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Chapter 2 (part 9)
6. Layer VI: the Mycenaean castle, continued (p.121).
If we were able to draw a
reasonably clear picture of the original condition of the eastern
castle wall and of the alterations to its upper wall, unfortunately one
part of this picture must remain dark. We do not know how high the
upper wall was and how it ended at the top. Neither for the brick
building nor for the more recent stone building do we have any means of
determining the height and the upper end of the superstructure. We can
only claim one thing, without fear of contradiction, that the 4.60 m
thick brick wall erected on the solid substructure must have been at
least 4 to 5 m high. It is obvious that it could have been
significantly higher. For the stone wall, 1.8 cm thick, which later
took the place of the brick wall, we may assume with some probability
the same height as the brick wall. A covered gallery may have existed
as the upper end of the brick wall because it is sufficiently wide. In
the case of the stone castle wall, on the other hand, the width of at
most 2m is hardly sufficient to supplement a covered hall. It can also
be said explicitly that no specially worked stones have been found that
could have served as a crenellated crown or similar upper end of the
stone building.
The
southern castle wall is even more impressive than the eastern one.
Their stones are larger, better worked and so close together that small
stone fragments were no longer necessary for their firm storage. The
length of the blocks reaches 1.50 m, their height is on average 0.30 m.
The embankment is 0.23m in height, so it will have been 1:4. The wall
thus erected extends from Gate VI T in the south-east to Gate VI U in
the south-west. We have uncovered the surface for almost the entire
length (more than 120m). The excavation of its inner side has only been
carried out down to a small layer of rubble (p.122) which arose during
the construction of the wall itself or its stone superstructure, and
which gives us a reliable guide for determining the inner floor height
of the VI layer.
Unfortunately, a few obstacles stood in the way
of exposing the outside. Firstly, directly in front of the wall there
are still large masses of rubble piled up by Schliemann, which first
had to be removed before an excavation could even be considered.
Secondly, in Greek and Roman times, several buildings of various kinds
were added to and on the castle wall, which at least in part would have
had to be demolished if the castle wall had been uncovered. In this
situation we have limited ourselves to uncovering the outside only in a
few places, at the western end of the wall, in D 9, in E 9 and at the
eastern end, up to the natural ground; in the other places it is still
underground.
In spite of the severe weathering which the upper
part of the outside shows, the good workmanship of the masonry could
still be seen almost everywhere. The processing and formation of joints
in the lower part, which was buried early, can be seen particularly
well, because the condition here is impeccable. We can claim that the
wall, if it should later be completely uncovered, will look even
grander than the east wall now.
 Fig.39: Section through the southern castle wall of the VI layer and the VI M building.
Fig.39 shows a section
through the southern castle wall between squares B 8 and C 8. On the
left you can see castle wall VI, the facade of which was once
completely smoothed out. Only its two lowest stones have remained
unworked on the outside; they should lie under the floor as a
foundation and remain invisible. The height of the inner floor is given
next to the castle wall by the layer of building rubble indicated in
the drawing and on the other hand on the retaining wall of building VI
M by the type of [p.123] processing of the wall.
On
the wall, which is
4.60 m thick at the top, we can without hesitation add an outer brick
wall and also a narrower younger stone wall based on the model of the
east wall; I have indicated both by dotted lines. Since the
substructure here shows almost the same good construction as the
superstructure of the east wall, one could assume that both were built
at the same time and that the south wall therefore did not have a brick
superstructure, but immediately received a stone upper wall. Because of
the great strength of the substructure, however, this assumption seems
untenable to me; for the narrow upper wall one would not have erected
the lower wall, which was more than twice as thick. In the wide space
between the castle wall and the VI M building, two houses were built in
layer VII, to which the walls and large storage vessels (pithoi)
indicated in the drawing belong.
Although
very little is known about the outside of the south wall as a result of
insufficient excavation and severe weathering, we do know that, like
the east wall, it was fitted with vertical projections. These
themselves are mostly built over or weathered in the upper part of the
wall, but on the inside the corresponding paragraphs are usually still
clearly visible. The distance between the projections seems to have
been a little more than 9m on average here too.
Unfortunately,
we cannot publish a photograph of the outside of the south wall because
only insufficient photographs were taken in the small holes that were
dug up. However, since the way in which they were joined with the
stones corresponds entirely to that of towers VI h and VI g, the
pictures of these towers (see photos 14, 15, 20 and 21 and fig.35) give
an idea of the type of construction of the south wall. A small piece of
the surface of the wall can be seen in the foreground of photo 24,
where one can see several of the almost regular ashlars of which the
wall is built.
