Schliemann 1- 30 Schliemann 30-60 Schliemann 60-90 Schliemann 90-120 Schliemann 120-150 Schliemann 150-180 Schliemann 180 – 210 Schliemann 210 – 240 Schliemann 240 – 270 Schliemann 270 – End
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sometimes in the form of a pillar rounded off at the top (just as I have seen in Indian temples, but there only about four inches in length). I once also found the symbol in the form of a little pillar only about 1 inch in length, made of splendid black marble topped with white and beautifully polished.” Schliemann correctly supposed that the Trojans of the period worshipped Priapus and, as members of the Indo-Germanic race, brought their religion from Bactria, India, where the god of reproduction (Priapus) was represented in forms similar to those found at Hissarlik.
He did not always have a basis for comparison of objects, and he was confused by many “round articles with a hole in the center, which have sometimes the form of humming tops or whorls.” These were carved in marble or made of baked clay, with decorative lines scratched into the surface; some were in the shapes of temples or of animal and human figures. After long discussions with Sophia about the whorls, Heinrich questioned: “For what were these objects made? They cannot have been employed in spinning or weaving, or as weights for fishing-nets, for they are too fine and too elegant for such purposes ; neither have I as yet been able to discover any indication that they could have been used for any handicraft. When, therefore, I consider the perfect likeness of most of these objects to the form of the heroic sepulchral mounds, I am forced to believe that they, as well as those with two holes which occurred only at a depth of 6^2 feet, were used as Ex Votos” The following day, obviously still wondering about the objects, he wrote in his diary, “The mystery of these innumerable and fascinating whorls their use and production must remain unsolved until I can further study into the history of such items and discuss them with colleagues throughout the world.”
Correspondence and discussion with scholars confirmed that the whorls were ex votes, votive symbols placed in temples and homes and worn on chains as good luck charms. Almost identical whorls had been found by archaeologists studying the ancient civilizations in many countries.
While seeking proof of his deductions and interpretations of his finds, Heinrich surmounted daily challenges at Hissarlik. A recurrent problem was created by workmen who refused to dig on religious holidays. On rare occasions when it was impossible to
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round up substitutes for Greek Orthodox workmen absent because of a feast day, Heinrich, Sophia and Yannakis labored as a crew of three at the Hill. When rains turned the great trench at Hissarlik into a silt-filled river where no one could work, Heinrich, fretting, was forced to remain at Chiplak with Sophia; she measured and numbered objects, and he did his paper work. With the efficiency of a bookkeeper, which he once was, he not only recorded his finds in his diaries, but also noted them on separate sheets. These were used by him when writing books about his excavations, as well as by succeeding generations of archaeologists to whom the detailed material was invaluable as reference.
The recurrent damp weather that delayed spade work also caused absenteeism among workmen wracked with fever. Sophia and Heinrich took daily doses of quinine as fever preventive ; and he treated sick men with the same drug, which he had in large supply, along with other medicines. In New York, when he had nearly died from a fever contracted weeks earlier in the marshes of Nicaragua, his physician, Dr. Hans Tellkampf, had prescribed 64 grains of quinine in one dose. Schliemann took that amount as his control in the Troad and administered whatever grains he thought were needed, based on each patient’s degree of fever. The method was so successful that Schliemann was able to say, “I have this far cured all the fever patients who have applied to me for help.” The number of his patients increased daily as workmen brought their wives and children, relatives and friends to Schliemann for various treatment. Within a short time he was operating a free medical clinic for bedraggled men, women and children, who reached the Hill on foot or sagged across the backs of burros.
Schliemann was a health faddist who freely gave out information on diet, exercise and routines for sensible living. His cure-all for “almost all diseases” was sea-bathing, a prescription resisted particularly by most female patients, who thought that cold water on their bodies would bring death. However, some took the plunge and Heinrich wrote that many women “now go joyfully into the water and take their dip.”
With his fame as physician established, Schliemann was sought out by peasants and landowners who had ailing animals : camels, donkeys, horses, and dogs. As veterinarian, he attempted medical and surgical treatment with which he had had no previous ex-
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perience. Tincture of arnica cleared up many of the contusions and joint swellings of animals. But he often had to use a knife for slicing fistulas or for cleaning out infected cuts, and once was midwife to an overdue mare from which he forced a colt that had resisted being born.
His duties as doctor and veterinarian began to take up so much of Schliemann’s time that he, grumbling, became short-tempered at the digs. He had gladly performed medical services, but complained that he had received no proper thanks from human sufferers or from owners of sick animals. Since not one of his patients had ever expressed their gratitude for his help, he concluded that it was “not one of the virtues of the present Trojans.” Finally one night, Heinrich, pacing up and down in the tiny house at Chiplak, told Sophia firmly that he would no longer treat either people or
animals, but would turn all away with a curt refusal of further help.
The very next morning he and Sophia reached Hissarlik to find a pitiful girl from the miserable village of Chutzpa waiting for Effendi Schliemann. The seventeen-year-old patient had a disgusting festered sore around her blinded left eye and seemed too emaciated to have managed the three-hour walk from her home. Heinrich glared at the girl and then at Sophia, who could only laugh. She knew that he would not refuse help to someone so obviously in need of attention. There being no shelter for privacy at Hissarlik, Heinrich stripped the girl of her ragged clothes right out in the open, arousing mixed reactions from workmen watching. Some stared lecherously at the bare body; others who muttered about the exposure of a young virgin were placated by Sophia. She moved among the workmen explaining why the Effendi had to examine the girl’s body, revoltingly covered with running ulcers.
The young patient was too weak to answer the questions put to her by Schliemann, who turned to her mother for information. He found out that her daughter, whose chest was alarmingly caved in, coughed constantly and had no appetite. She had been bled seven times in four weeks by the parish priest. Schliemann disapproved of debilitating bleeding, but knew that it was the usual panacea of the priests, who were the only doctors available to villagers of the Troad. He gave the girl a spoonful of castor oil, as Sophia winced.
