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Chapter 2 (part 8)
6. Layer VI: the Mycenaean castle; Homer's Troy (p.107).
Neither
the stately ring wall of the sixth layer nor its large buildings were
uncovered and identified during Schliemann's first excavations. It was
not until 1890, shortly before the researcher's death, that the first
building of this stratum and in it vases of the Mycenaean period came
to light. How this building (VI A) was initially assessed by us, and
how it then formed the starting point for the complete uncovering of
the great Mycenaen castle, the true Homeric Troy, I have
explained in the historical part in Chapter 1 (p.16 ff .). I have already
indicated there that not all of the surviving buildings of layer VI
have been revealed. We know quite a bit that parts of the southern ring
wall and also some interior buildings in the south-east and north-east
parts of the castle are still hidden under younger ruins and high
masses of rubble. However, it is sometimes not possible to uncover them
now, and sometimes not advisable. The excavated buildings are also
perfectly sufficient to get an image of the castle wall with its gates
and towers, as well as of the castle interior with its terraces and
houses.
Before we turn to the individual structures, it is
advisable to answer the question that is often raised, how the lower
layers (I-V) could be uncovered without the large walls of the higher
VI layer being found and destroyed. The answer is given by the section
through the hill drawn on Plate VIII, or better yet, the schematic
section published in fig.6.
Fig.6: Schematic section through Hissarlik hill showing the nine different strata.
When the Romans wanted to
build a large upper area with stones and propylaia around the temple of
Ilian Athena, they completely cleared away the entire middle part of
the hill, which was higher than the Greek temple, and used the masses
of rubble gained in this way to widen the hill. At that time, in the
highest part of the hill there were not only buildings of the VI layer,
but above them also houses and other remains of the VII and VIII
settlements. All that was preserved of them above the temple plateau
was destroyed and removed, and on the level place thus obtained, large
Roman buildings and bases for statues and votive offerings of all kinds
were erected next to the renewed temple.
In the middle of the
hill, where layers VI -VIII had been removed, the Roman buildings now
lay directly over the remains of layer V. Only a little further away
from the middle were some remains of buildings of level VI and further
still ruins of the two younger settlements preserved. Therefore, during
the excavation, the latter could only be found on the periphery, the
buildings of the VI layer a little further towards the middle. In full
accord with this, Schliemann in his reports often expresses his
astonishment at the shallow depth at which the prehistoric finds
occurred in the middle of the mound immediately below the Roman
buildings.
It
is therefore due to the thorough modification of the hill by the Romans
that the buildings of the VI -VIII layers have survived only in the
outer parts of the mound, and that neither could a single building of
these layers be found in the middle. Since Schliemann's
excavations were essentially limited to the middle core of the hill, as
far as the layer II prehistoric castle reached, he was able to focus on
the large buildings of the VIth layer only in the narrow ditches that
he dug to the periphery of the hill. The fact that he actually found
some walls of the Homeric castle in these (p. 109), but considered them
too young because of their good construction, has already been
mentioned (p.4). Only when in 1890 he had a larger space outside the
ring wall of layer II which soon turned out to be the remains of the
Mycenaean castle.
In order to explain this fact, reference may
be made to another, better-known castle, in which the buildings of the
oldest strata are preserved for a similar reason only on the edge of
the hill, namely the Acropolis of Athens. There it was not the Romans,
but the Athenians of the 5th century, viz. Pericles and his artists,
who, in the center of the Acropolis, cut off the ancient structures of
the Mycenaean period, and also part of the rock, to make a large flat
area around the build a new temple, the Parthenon.
Just as
nobody will claim on the basis of the buildings that have been
preserved that in Mycenaean times only the edge of the Acropolis of
Athens was inhabited, but everyone will extend the Mycenaean buildings
over the entire castle during a reconstruction, so nobody should want
to assume that the VIth layer in Ilion existed only on the periphery of
the hill. The whole hill was covered by the buildings of the Mycenaean
period, and according to the analogy of the preserved outer buildings,
large individual buildings must also be added in the middle. Likewise,
although a large piece of the ring wall has been destroyed, we can add
to the strong wall around the castle hill.