Having traced the whole wall round the castle
hill, and having become acquainted with its individual parts, executed
in so many different ways, we can turn to answer the question already
raised, how these great differences are to be explained. Was there a
uniform wall around the hill at first and were the now best built
parts, i.e. the east and south walls, completely renewed during the
course of the sixth layer? Or did the builders of the VI Castle
gradually learn the art of stone processing during the construction of
the 500m long wall so well that the first sections of the wall were
still built in an almost Cyclopean style, but the last ones were built
in fairly good ashlar construction? While formerly (Athen. Mittheilungen
1894, p. 385) I decided in favor of the latter possibility, some facts
have now become known which cause me to prefer the other view.
First
of all, when examining the east wall, we recognized that this [p.124]
and the rest of the castle wall originally had a superstructure made of
unfired bricks, and that the clay wall was only later replaced by a
stone upper wall. This ensures a thorough renewal for the sixth layer.
And this can only have taken place after the completion of the youngest
parts of the wall, namely its towers, because the large north-east
tower VI g certainly received a superstructure made of bricks, some of
which still exist today.
Then we got acquainted with a castle
wall of the 5th layer, which in the west is not far behind the 6th
castle wall, in the south and east it is approximately where the
terrace wall of the first inner building is in the 6th layer. As we
have seen, it did not perish in a great catastrophe, but was probably
replaced by another ring wall when the castle was expanded and
renovated; as well as the inner buildings of the VI layer, because they
bear no traces of violent destruction and because they lie immediately
below the floor of the younger layer, have probably been rebuilt one
after the other.
The thought now seems very plausible to me,
that the castle wall of the V layer has gradually been replaced by the
wall of the VI layer, and that the V castle wall is the uniform wall
that we are looking for, the piecemeal replacement of which over longer
periods of time has led to the emergence of such a diverse ring of
walls , as it is exhibited by the VI layer. The western wall and
perhaps also the northern wall immediately in front of the V ring wall
were probably built first, in a somewhat better design and with larger
dimensions, but not yet in the dimensions and the good design of the
eastern and southern walls.
After a longer period of time, the
east wall was built, initially without towers, at a greater distance
from the old wall, so that the castle circle was expanded by a
considerable amount. The old wall was allowed to remain as the inner
terrace wall until it was replaced by the retaining walls of the new
inner buildings. Finally, the south side of the castle also received
its new ring wall, which was now built in the best and newest
construction with almost regular ashlar masonry. Soon thereafter,
stately towers were erected in front of the wall on the east and south
sides, and possibly on the other sides as well, of which we have found
three.
All sections of the VI Wall, including the towers, were
generally modeled on the fortress walls of the older strata, made of
mudbrick on a banked stone substructure. Only their dimensions had
increased and the technique of masonry had improved more and more. The
west wall was a little over 3m thick, the east and south walls were
almost 5m thick. The technology of the western wall differed only
slightly from that of the V ring wall, the eastern wall received a more
solid stone bond and a better worked [p.125] outside; the most perfect
construction and the most beautiful facade can only be found on the
southern wall. Finally, a final step was taken in the beautification of
the castle, replacing the brick superstructure with a thinner but
excellently built stone wall of small brick-shaped ashlars ("stone
bricks"). As far as we know, the latter improvement has been carried
out all around the castle (with the exception of the large north-east
tower). The stone-clay wall had become a pure stone wall.
At the
same time as the upper wall, the substructure of the section of the
western wall next to building VI A was renewed in the good masonry of
"stone bricks", presumably because the southern end of this wall, which
was built in an almost Cyclopean style, was connected to the
neighboring, excellently built western end the south wall didn't fit at
all.
One would hardly want to assume that the new construction,
which essentially consisted of the use of well-worked blocks, was
invented in Troy itself. The lord of the castle will have appointed a
foreign master builder or foreign builders who introduced the ashlar
construction in Troad.
We do not know which country they came
from. However, it deserves to be pointed out that ashlar walls of a
similar type to the Trojan ones and also embanked walls, which look
confusingly similar to the southern castle wall of the VI layer, occur
in large numbers in Egypt in the buildings of the old and new kingdoms.
From the earlier period I will name only some of the small tombs
(mastabas) near the pyramids of Giza, and from the more recent period,
roughly coinciding with the VI layer at Troy, walls in the Makere
mortuary temple at Der-el-Bahri.
Between these walls and those of our
sixth stratum there will be some direct, or at least indirect,
connection. It must be said here that the development of construction,
as we found it in the castle wall, also returns in the other buildings
of the VI layer.
We uncovered three large gates and a gate in
the course of the VI circular wall. We will describe the gate at the
same time as the tower VI g into which it leads. The three gates, which
we will briefly call East Gate (VI S), South Gate (VI T) and West
Gate (VI U), although they do not correspond exactly to the
cardinal directions, are probably not the only gates which the castle
had.