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Heinrich explained to the mother that her daughter should bathe nude three times a day in salt water, so it might “enter the pores, act against the poison and heal the ulcers.” Then he said that after the girl had gained strength her father should “put her through some passive gymnastic exercises” to expand her chest and develop her lungs. Just before the mother and daughter were about to leave Hissarlik, Yannakis rode up with a dress that Sophia had sent him to fetch from Chiplak for the girl. She, animated for the first time, looked at the new dress with a radiance that was mirrored as envy in her mother’s eyes.
Ten days later Heinrich was moved to tears when the girl appeared at the platform where he was working, threw herself to the ground, and kissed his dirty shoes. The sea baths had healed her sores, cured the cough, and restored her appetite. The grateful mother gave Heinrich a package of food which, though it reeked of rancid oil and herbs, he accepted with profuse thanks. Sophia, in turn, received a package containing a thread worn piece of crude, yellowed lace. Touched literally to tears by the sacrifice of what she knew must be a prized possession, Sophia leaned forward and kissed the girl’s mother on the brow. There was not a dry eye at the digs as workmen and the principals of the scene wept.
Schliemann, having received his first appreciation for medical advice, was nonetheless skeptical about the reason for the return of the patient and her mother. The girl was still blind in her left eye, and he surmised that the three-hour trek had been made in hopes of having him cure her eyesight. It was his opinion that the skin-covering of the eyeball might easily be removed by an oculist, but daring as Schliemann was in his surgical treatment of animals, he would not attempt a delicate dissection on a human.
Illness in the Schliemanns* own family was responsible for the departure of Sophia, who heard from Madame Victoria that little Andromache, nearly six months old, had contracted a cold. Leaving to Heinrich the responsibility of closing up the digs for the winter, Sophia returned home. Weather, increasingly severe, was obstructing excavation, which was further delayed by feast days that were
proliferating with the approach of Christmas. Two weeks after Sophia sailed for Athens, Heinrich joined her there. Looking down at the tiny Andromache, he said that he would remain with his “beloved wife and divine daughter” until he returned to Troy for the spring excavations.
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He stayed through the holiday but, typically, soon after was off to Paris, London, Munich and Berlin for conferences with friends and confrontations with his detractors. At Paris he spent long evenings talking about the work at Troy with Egger and Renan. In London, Schliemann met for the first time “the Honorable Mr. Gladstone, himself a classical scholar of great capacity. I found to my astonishment and delight that he has followed my work with keen interest. Although we disagreed on many points of view, in general he seems certain that my major premise is sound. My darling Sophithion, how much I wish you were here with me in stead of in faraway Athens with our cherished daughter, Andromache.”
Sophia again was suffering from the stomach trouble that had not bothered her at all while she was in Turkey. Andromache was creeping, crawling, and haltingly trying to walk, and Heinrich was much amused by reports of those antics in Sophia’s letters, which often had to be forwarded to him as he moved about rapidly.
Living out of a suitcase and traveling by rail and ship, Heinrich wrote papers for scholarly journals and letters to leading newspapers on two continents. He addressed the members of learned societies, and sfcught ever more explicit information about objects that he had excavated at Troy in the autumn of 1871. In various capitals of Europe, he shivered through endless hours in unheated libraries, delving into books written in more than a dozen languages. He flipped pages in feverish search for clues that might solve mysteries of the Trojan finds, and fluently translated passages of interest to him, often copying whole pages for his files.
His research led to correspondence with distinguished authors and with authorities on special subjects. Answers to Schliemann’s inquiries were stored in his brain for ready reference when he needed to correlate information about some disputed point or new find. One of his bitter opponents was Ernst Boetticher, a German army captain turned scholar, who admitted that “Schliemann’s brain is like one of the sponges brought up by naked divers from the islands of his adopted country. Even I am at pains never to contest a fact he may suddenly fling at me without first checking its source. Maddeningly, the man is pedantically accurate in this realm, although in scholarship and deduction he is a mere romantic.”
Boetticher had reason to regret that statement when he and
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Schliemann met face to face at a conference in Berlin. With deceptive charm, Schliemann led into a discussion of Homer byfirst quoting passages that he asked Boetticher to finish. This the former army captain was not consistently able to do. Then, entwining Boetticher in a tight-spun web, Schliemann answered his own rapid-fire questions every time Boetticher faltered. Boetticher be came so enraged that he obviously could not think clearly. Most of those present at the exchange between the two men disagreed with Schliemann’s point of view, but they listened with veiled amusement, which turned to uproarious laughter as Boetticher’s fury reached such a peak that he was unable to control his quivering jaw. Schliemann then clearly, for all to hear, said, “Pedantic I may be, but I can state facts and be certain of my ground. You, sir, have allowed your vaunted scholarship and powers of deduction, if they exist, to be buried under your uncontrollable temper. A word of advice, sir. He who permits emotion to supersede logic is no match for a lowly pedant.” Schliemann, outwardly humble, turned on his heel, leaving Boetticher to the mercy of his peers.
(GERMAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, ATHENS)
Lejt: First photo of Scktmmn at Hismlik shows him koking down into a portion of the excavation that reveals nbUe of wdls of one of the later cities of Troy. Above: Wide trench cut through, Three workmen cm be seen at top right. ”’ < ‘ ”*’
(ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS)
an dt tk far right with their tnsld facteto Nvhoks Tlio^ wany scholars disagreed wih hin about Troy’s siteand even its emtm-Heinrich proved he’d ken right all along. i y/m , >*fc ?f i: (T** I V > \ v ‘ I ‘”*” ‘ w _ .,’ i ^mm. /* S ‘$&W$ m^ \$y?-y ^-V:^/ ‘” <* ” * -c ‘
(GENNADIUS LIBKAKY, ATHEHS)
Two ^w of Schliemann’s diary containing sketches and notes oj objects jound on June 7, 1872. After digging all day, Hemrich and Sophia catalogued and described daily finds at night.
(FEEE UNIVERSITY, WEST BERLIN)
Detailed drawings of whorls found at Troy } each with two perforations.