As unfortunate as
it is that some buildings of Layer VI have already perished in
antiquity, so we can be all the more pleased that so many and so
stately parts of the ring wall and so many inner buildings have
survived the great destruction by the Greeks and the later damage. In
fact, neither we nor the pioneering Schliemann ever believed, or even
dared to hope, that the walls of the Ilios sung about by Homer, and the
dwellings of Priam and his companions, would be preserved in such
magnificent ruins as is actually the case.
We
begin the description of the buildings again with the castle wall and
its gates and towers, then turn to the buildings and paths inside the
castle and end with the fountains. To facilitate the individual
description, a few general words about the building materials of the
VIth Layer and its processing will come first.
The main building
materials of the layer VI or Mycenaean castle were limestone, wood,
unfired brick, loamy earth and lime. The native tertiary limestone was
by far the preferred choice and very good types of it were used in
almost all buildings. The soft types of this stone, which were often
used for foundations in Roman times, do not occur in layer VI. The
masonry made of these (p.110) stones is of different types : either the
blocks are carefully worked and connected so closely to the neighboring
stones without any bonding agent that the joints are sometimes hardly
recognizable, or the stones are only smoothed on their outside and
their Joints filled with clay and small stones. In some walls the
stones show no working at all, so that one can speak of Cyclopean
masonry. In a wall of the latter type, the former presence of
horizontal wooden beams can also be seen (in the layer VI F building).
Figs.34
and 35 may serve as a sample of these different constructions. In the
first picture (fig.34) a projecting corner of the VI M building is
shown. Near the corner the stones are well finished and neatly joined,
the joints appearing as fine lines. Farther from the corner and in the
lower part of the wall, the stones become more irregular and the joints
larger; small stones are inserted to fill in the gaps.
Fig.34: Retaining wall of layer VI M building with projecting corner.
Fig.35
shows a piece of the eastern castle wall and the adjoining tower VI h.
The well-hewn castle wall (c) is composed of rather irregular stones,
while the wall of the tower is composed of well-worked ashlars. The
latter form a very (p.111) regular stone structure, which can almost be
compared with the Greek isodomous masonry. At the same time, the
picture teaches us that the stones were initially moved with a rough
outside and only after the completion of the entire wall did they
receive their smooth outside by working off the protruding parts. In
the lower part of the wall a the stones, insofar as they lay under the
floor, have remained completely rough; the cuboids d clearly show how
far down the wall the processing reached. We will see other examples of
the different construction methods when discussing the individual
buildings.
 Fig.35: The eastern castle wall (c) of layer VI and the northern wall (a) of the layer VI h tower.
Unfired
bricks occurred to a limited extent in layer VI . Brick masonry that
was still preserved was only found in the upper part of the large tower
VI g, while individual bricks came to light in several places in the
rubble of the houses. The fact that originally the entire
superstructure of the castle wall was made of bricks, but was later
replaced by a stone wall, we will prove below.
Clay or
argillaceous earth was also used to make the horizontal roofs of the
houses. Wood has been used as building material for the roofs of the
houses, the (p.112) floors inside the towers, the longitudinal beams in
some walls, the free-standing columns and the doors. Wooden parastads,
which are so numerous in the layer II castle, appear to have not been
usual in the layer VI castle; the wall corners and parastades were, as
far as we know, built of stone.
Quicklime
was used to make floors in a manner similar to that used in other
Mycenaean castles. We found large pieces of such screed in the steeply
sloping path, shown in squares D8 and D7, which led from the southern
curtain wall to the higher terraces inside the castle. Inside the room
we didn't notice lime plaster either on the walls or on the floors.
Several
large pithoi [large storage jars], entirely filled with lime, were also
discovered within tower VI h. A chemical analysis of the lime, kindly
carried out by Professors Richard Lepsius and Otto Russopulos, revealed
almost pure carbonate of lime with small admixtures of alumina,
magnesia, siliceous earth, potash and soda. Whether the lime stored in
the pithoi was used to make screed or for other purposes remains
undecided. Apart from the cases mentioned, lime was not found in any
building of the VI stratum and therefore it cannot have been in general
use. Like the Mycenaean pottery, it was probably imported from Greece
or another region.