In addition to them, there must have been at least a
fourth gate on the north side. We conclude this on the one hand from
the circumstance that a northern gate has already been proven with some
probability in the smaller II castle (cf. p. 59), and on the other hand
from the presence of a curved gate uncovered in K 3 and labeled VI R on
Plate V - which I can only understand as the retaining wall of a
ramp-like gateway. This began at the corner of the large tower VI g and
led up the north slope of the hill to the gate that may already have
been placed in J 3 [p.126]. The start of the ramp wall can be seen on
photo 20 (p. 136) and is marked with the letter f. As may already be
mentioned here, this ramp was replaced by a steep stairway leading to
the castle (b on photo 20) on the eighth level. In layer II the ramp
shown on p. 60 (BC on plate III) presumably led up to an older gate in
a similar way.
The East Gate VI S is completely preserved and
uncovered. You can see its ground plan on the large plan V and in the
adjacent fig. 40. Its current condition is illustrated in fig.41 and
photo 17. It can also be seen in the background of the pictures in
photos 15 and 16.
The gate consists of the actual gate (a b),
which can certainly be closed with wooden door leaves, and a longer
gate (d e), which is formed by the castle wall coming from the north
being pulled forward in an arch (hgfe) in front of the gate lock. From
the south one had to pass a long distance between the two castle walls
in order to reach the gate itself, an arrangement which was obviously
very advantageous for the defense and very unfavorable for the attack.
It is known from later Greek city gates (e.g. from the city wall in
Mantineia) and also occurs in Mycenaean and Tiryns in a somewhat
modified form.
In Troy, this form was self-evident if our
assumption is correct that the old ring wall of the V layer was
gradually replaced by a wall lying further outside. Because when the
new wall was erected in front of the older one and a gate was built
between the two, a similar gate system came into being of its own
accord. Our East Gate itself was not created in this way, of course,
because both adjoining walls are from the same time and, apart from the
stretch h e, are in one and the same line.
 The
former appearance of the gate can be imagined to some extent with the
help of the floor plan according to photo 17 and the section (fig.41),
although in these pictures several more recent additions disturb the
overview somewhat. If one stands in front of the gate, one has on the
left the outer side of the eastern castle wall (a) which is just
visible on the edge of the picture in photo 17; a part is covered by a
remnant (f) of the seventh layer gate, about which we shall learn more
later.
Photo 17: Gate S of layer VI between walls a and b; inner wall of the gate (d); Remnant of the gate of layer VII (f).
On
the right you have the end of the other castle wall enclosing the
gateway. Its left corner is perfectly preserved in the picture at b and
c, but its facade is completely covered by the large ashlar wall (h), a
foundation wall of the Roman east hall of the Athena district. We
discovered its right-hand corner beyond the Roman wall, behind a layer
VII fortress wall shown on Plates III and VI. In the ground plan
(fig.40) it is marked with e. In the photographic image we are struck
by the small round holes present on stones c-c, which were obviously
worked on (p.127) on purpose, but have not yet found an explanation.
They are not deep enough to have been used to hold even small objects;
However, because of the regularity of their arrangement, they must have
had some specific purpose.
If
we enter the more than 2 m wide gateway, the left castle wall ends
after 5 m in a well-preserved corner (c in the floor plan); the wall on
the right, which is conspicuously slightly overhanging, first runs
parallel to the left and then turns to the left in an arc visible in
the picture at d (p.128). This wall is only 2m high, the wall e visible
above it in the picture lies further back and belongs to a house of the
VII layer. Originally it must have been higher. There is no doubt that
it had the full height of the substructure of the castle wall of at
least 4m.
Fig.40: Plan of gate VI S and its surroundings in layer VI.
However,
it is questionable how its superstructure was designed, because this is
now only preserved on the outer half of the wall and, as its
well-crafted inner facade proves, could not have been wider. I suspect
that the inner half supported either just a low parapet or a full adobe
superstructure. In earlier times, when the superstructure of the ring
wall was still made entirely of bricks, the full thickness of the wall
was of course covered with a brick wall. The fact that the difficulty
of the upper solution only arises with the stone superstructure can be
cited as confirmation of our proof of an older brick upper wall. The
shape of the gateway was evidently calculated for building over the
entire width of the base with bricks.
Once we have passed
through the curved gateway, we find ourselves in front of the actual
castle gate, of which unfortunately not much is left. Two gate pillars
(a and b in the plan fig.40) made of small, well-worked stones enclose
a doorway of about 1.8 cm. Since only the lowest stone layers are
preserved and in a very bad condition, nothing can be said about the
shape of the lock and the covering of the door opening. The Thor wall
is only 1.20 m thick and is not connected to the two side walls. This
goes ill with the strong and well-built castle walls. One would
therefore like to think of a later conversion and look for the actual
gate closure in a different place for the older time. But no trace of
such a thing has been found. The connection between the wall of the
gate and the upper wall on the right was perhaps formed as I have
indicated in fig.40 with dotted lines. But if, as I previously assumed
to be possible, the base wall, which is lightly shaded in the ground
plan, was completely provided with a superstructure, then no special
connecting wall needed to be present.