TWELVE
Sophia and Heinrich left for Hissarlik in late February 1872 and resumed digging at the excavation on March 1. Activity was accelerated, and a successful season anticipated. Heinrich, having obtained essential materials for the digs, was assisted by anengineer-adviser and by two experienced foremen, who supervised the complement of workers engaged by Yannakis. Sophia, energetic and ebullient, was a diverting helpmeet to Heinrich and an industrious member of her work crew.
Even daily living was easier for the Schliemanns, who now had a house of their own on the Hill. Heinrich had ordered the construction of a complex of three small frame buildings, all roofed with waterproof paper for protection from heavy rains. There was a tiny magazine, a three-room structure for Heinrich and Sophia and, across from it, a cookhouse built on the rim of the great trench that bisected the Hill from north to south.
Insomnia was a drawback to living on the Hill that the Schliemanns could not have foreseen. Night after night, they were kept awake by the hideous and penetrating screeching of owls that roosted in the excavations. After a number of all-but-sleepless nights, Heinrich ordered men to hunt and kill the owls ; but they had a protective coloration that camouflaged them against the earth, and only a few of the nesting flock of hundreds were ever exterminated. One night when Heinrich was working himself into a fury about the hooting pests, Sophia quoted to him a classical passage about Athena and the owl that was symbolically identified with the goddess. Challenged by Sophia’s quotation, Heinrich recited lines about owls from the literature of other countries, and she capped those with her own from Greek classics. Heinrich, calmed by the mental exercise, soon fell asleep.
Another time, Sophia managed to get his mind off the persistent hooting by saying, “Tell me a story, Henry, and Til tell you one. We must each imagine a story about the owl.” He spun a fanciful
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tale about an Indian girl of low caste, who dreamed of being a princess. She worked hard on a garment made of metal threads, wasting not a minute of time by day and sleeping little at night. When she drowsed over her stitches in the evening, an owl’s hoot wakened her. After a while the owl regularly flew to the girl’s windowsill, and she, being lonely and friendless, talked to it. Finally she finished her handiwork, and in the light of the dazzling full moon, she held up a glittering cloak, silver and gold, for the bird to see. With a final ear-splitting screech the owl materialized as a handsome prince, who led the girl off to his kingdom and married her, turning to reality her dream of becoming a princess.
When Heinrich came to the happy ending of his story, Sophia began : “Many centuries ago . . .” ; but her husband, lulled by the sound of her voice, soon drifted into a deep sleep and wakened refreshed the next morning, ready for a day of vigorous activity at Hissarlik.
Sophia, beset by different kinds of pests, was constantly on guard against crawling bugs and flying insects. Centipedes had the nasty habit of dropping down from the ceiling in the house and from the roof of an excavated area. The most prevalent of the species had a name that meant “with forty feet.” Those repulsive-looking centipedes, scavengers of smaller insects, were supposed to have a bite fatal to humans, but fortunately no one at the digs was ever bitten by one.
Workers often were bitten by snakes that, in great numbers, infested the whole region of the Troad. A common snake that Heinrich described as being “scarcely thicker than a rain worm” was the antelion, its name derived from the superstition that the person bitten by it would survive only until sunset. Schliemann said that if many antelions had not been destroyed in spring and summer by the thousands of storks over the Plain of Troy, it would have been uninhabitable “owing to the excess of these vermin.”
Larger snakes that slithered among the stones of the excavation, even as far down as 36 feet, frequently were picked up by workmen, who enjoyed playing with them, a practice that repulsed Heinrich. One day, seeing a Greek workman beside him struck and bitten twice by the same viper, Heinrich grabbed at the man, indicating that he would split open the two fang-marked spots. The workman, laughing, pushed Schliemann away, explaining that, from early
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childhood, all people in the Troad were so repeatedly bitten by reptiles that they regularly drank a concoction made from a local snakeweed. Schliemann asked for some of the liquid so that he might also be safe from snake bite. Somehow he managed to get a dose of the bitter brew into Sophia, who was very finicky about drinking or eating anything unpleasant to her palate.
Schliemann thought a great deal about the antivenom liquid made from the weed of the Troad, and wondered “whether the decoction would be a safeguard against the fatal effects of the bite of the hooded cobra,” which he had seen kill a man in India within half an hour. Ever the businessman, Schliemann considered that if the brew would work with the bite of a cobra, it “would be a good speculation to cultivate the snakeweed in India.”
He really could not give serious consideration to growing snake-weed for profit, because too much was going on at Hissarlik. The excavation was being carried out with an efficiency previously lacking. His crews were working with pickaxes and spades from England, and had sixty sturdy wheelbarrows for carrying away the debris. Even that number of the barrows with iron wheels was not sufficient, so as work progressed, Schliemann sent for twenty more and wangled six horse-carts from a reluctant official in Constantinople. Through the kindness of Mr. Charles Cookson, the English consul at Constantinople, Schliemann procured ten man-carts, unique vehicles pushed by two men and drawn by a third.
Two foremen had been lent by Mr. John Latham, director of the railway from the Piraeus to Athens, “a road which I am glad to say brings the shareholders an annual dividend of 30 percent,” wrote Schliemann, a stockholder of that line, as he was of several railroad companies in the United States. Latham’s men, Theodorus Makrys and Spiridion Demetrios, who were overseers of large crews, received wages of ISO francs a month. The builder of the railroad from the Piraeus to Lanira offered Schliemann the services of a topflight construction engineer, Adolphe Laurent, whose fee was 500 francs a month. That spring, laborers were paid one franc, eighty centimes a day. Schliemann T s account books were accurate to the centime, and he wrote in April, “. . . in addition there are other considerable expenses to be defrayed, so that the total cost of my excavations amounts to no less than 300 francs (12 pounds) daily.”
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He paid 7 francs a day to an invaluable man, Georgios P. Photidos, who for seven years had been a miner in Australia, working as pitman and tunnel-maker, an experience not matched by anyone else at the digs. Photidos, rugged and tough, wrote a surprisingly fine hand, and Schliemann used him as amanuensis for paper work on Sundays and Greek Orthodox festival days. Photidos made perfect copies in Greek of reports to newspapers and learned societies, relieving Schliemann of the tedium of copying long articles and freeing him for other work or for much-needed rest.
