy. “Under all circumstances, the owl-headed idol cannot be made to explain the idea of the goddess. The ideal conception and the naming of the goddess came first; and in that name the owl’s head, whatever it may mean, is figurative or ideal. ”

“ I am astonished at this remark of M. Nikolaïdes, for, as he can see from his own map of the Plain of Troy, the distance from hence to the Hellespont is nearly four miles, or 11⁄2 hour’s walk, whereas no human eye can recognise men at a distance of 1 mile, much less at a distance of four. M. Nikolaïdes, however, believes the tumulus of Æsyetes to be the mound called Udjek-Tépé, which is 8 miles or 31⁄2 hours’ journey from the Hellespont. ”

“ Terra-cotta idols of the Ilian Athena are rarely met with; but we daily find marble idols of this goddess, most of which have almost a human form. We also frequently come upon oblong flat pieces of rough marble, upon which the owl’s face of the goddess is more or less deeply engraved. It is often so finely scratched that the aid of a magnifying glass is required to convince one that it actually exists; we found several such pieces of marble where the owl’s head was painted in a black colour. ”

“ At a depth of 5 feet we found the upper portion of a vase with a pretty owl’s head; the rim of the mouth forms a kind of helmet. A little deeper than a foot we met with a good-looking head of a man in terra-cotta; at 2 meters (61⁄2 feet) down, a Greek lamp with a foot 23⁄4 inches long, and at the same depth some very pretty vases and jugs, and a terra-cotta flattened on one side, with two perforated holes and a stamp, in which there is a very pretty picture of the head and shoulders of a woman. At a depth of 3 and 4 meters (10 and 13 feet) were twelve marble idols without owls’ faces ”

“ The signs of a higher civilization increasing with the greater depth—which I mentioned in my last report when speaking of the large urn with Assyrian inscriptions—continue down to the native soil. Close above it I find a great quantity of fragments of brilliant black and sometimes red or brown pottery, with engraved decorations, of a quality more excellent than I have hitherto met with even in the highest strata, among the ruins of the Greek period. ”

“ At all these depths I also find funnels from 23⁄4 to above 3 inches long, the broad end of which is only a little above an inch in diameter. In the upper strata they are made of very coarse clay, but at an increasing depth they gradually become better, and at a depth of 46 feet they are made of very good terra-cotta. It is extremely remarkable, however, that these curious and very “unpractical” funnels were kept in use in an entirely unchanged pattern by all the tribes which inhabited Ilium from the foundation of the city to before the Greek colony. ”

“ Now as regards the construction of the houses belonging to the strata at a depth of from 7 to 10 meters (23 to 33 feet) , only the foundations and thresholds were composed of large stones—as anyone may convince himself by a glance at the earthen walls of my excavations. The house-walls, on the other hand, were composed of unburnt sun-dried bricks. At a depth of 10 meters (33 feet) , I again found the buildings to be of stone, but of colossal proportions. Most of the stones are very large, many of them hewn, and we meet with a great many massive blocks. ”

“ Knives are found in very great numbers; all are of flint, some in the form of knife-blades, others—by far the greater majority—are jagged on one or on both sides, like saws. Needles and bodkins made of bone are of frequent occurrence, and sometimes also small bone spoons. Primitive canoes, such as I frequently saw in Ceylon, formed out of a hollowed trunk of a tree, are often met with here in miniature, made of terra-cotta, and I presume that these small vessels may have served as salt-cellars or pepper-boxes. ”

“ Sometimes the sun is in the centre of the cross with four nails, which, according to the explanations in my sixth memoir, can evidently, and in all cases, represent only the instrument which our Aryan forefathers used for producing the holy fire (Agni) , and which some Sanscrit scholars call “Arani” and others “Suastika.” The rising sun must have been the most sacred object to our Aryan ancestors; for, according to Max Müller ('Essays') , out of it—that is, out of its struggle with the clouds—arose a very large portion of the gods who afterwards peopled Olympus. ”

“ Experience has taught me that it is far more profitable not to have any special men for loading the wheel-barrows, but to let every workman fill his own barrow. Experience has also shown me that much precious time is lost in breaking down the earthen walls with the long iron levers driven in by a ram, and that it is much more profitable and less dangerous to the workmen always to keep the earthen walls at an angle of 55 degrees, to dig as occasion requires, and to cut away the rubbish from below with broad pickaxes. ”

“ The more recent house was erected when the ruins of the more ancient house were perfectly covered with ashes and with burnt débris, as is obvious from the fact that the more recent walls run in all directions above the more ancient ones, never standing directly upon them, and are frequently separated from them by a layer of calcined débris, from 61⁄2 to 10 feet high. The lower, as well as the upper house, is built of stones joined with earth, but the walls of the lower house are much thicker and much more solidly built than those of the upper one. ”

“ All of the large fields are filled with imprinted little stars. The mouth or opening is only about 1/3 of an inch in diameter. I presume that this small and wonderful Trojan vessel was used by ladies for holding scented oil, which we know was applied after the bath. It cannot have been used as a lamp, for Homer, who lived 200 years after the destruction of Troy, does not as yet know of lamps. I also found this morning two copper arrow-heads, and one of those small terra-cotta “volcanoes,” which for some days have been less frequently met with. ”