The castle wall has been found all along the
east side of the hill and has been completely exposed to its
foundations; it has been established on the whole south side and in
part of the west side, but has not yet been fully excavated; in part of
the west side and on the whole north side it is not found and no longer
exists at all. Only at the eastern end of the north side in J 3 is
there a small piece that is still unknown. Of the entire circumference,
which had a length of around 540m, about 330m, i.e. about 3/5, have
been preserved and for the most part uncovered. The fact that the other
2/5 were already destroyed in antiquity and not by Schliemann is
certain by the fact that we too have searched in vain for the remains
of the layer VI ring wall in several places where Schliemann had not
yet dug at all.
Strabo (XIIl, 599) tells us when the complete
destruction of the missing part of the wall took place. He reports that
Archaianax (around 550 BC) built the walls of Sigeion with the stones
from Old Troy and that, according to another message that Demetrios
doubted, stones from Troy were also used to build Achilleion. Both
cities lay northwest of Ilion, west of the Skamander estuary.
Since
the old city wall, while it still stands several meters high on the
other sides of the hill, seems to have disappeared down to the last
foundation stone in the (p.113) north-west and north, we are justified
in demolishing this section of the old wall in the middle of the 6th
century BC. In the present-day houses of the village of Jenischer,
which is on the construction site of Sigeion or Achilleion, many
ashlars are actually built in, which, judging by their material and
their work, can very well come from the wall of the VI layer.
Incidentally, the VI century is also a very good time for the
destruction of the old castle wall, because the hill probably did not
have any settlements at that time.
The village of the VII layer,
whose inhabitants still used the upper parts of the VI castle wall as a
fortress wall, was already deserted and buried at that time. The VIII
layer, the Greek settlement, on the other hand, did not yet exist. Soon
after this, however, its inhabitants built a new castle wall with small
stones and using the remains of the old wall that had not yet been
destroyed, which we will get to know later. It is probably the same
wall that surrounded the Greek Ilion in the fourth century when it was
taken by Charidemus. In the period between the fall of the
VIIth and the founding of the VIIIth layer, part of the old castle
wall was probably destroyed.
In the part of the layer VI castle
wall that has been preserved and excavated by us, three sections can be
distinguished, which show such different construction types that they
cannot possibly have been built at the same time. To the first section
belongs the western wall from its present end in A5 to Gate VI U;
secondly, the entire south wall from the latter gate to the main gate
VI T and also the two towers VI h and VI g on the east wall; to the
third, the eastern castle wall itself from the gate VI T to the tower
VI g.
The western castle wall is the poorest built; it
consists of small stones which, apart from a piece of wall later
repaired, are almost unworked. Larger and better-worked stones were
taken for the U, east wall, but their joints visible on the outside
show good dressing only near the projecting edges. The southern wall
and all the towers are still better built; their stones are still
larger and worked into almost rectangular ashlars; their joints are
neatly trimmed and completely closed. In order to find an explanation
for these large differences in the individual sections, we first have
to get to know the different parts of the wall better via a tour around
the castle.
 Although the western castle wall is weaker than the
others, it can be described as a strong curtain wall. We already know
their section from fig 31. Fig.36 shows a second section taken
further south, indicating a later fortification.
Fig.36: Section through the layer VI castle wall and the neighboring buildings in square A 6.
In both places the
wall has a sloping substructure, the outside of which is very
weathered, and an almost completely destroyed superstructure. The
(p.114) thickness of the former is about 3m at the top of the
escarpment; how big it is at the lower end could not be determined
because the inner edge could not be uncovered due to building VI A. The
slope of the outside is about 0.40m in height; a more precise
measurement was not possible due to the severe weathering. The stone
bond inside the base wall could not be determined either. The
superstructure, the outside of which ran almost vertically, is only
preserved up to the level of the floor inside the castle and was
probably originally 3 m wide in its higher, now destroyed part, later
perhaps only 1.80 m wide. What entitles us to this assumption can only
be discussed with regard to the eastern wall.
 The
surviving piece of western wall consists of two essentially different
parts, the junction of which can be seen in the accompanying photograph
in fig.37. On the left some regular square stones (a) of the inner
facade are visible, and behind them, too, despite the rubble and
breakage, one can still see isolated small worked ashlars. The masonry in the right half of the picture (b), on the
other hand, is made of irregular chunks of stone and many inserted
splinters of stone.