That Schliemann always called Photidos by his correct name was an indication of the man’s importance. Schliemann either honestly forgot the names of the crew workers or chose not to remember them. He consistently addressed them by descriptive nicknames : Dervish, Short One, Tall One, Fat One, Gimpy, Peg-Leg. Most foremen were forced to answer to Homeric names: Telemon, Paris, Menelaus, Bellerophon, Ajax.
Schliemann never tampered with the name of Yannakis, the indispensable factotum, whose multiple duties were in no way defined. He handled so much money, all of which he signed for, that his signature appeared on the account books more often than Schliemann’s. Yannakis wore a money belt filled with gold entrusted to him by Schliemann for payments as needed in “critical situation with some official or employee.” The controller of bribes ran a private business, in partnership with his brother, selling wine, bread and brandy to the workmen. They bought on credit* but never owed large sums because Yannakis, as paymaster, collected what was due him when he gave them their wages.
Soon after the arrival of the Schliemanns at the digs in 1872, Heinrich told Yannakis that there should be at least one other woman on the Hill with Mrs. Schliemann, and asked if that could be arranged. Yannakis, to whom everything was possible, answered that if he might have a few days off, he would bring back a suitable female companion for Mrs. Schliemann. Four days later he returned with a young woman, very beautiful and sweet mannered. When Schliemann asked anxiously how long she would stay, Yannakis answered, “As long as I do. I married her.” Because of the bride’s handsome appearance, Heinrich nicknamed her Helen, the name by which she was known ever after.
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Yannakis, who was the cook that spring, did as well as he could with limited food supplies ; but there was an inevitable monotony to menus planned around fresh mutton, the only staple meat available. Practically no vegetables were grown on the Plain of Troy, where flowers flourished in wild profusion. There was a seasonal crop of spinach, and of hog and kidney beans that matured in June and July. The yield from potato patches was so small that potatoes had to be shipped in from the Dardanelles. Bread was the staple starch for the workmen. Heinrich, a connoisseur of wines, drank a local one, which, to his taste, compared favorably with the imported Bordeaux. A gourmet, when he could be, he tolerated the cuisine of Yannakis, writing, “We are not here to dine well. We are here to work, so we shall not worry about the food. We eat to live, and get on with the project at hand.”
After an early breakfast, Schliemann was talking earnestly with Adolphe Laurent at six o’clock on a spring morning with the sun “glorious in the sky.” The two men were standing on the rim of the great trench, and Heinrich noticed absent-mindedly that Sophia was below, directing a crew of ten. Suddenly she beckoned to him with her right hand and raised her left fist, tightly clenched, as if holding something. She spoke quickly to a workman, who nodded and started to clamber toward Schliemann. In midsentence he left Laurent and hurried to meet the approaching workman, who said that the lady had something to show. A find ! Heinrich fairly tumbled into the trench. Breathless, he reached Sophia, who handed him a ring, saying, “The most precious possession I own/’ Heinrich immediately recognized the diamond-studded piece of jewelry as the first ring he had given Sophia after their engage ment in 1869. Naturally he had thought she wanted to show him an antiquity of great value, which was what she had wanted him to think. Disappointed and confused, he stared at her. Then he became angry and asked why she had tricked him “into coming when I was advising with M. Laurent on important matters.” Before the incident got out of hand, Sophia smiled. “Henry, you have forgotten the date of this day?” He wrinkled his brow and then burst into loud laughter. To the amazement of the workmen, Heinrich kissed Sophia, hugged her, and swung her round and round so that her numerous voluminous skirts swirled out around her. “My beloved Sophaki ! Yes, yes, it is the April first day of the
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fool !” Both of them enjoyed pranks and jokes at any time, and tried especially to trick each other on every April Fools’ Day of their married life.
Two weeks later Heinrich outwitted laborers at the digs. Ever alert to wasted man-hours, he had begun to notke that these were mounting because workmen often stopped to smoke. Irritated by the costly delays, Schliemann issued an order that there would be no smoking during working hours. The day following that ultimatum, when he passed through the digs on inspection tours, entire crews seemed to be at work. Then he surprised idlers, smoking stealthily down in open trenches or behind walls. Infuriated, Schliemann threatened that any offender found smoking would be dismissed, never again to be taken on as employees. When that message was relayed by the foreman, seventy workers from Renkoi put down their tools, refusing to work unless Schliemann agreed that any man might smoke whenever he pleased. Schliemann was adamant.
The Renkoits, in mutiny, threw down their tools and gathered in an angry group, muttering and shouting. Shortly they spread out around the excavation and stoned the thirty workmen who remained on the job. These, dodging pebbles and rocks, tried to continue with their digging, but it was impossible for them to carry on. With the permission of Schliemann, they left Hissarlik and started home.
The mutineers, instead of returning to Renkoi, lounged around the excavation, and at nightfall took up a vigil right outside Schliemann’s house. Inside the flimsy frame building, Heinrich and Sophia made their meticulous notes of the day’s activities, listing the objects unearthed from the excavation. Whenever a murmur from outdoors increased to a brief babble that then died away, they looked at each other across the worktable brightened by light from an oil lamp. A shrug, a lifted eyebrow, were the only signs that they were aware of the seventy men massed outside, only a few yards from the front door.
A cacophony of snores broke over a long line of sleeping forms. Small talk rumbled over a huddle of squatting men. In the dark a few solitary figures strolled up and down, their shuffling feet raising a spray of powdery earth. Probably no man doubted that, on his own terms, he would be back at work at dawn. There would
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have been no discussion of an alternative. The men knew that Schliemann drove forward with the digging in fine weather, such as they were then having. And to dig, he needed them. But they reckoned without Schliemann, a man equal to any emergency and determined to have things his way. The evening would not have been so relaxed for the Renkoits, or their rest untroubled, had they known of a mission of Yannakis.