After crossing the gate
one finds oneself at a crossroads. Straight ahead is a ramp, from the
beginning of which two steps are found at v, leading up to the terrace
of buildings VI E and VI Q; on the other hand, to the left and right,
as indicated by dotted lines and arrows, one could enter the space
between the castle wall and the first terrace wall.
We used to
believe that this ambulatory, which is almost 1m wide and located
behind the castle wall, was still occupied by small houses or magazines
during the existence of the sixth tier (cf. Athens. Mittheilungen 1894,
Plate IX). But it turned out that the construction of the houses only
after the complete destruction of the VI. shift has taken place. We
shall give proofs of their belonging to the VII layer when discussing
the latter.
No buildings (p.129) of the VI layer have been
found in the ambulatory, only a number of large storage vessels
(pithoi), which because of their altitude (below the VII walls) and
also because of the pottery found in them with certainty belong to the
VI castle may be assigned. In fig.40 only the pithoi, 9 in all, which
definitely belong to the VI layer, are drawn. The attached numbers (59
- 68) refer to the list of pithoi to be given in Section III.
The
storage of grain and other food staples in large underground pithoi has
been established for almost all strata. The vessels are always in the
rooms of the houses or in groups together in special magazines.
It
may seem strange that in the sixth layer there are several pithoi under
the open sky in the middle of the wide gallery behind the castle wall.
A similar device is still common in the Orient, not only for individual
pithoi, but also for entire groups. Thus in the village of Phlamudi on
the island of Cyprus I found a large number (over 50) of such
subterranean storage rooms next to one another in an open space outside
the village. They were cavities in the shape of pithoi, cut into the
solid ground, lined with clay on the inside, and then fired. Each
vessel thus made was covered on top with a flat stone, and contained
the grain of one family. When I asked my guide whether the grain was
not stolen in this way of storage, he answered indignantly whether I
believed that "bread" could be stolen! One steals money and sheep, but
never bread.
The shape of the ambulatory and its elevation in
relation to the walls enclosing it result from the leveling numbers
inscribed in the floor plan, but even better from the sections drawn
through the eastern part of the castle in Plate VIII below. When the
castle wall was built and the pithoi erected, the floor of the
ambulatory near the pithoi was at about a height of 31.60 m above sea
level, sloping north to the top of the ramp at 31m, reaching inside the
gate at about 30.50 m and descended even more in the gateway to the
south until it had a height of 29.75 m between i and d (in fig.40).
During
the existence of the VI layer, all these numbers increased
significantly, because the ground was raised by earth, small stones and
all kinds of rubble that were deposited here. A particularly large
increase in floor height will have occurred when the brick upper wall
was demolished and replaced by a stone wall.
 The
gradual elevation of the path can be seen very clearly in the section
in fig.41. Above the rubble that was created during the construction of
the castle wall, the floor at a height of 29.70 m can be seen on a line
formed from pebbles and dark earth. After reaching the height of
30.60m, the path was paved with stone slabs.
Fig.41: The East gate in layer VI (VI S) and in layer VII (VII S)
When
it was 0.30m higher, the destruction of the VI castle took place. Fire
debris and rubble covered the path and then formed the base for the new
gate built in the VII layer, whose threshold was 31.75m above sea level
and thus 2m above the former floor of the VI layer. We will get to know
this later gate in more detail later when discussing the VII layer.
The
height of the floor of the layer VI immediately behind the gate lock
and at the same time the different construction methods of the walls
uncovered at the gate is illustrated in the adjacent fig.42, a
photographic image of the north-west corner of the castle wall (k in
fig.40). The wall marked a [p.141], built of rather rain-wet stones,
against which the measuring rod rests, is that corner seen from the
north. It is adjoined on the right by a house wall from the first
period of the VII stratum; besides small, rather rough stones, it
contains several well-worked ashlars (b), undoubtedly taken from a
ruined building of VI. In the rubble that lies under this wall, a line
formed by small white pebbles can be seen, the floor of the VI layer.
Of the walls visible in the upper part of the picture, c belongs to the
first, and d to the second period of the VIIth stratum.
 The
main gate of the VI Castle was probably the South Gate VI T. It is wider
than the East Gate and also lies in the same direction in which the layer II
Castle had its main gate (FO). Also in Roman times we will find the
gate building of the Athena temple precinct again in the same [p.132]
area. The site was determined by nature as the entrance to the castle,
because this is exactly where the large plateau of what later became
the lower town joined the castle hill.
Fig.42: The north-west corner of the eastern castle wall of Level VI (a), and the walls of the VII layer ( b, c, d ).
[Continue to Chapter 2, part 10]
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