In the late afternoon he and Schliemann, after consultation, decided to try to recruit new crews from other villages on and near the Plain. Well instructed, Yannakis secretly rode away from the digs to spend a long night traveling from one small community to another in the hope of hiring workmen. His weary ride was a signal success. In predawn hours men on foot trudged across the rough terrain toward the excavation, or on burros jogged toward the site. At daybreak 120 workers were at Hissarlik.
The seventy strikers, dark faces sullen, grumbled to one another as they gathered for their return to Renkoi. The group moved slowly away from Hissarlik, a few stragglers looking back toward the Hill where crews were eagerly beginning to scrape, to shovel and to dig,
Schliemann wasted no time in gloating about his triumph over the Renkoits. He was glad to be rid of them because they had been insolent and troublesome as a group from the time of their original employment in 1871. The smoking mutiny not only resulted in an increased number of workers, but proved to all that Effendi Schliemann meant what he said. Schliemann was then able to increase the workday by one hour. After the departure of the Renkoits, the crews worked from 5 A.M. until 6 P.M., with a breakfast break at 9 o’clock and an hour and a half for eating and smoking in the afternoon.
Falling rocks were hazards at the digs where cave-ins were ever imminent. On a day in late April, Sophia was working at an isolated location with six men when three large boulders, dislodged from the earth, tumbled on four of the crew. Cursing and flailing their arms, they struggled in vain to get loose. Calm and controlled, Sophia pitched in to help the other two workmen move the rocks. Straining, pushing, pulling, the three inched the boulders off the trapped workers. Freed, one started to rise, but Sophia sternly ordered him to stay where he was. At her command all
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four remained on the ground while she expertly ran her hands along their limbs and rib cages, making sure that no bones were broken. Only when she was satisfied that the men had suffered just bruises were they permitted to get up.
Within minutes everyone at the digs knew that the young wife of Effendi Schliemann had with her own hands explored the bodies of four workmen. Astonishment gave way to respect for the compassionate lady, who, after risking personal injury in the successful attempt to rescue the men, had nonchalantly returned to work. When news of the mishap reached Heinrich, he hurried to Sophia, finding her with clothes ripped, fingernails broken, and hands nicked by stone. In a letter bubbling with pride, he described the accident to Madame Victoria, assuring her that her daughter was a heroine at the excavation.
The following month Schliemann was watching Fhotidos and a large crew excavating near a wall of huge stones, many of them hewn. Photidos thought that the stone wall was strong enough to hold up for centuries more, but Schliemann, to be on the safe side, ordered six. men to shore it up with a stone buttress. Just after they started, the main wall collapsed with a thundering crash. “My fright was terrible and indescribable, for I quite believed that the six men must have been crushed by the mass of stones ; to my extreme joy, however, they all escaped directly, as if by miracle.”
earth-mass crushed against the flooring, but did not cut off the men’s air. Low moans from under the platform indkated that at least one of them was still alive. Rescuers had to work with extreme caution because of great gaps in the cracked wall. Schliemann with his own broad knife dug and scraped until he had cut a hole for the removal of Photidos who, like the second man, was only dazed by the experience.
In spite of precautions, earthslides and rockfalls were almost daily occurrences, and according to Schliemann, he thanked God
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every night for the blessing of another day without tragic accident.
The excitement of digging was so infectious that even the wife of Yannakis, who served Sophia as maid, scraped into the smooth earth close to the Schliemanns’ house. Sophia, seeing the young woman, joined 1 T, saying that together they would excavate. Using a garden hoe and a light rake, they scooped out a shallow trench, laughing and chattering as they worked. They looked like two young girls preparing a flower bed for planting; Sophia had on a bustled dress of exquisite cotton, and Yannakis’ bride wore an underskirt of coarse cloth, her Sunday skirt rolled at her waist in the fashion of Greek women in the fields. After digging only a short time, Sophia and Helen were thrilled by the sight of first one terra-cotta whorl, then another. Within a few days they had excavated a sizable collection of whorls, some with decoration, some without.
Below the hilltop where they dug, daily finds were methodically excavated from the great trench, by then 233 feet wide and 46y 2 feet deep. Work crews removed from the earth evidences of the daily lives of ancient peoples: votive offerings, statues, military weapons, tools and household utensils, funerary jars, dung, and animal skeletons. Exposed remains of cities, buried one on another, disclosed the architectural constructions of dwellings, temples and public buildings of specific early civilizations. Schliemann, tense with anticipation, expected soon to identify the real city of Troy his Troy and Homer’s Ilium.
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THIRTEEN
Finds at Hissarlik accumulated so rapidly that Heinrich and Sophia were no longer able to examine every object excavated in any one day. A photographer, retained by Schliemann, took pictures of major objects, and a staff artist sketched smaller pieces. At night, in their house on the Hill, the Schliemanns discussed the day’s discoveries in general, correlating facts and artifacts and comparing objects excavated with those they had seen in situ or in museums. The extensive studies made during their travels were proving to be invaluable as reference sources at Hissarlik.
Their method of research was typified by their study of large numbers of unearthed objects that were decorated with the head of an owl. Flat idols, carved from the finest marble, were enhanced by the head of an owl and a female girdle with dot decorations, and, in some instances, by two female breasts. “The striking resemblance of these owls’ faces to those upon many vases and cups, with a kind of helmet on the owl’s head, makes me firmly convinced that all of the idols, and all of the helmeted owls’ heads represent a goddess, and indeed must represent one and the same goddess, all the more so as, in fact, all the owl-faced vases with female breasts and a navel have also generally two upraised arms ; in one case, the navel is represented by a cross with four navels.”
Who was the goddess? That was the important question. ‘What goddess is it who is here found so repeatedly, and is the wily one to be found upon the idols, drinking cups and vases?” Together Heinrich and Sophia reasoned that “she must necessarily be the tutelary goddess of Troy, the Ilian Athena, and this indeed per fectly agrees with the statement of Homer, who continually calls her ‘Thca glaukowpis Athene,’ the goddess Athena with owl’s face. For the epithet ‘glaukowpis’ has been wrongly translated by scholars of all ages, and, as I can show by immense numbers of proofs, the only possible literal translation is ‘with an owl’s face’ ; and the usual translation ‘with blue, fiery or sparkling eyes’ is [in]
utterly wrong. The natural conclusion is that, owing to progressive civilizations, Athena received a human face, and her former owl’s head was transformed into her favorite bird, the owl …. The next conclusion is that the worship of Athena as the tutelary goddess of Troy was well known to Homer.”
His major premise about Athena and the owl held true. Seeking facts to prove or disprove his theory, Schliemann wrote to dozens of European scholars, asking for information about discoveries of the owl symbol in situ or in museum collections. While awaiting replies, Schliemann studied books and journals in which he hoped to find clues to the logical development of the owl-headed design. Illustrations affirmed his theory; early owl-headed vases were eventually supplanted by the owl as a bird and by statuettes of Athena with human face. Scholarly answers to his letters of inquiry emphasized the evolution; excavated objects at archaeological sites and pieces displayed in museums demonstrated development consistent with Schliemann’s literary research. All information gathered substantiated his theory that the owl-headed vases of Troy were symbolic of Athena, and that later the owl, as a bird not as a face, indicated Athena’s dedication to knowledge. She herself was shown in sculpture in the form of a maiden with human face. Schliemann’s owl-and-Athena concept was original and inevitably started a controversy. It was prolonged by chair-bound scholars, and, basically, Heinrich enjoyed their rebuffs because of the opportunities they gave him to expound on and clarify his correct theory.
Another symbol found on innumerable objects touched off further disputes. The symbol was a counterclockwise design, the sauvastika :
Schliemann correctly judged the form to be a universal symbol “employed for unknown numbers of centuries.” Reporting on the finds, he described an object decorated with little stars and three sauvastikas ; another with rays of the sun across from two of the sauvastikas and eighteen little stars “of which twice three (likethe constellation Orion) stand in a row.” Schliemann repeatedly found the symbol posited with stars, and on occasion found the symbol on objects incised with three or four trees. He began a study in depth that he was to continue for years, and
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he asked in print and letters for reports on the places where the symbol had been seen by archaeologists and other scholars and observant travelers, fimile Burnouf at once answered that three dots (stars) in a row denoted “royal majesty” in Persian cuneiform inscriptions, adding, “Indian scholars find these tree-crosses to represent the framework upon which our ancestors used to produce the holy fire. In other places, the tree is virtually the tree-of-life.” The mystery of the symbol was compounded when Schliemann found the svastika, a clockwise design, the complete reverse of the sauvastika. The internationally known Orientalist Professor Max Miiller of Oxford University wrote to Schliemann that the swastika, “derived from su, meaning well, and as, to be,” was definitely from India. The other, counterclockwise symbol “is called sauvastika and is found outside of India.”
An explanation of the dots on certain of the symbols, both m – was offered by Burnouf, who said the dots represented the wooden nails that held together crosses used in the worship of Maya, the reproductive force in nature. After Schliemann saw a cross symbol with dots in the vulva of a statue unearthed at Hissarlik, he frequently queried in print the relationship of that object to the deity.
Information about the distribution of the two cross symbols flowed in, proving that examples of svastika and sawvastika were evident in almost every civilization that flourished up to the 5th century. Schliemann unceasingly attempted to pinpoint the origin of each example and to correlate facts sent to him from many countries.
Sophia and Heinrich, drawing on his extensive knowledge of languages, searched for references to the symbols in world literature. They discovered the satwastika in Ezekiel ix.4 6, where “. . . in the fork of the old Hebrew letter Tau … it is written as the sign of life on the forehead, like the corresponding Indian symbol.” The Schliemanns, tramping through the Troad, wondered whether the two symbols, originating in one place, were carried to another by wanderers, or whether the symbols, by coincidence, were independently created in many countries. The amount of space given to the symbols in Schliemann’s articles and books indicated how absorbed by the subject he and Sophia were. They mulled over advice, ideas, and theories without arriving at solutions satisfactory to them.
The key to their concentration on the problem of the symbols was contained in Hemrich’s statement: “People say that my paramount purpose is to prove by any means possible that Troy existed. Since childhood my aim has been to uncover Troy, but my paramount purpose in this search is to uncover the development of mankind, and any clue to his [man’s] interrelationship throughout the world is a prime contribution to my central purpose/’ The sauvastika and svastika symbols were definitely linked to the progress of mankind in many civilizations.
For most of his life, Heinrich lived without abiding faith in a specific religion. Sophia, although a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, was inherently attuned to the philosophy of the ancient Greeks and, through Heinrich’s tutelage, was knowledgeable about the theories of life expressed in Greek classical literature. Her heritage and her learning enabled her to share in her husband’s contemplation and discussion of a godhead. Heinrich wrote that they again and again returned to a common and positive belief:
“My devoted and devout wife, my darling Sophithion, concurs with me that in this cosmos there is a Supreme Being because the cosmos is so orderly and simple. Because the cosmos is of such perfection, some Being must guide it, or all would be for nothing, and soon lost. My wife has shown me that, without doubt, there are four basic elements in mankind: curiosity, imagination, emotional feeling and faith. I find her declaration to be true. There can be no progress on this earth, or in the cosmos around it, without curiosity about everything, the imagination to interpret what one discovers, the inner emotion to feel, and the faith to carry the life we have been given by a Supreme Being. I would add to her summation a fifth (element) which is that quality of being with out inhibition ; that quality which made my wife’s ancestors creatively without peer in the world/’
Several years later, Sophia wrote, “How often my dear Henry and I spent hours, so important to our inner selves, in contemplating aloud on the verities of mankind. As we excavated and released the past for present-study, we found myriad objects ; yet, fascinating as those objects were, they served only to illustrate the path followed by mankind from cave to temple. As a child, I learned the simple rules of my church ; as a woman, I had the divine opportunity to delve deeply into the meaning of life. All this I owe to my dearest husband, Henry.” The truths for which they searched, the conclusions they drew, the verities about which they philosophized, were guiding forces of their life together.
Heinrich and Sophia constantly were forced to make the transition from exalted cogitation to the grim reality of daily toil. On specifications drawn up by the engineers, Heinrich had a safety platform built the full length of the great trench. He consulted with his three foremen, and worked in spells with crews digging at various layers below the platform. Floors and walls of ancient buildings, pottery, small sculpture, molds for the making of metal instruments, and other artifacts were exposed on every workday.
But these were too few to suit Heinrich. Religious holidays so interfered with digging in May, that from the llth to the 23rd the Greeks reported for work on only seven days. When Schlierhann remonstrated with the crew members, they stubbornly insisted that the saint “will strike us if we do not observe his day.” Heinrich told Sophia that he was going to offer wage increases for saints* days,
but she knew that money would not influence the workers. And she was right. Their refrain again was “The saint will strike us/’
In June, excavation was started on the portion of the Hill owned by Frank Calvert. Sophia and Heinrich were working together when he saw a thin edge of marble protruding from the earth. She, eager and curious to see more, scraped at the dirt around the stone with her bare hands while Heinrich sent for the staff engineers, Yannakis, and several trusted workmen. The group of experienced excavators made a horizontal cut into the trench and, with infinite care, slowly removed a block of marble. Under Heinrich’s supervision, crusted earth was scraped and dusted from the marble, whkh was then washed.
Even the lowliest workman recognized the ancient object of Parian marble as a masterpiece. It was dominated by Phoebus Apollo reining four spirited horses. The bas-relief depicted the start of the sun god’s globe-circling day, during which he took light to the world. The sculptured block conclusively indicated that a temple was buried at the digging location. Schliemann glowingly described the discovery in his diary entry of June 18, 1872 : “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% inches long and ten others 3> inches long. The face of the young god is very expressive, and the folds of his long robes are so exquisitely sculptured that they vividly remind one of the masterpieces of the Temple of Nike Apteros in the Acropolis of Athens. But my admiration is especially excited by the four horses which, snorting and looking wildly forward, careen through the atmosphere of the universe with infinite power. Their anatomy is so accurately rendered that I frankly confess I have never seen such a masterly work. . . . The grandeur and classical beauty of the style and happy character of the composition, the life and movement of the horses all is admirable. This is a masterpiece of the first order, worthy of being compared with the best of Greek sculptures/*
His judgment was confirmed by art historians and aestheticians excited by the published photograph of the Apollo metope, a work of fine quality and of inestimable artistic value. Experts, willing to undergo the rigors of travel in the Troad, made the pilgrimage to Hissarlik to see the sculpture. Schliemann, gratified by the reaction to his find, always gave credit to Sophia, the engineers, and the workmen for their skillful removal of the marble object that was without chip, nick or scratch on its surface.
The 1872 discovery of the first object of artistic merit spurred the Schliemanns to greater activity, and, with their crews, they returned to the drudgery of digging. Sophia, by intuition that Heinrich called “currents in the air,” recognized as something special a broken um with three legs extending from the bottom. Heinrich examined the contents of the urn and, with scientific directness, identified them. “In the vessel I found among the human ashes the bones of an embryo six months along, a fact which I can only explain by the mother’s having died in pregnancy and having been burnt while the bones of the embryo, being surrounded by the membrane which enclosed it, were protected and remained uninjured. Yet, it seems wonderful that these small bones should have been preserved, for the bones of the mother are burnt to ashes
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and I found only a fragment of them. I have most carefully collected the bones of the Trojan embryo, and shall have the little skeleton restored by a skillful surgeon.” His conclusion was later confirmed by two reputable medical authorities.
The identification of the embryonic skeleton was one more proof of Schliemann’s extensive knowledge. His insatiable curiosity led him to inquiries and studies that he either failed to men tion or referred to in passing. He never detailed how he was able to pinpoint the state of growth of the embryo in the urn, but he hinted at early discussions with an experienced midwife and with friends in the medical profession.
Announcement of the find of the embryo was received with mixed reactions by scholars. Those who accepted it as fact were in the minority. Some chose to ignore it, others made fun of it, and a few scoffed at it. Professor Hans Meister, a minor classicist, wrote, “Now the eminent Herr Doktor Schliemann has added the science of obstetrics to his limitless professions. Soon he shall become a specialist in metal and join the Gold Works Guild, then a chemist, then an astronomer, and for all this will be honored by learned societies around the world.” Schliemann did not then deign to reply to the sarcastic remarks that Meister was in time to rue.
Occasionally a find turned over to the Schliemanns was faked by a workman hoping for the bonus of 10 paras (five centimes) sometimes paid for objects, particularly for those decorated with symbols. Uneducated but not unintelligent, the workmen quickly caught on to the kind of object for which a bonus was likely to be paid. A few dexterous men learned to incise pieces of undecorated terra cotta before taking them to Heinrich or Sophia. Suspiciously examining a large whorl with markings never before seen at Hissarlik, Sophia took off her glove and rubbed the clay surface with her hand while the workman who had handed it to her stood by, smiling. Looking him straight in the eye, she explained the meanings of the symbols on the whorl to the crew gathered round. She said that the carver’s ancestry was unfortunate, his mother having been born out of wedlock, the daughter of a murderer. Since no one would perform a marriage ceremony for the carver’s parents, he was born without blessing of church or sanction of government and, worse yet, was doomed, according to the final symbol, to be thief, liar and cheat. Concluding her remarks, Sophia
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made the workman-carver feel the rough edges of the incised symbols before breaking the object with his spade, as she ordered. Asking him for the pieces, Sophia flung them at his feet and turned her back on him. Other workers unmercifully taunted him, and he left the digs at the end of the day, never to returnV)But the faking continued, and the Schliemanns had to be on guard against the chicanery of workmen who mistakenly thought that they could outwit the experts.
Schliemann, who had been sure he would one day discover the two springs of Troy Homer had written about, did find two springs at Hissarlik. The water of one, situated directly below the ruins of an ancient town wall, was at a constant temperature of 60JS F. ; the water of the second tested at 62.6 F. Schliemann thought that it was “extremely possible 1 * they were the springs that Homer described :
They by the watch-tower, and beneath the wall
Where stood the wind-beat fig-tree, raced amain
Along the public road, until they reached
The fair-flowing founts, whence issued forth
From double source, Scamander’s eddying streams.
One with hot current flows, and from beneath,
As from a furnace, clouds of steam arise ;
‘Mid Summer’s heat the other rises cool
As hail, or snow, or water crystallized;
Beside the fountains stood washing-troughs
Of weft-wrought stone, where erst the wives of Troy
And daughters fair their choicest garments washed,
In peaceful time, ere came the sons of Greece.
Iliad XXII, 145-156
Even the possibility that the springs were the Homeric ones was naturally challenged because the recorded temperatures were nearly the same. Schliemann pointed out that the geologic conditions had changed through the centuries, as evidenced by the shift of the river bed of the ancient Scamander. He contended that in Homer’s day the springs might well have been hot and cool Two springs, one really warm and the other cold, were located on Mt. Ida, but Schliemann refused to accept them as Homeric. No argument offered throughout years of controversy swayed him from his conviction that the two springs of Hissarlik were those of ancient Troy, the Nowm Ilium of Homer.
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Schliemann at first accepted as Trojan a tower uncovered in a trench at the south side of the Hill. After examining drawings made by the engineers, Schliemann decided there should be a channel for the runoff of winter rain water that, pounding at the tower, might destroy it. He personally examined every inch of the 40-foot-thick masonry tower and described it in a treatise, saying that experts asserted it had been designed by and built under the direction of a highly skilled engineer. Schliemann “presumed” that the structure was the Trojan Tower, the great tower of Ilium, which Andromache ascended because she heard that the Trojans were hard pressed and that the power of the Achaeans was great.
Schliemann’s contemporary opponents declared that too often he was swayed by implicit faith in Homer and ruled by his own romantic nature. Both charges were to some extent true. His critics refused to recognize how often Schliemann employed the words presume, suppose, my imagination and perhaps in his personal diaries and published writings. Detractors ignored written passages and public addresses in which Schliemann expressed doubt concerning individual objects and theories. Many failed to credit his frequent requests to the scholarly world for aid and advice.
In his search for the remains of Troy at Hissarlik, Schliemann supervised digging that exposed more than three millennia o historic habitation. In all, nine cities with their subdivisions were later identified by 20th-century archaeologists, who, guided by facts unearthed by years of digging, had at their command more sophisticated methods and instruments than those availabe to Schliemann. The many cities of Troy extended from approximately 3000 B.C. to 850 B.C.
Schliemann thought that Troy II, the second city from the bottom, was the City of Priam, destroyed by Greeks in revenge for Helen’s abduction by Paris, son of Priam. Schliemann used every available fact to substantiate that Troy II was Novum Ilium. But he was wrong.
Troy II actually existed from about 2600 B.C. to 2300 B.C., more than a thousand years before Priam’s Troy. That fact was made public in 1937 by the American archaeologist Carl Blegen, after sifting the ruins of Hissarlik, and studying the objects excavated before his time. Most scholars today agree with Professor Blegen that the city beseiged by the Greeks and made famous by Homer was Troy VII A. That city at Hissarlik was five and a half levels above the one that Schliemann declared to be the Troy of the Iliad.
Even before Blegen’s announcement, archaeologists had good reason for doubting the Troy II theory. Sophia, who had provided large sums for the continuation of excavation at Troy after the death of her husband, was sure that he would have accepted later evidence. She wrote : “I am certain that Henry, faced with facts now available, would admit his error and freely agree that there is still doubt about the exact level of Priam’s city.”
Certainly Schliemann was well aware that there would always be doubt about many archaeological and historical beliefs. In 1875 he wrote : ‘Tor a fact we know that the Parthenon was the shrine of Athena, that Eleusis was the center of the rites of Demeter and Dionysus, that the ancient site of Delphi lies buried below the miserable modern city clinging to the heights of Parnassus, but there are many places about which man will never be absolutely certain.” Those words of Schliemann displayed reason and prescience, but as with all mortals, Schliemann failed at times to be guided by objectivity.
When Heinrich and Sophia ceased the digs and left Hissarlik on August 14, 1872, Schliemann was certain that Troy II was the city of Priam, the city of the Trojan War.
Heinrich took Sophia home to Athens and left hurriedly for Paris, where he reported on his excavations of 1872 to four learned societies, checked on his real estate, conferred with his bankers, and shopped for Christmas. Laden with gifts, he rushed back to Athens to spend the holiday season with Sophia and their beautiful little daughter Andromache.
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FOURTEEN
Sophia and Heinrich, in a state of excitement, reached Hissadik in January 1873. They were prepared, as formerly, to give their minds and bodies to the work at the excavation, but both of them, sensitive and emotionally involved, had inexplicable fore sight of successes in the months ahead. Sophia, in a letter of January 31, reported on their arrival: “We stood together, gazing at the Hill so bound within our lives. Encumbered with heavy clothing, we joined hands so firmly that I later noticed my ring pressed deep in my flesh. I had no doubt that this winter would be one long remembered for its events. Something within me told me.”
Of the same moment, Heinrich wrote : “As my darling Sophithion placed her hand in mine, we looked toward the mound rising from the flat land, and allowed our eyes to sweep the Trojan plain we knew so intimately. Is this spot friend or foe, adversary or challenge? With our hands joined like two ends of electricity, we knew with certainty that our excavations would be memorable. My beautiful Sophithion would never have come here were it not for me*; I would never have progressed so far were it not for her assistance both physical and emotional. Together our love and faith has brought us to the brink. Never before has this love been so fully consummated as at the moment we paused before attacking.”
Both repeatedly wrote about their individual and mutual “feelings about the year ahead,** even whik enduring the tribulations of their early weeks at the digs. There were only eight good work days in the first month ; operations were delayed by the inevitable feast days and slowed by thunderstorms. The wind was bitter and “the cold is so intense that the workmen proceed at a fast rate in order to keep warm. In this way only does the cold work to our advantage.” Later, after Heinrich reread that diary entry, he humorously questioned, “Why do I say ‘the workmen proceed
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