Fig.37: Interior view of the western castle wall, partly made of well-worked stones (a), partly of unworked stones (b).
The
manner in which both pieces meet leaves no doubt that the better
(p.115) masonry is a later replacement of the older and inferior. As
this renewal of the wall from Gate VI U reaches just to the north-west
corner of Building VI A, it may be presumed that it took place at the
same time as the building of the latter. Due to the presence of small
square stones, which can be used well, the great destruction that the
renewed southern part later suffered is due to it. The western wall
originally consisted entirely of little-processed stones and was
thoroughly rebuilt at its southern end during the course of the sixth
layer when building VI A was erected.
How
the western wall was designed further north and how the completely
destroyed northern castle wall was designed will probably always remain
unknown. No stone was found from square A 5 to square J 3. In the
book Troy 1893 (p. 45) I
had expressed the hope that deep excavations on the northwestern and
northern slopes of the hill might still reveal a remnant of the wall.
According to the results of our last excavations, however, we have to
give up this hope. Despite a keen search, we only found a small section
of wall in the north-east directly at the large tower VI g, but we
could not be certain of its meaning.
This wall section can be
seen on the right-hand edge of photo 14 (p. 104) and is labeled c. It
forms the continuation of the wall (a) of Tower VIg, consisting of
large, almost regular blocks, and contains only small, little-worked
stones. Its low slope and poor foundations (it stands on the scree e)
justify doubts as to whether it is part of the outer castle wall at
all. Should it nevertheless be a piece of the northern wall, it would
agree with the western wall in that both are built of small,
little-worked stones, and it would be permissible to surmise that the
whole northern wall was of the same construction. On the other hand, it
is possible that the castle wall was located several meters to the
north here, and that our wall c was the side wall of a gateway. Only
further excavations can bring a decision here. Farther west, starting
from square H 3, the entire northern wall has certainly been destroyed.
Photo 15:
Eastern castle wall (s) of layer VI and side walls (b and c) of tower
VI h; upper walls of the same (b and c); house walls (f) of the VII
layer; foundations (h) of the IX layer.
A
much more stately structure is the eastern castle wall, which we
excavated almost entirely in 1894. Photo 15 gives a
good impression of its excellent condition and its still effective
appearance. There we see its strongly sloping substructure still
standing 4 to 5 m high and recognize, especially when we consult the
ground plan, that its outline is a polygon of lines of equal length,
the corners of which are marked by small black stripes that appear in
the picture projections are marked, b is the northern side wall of the
attached tower VI h, of whose upper structure a piece (e) is visible to
the left above the wall a.
The superstructure of the castle wall itself
has been partially preserved in two places in our picture (at d),
easily recognizable by the small, regular stones from which it is made.
A small piece of an external reinforcement that was carried out in
layer VIII of the wall, which was then almost completely buried, can be
seen at g. We will come back to the house walls (f) of layer VII and
the cuboid foundations (h) of layer IX later.
The
details of the eastern wall (a) appear even better on Photo 16. The
type of stone processing and joint formation can be clearly seen here.
A small piece of the superstructure is visible at d. The thin facing
wall (g), which was built in the VIII layer and now only supported by
the rubble (e), covers part of the old castle wall. The latter had
apparently long since been buried when the former was erected. At b one
notices in the distance Tower S of layer VI and a few meters higher at
c the corresponding Tower of layer VII. On the far right, the picture
is bounded by the large cuboid foundation h, belonging to the IX
stratum, from the eastern stoa of the temple of Athena.
Photo 16:
E
The
dimensions of the wall and the stone structure within it, so far as
they could be ascertained at all, can be taken from the section drawn
in fig.38. The sloping substructure has a height of (p.117) about 6
m and a thickness of 4.60 - 5.00 m. The lower thickness is not
known. We have only ascertained that the inner edge recedes by
almost one inch, and in view of the great thickness of the wall we must
presumably assume a second similar step in the lower part of the wall;
in the drawing it is only dotted as uncertain. The size of the outer
embankment is about 0.37 m in height, perhaps it was just 1:3. Large
flat stones were used to build the embanked part, which formed an
extraordinarily strong and steadfast wall. Inclining the bed joints
inwards increases the strength even more, a measure that is still often
used today for retaining walls.
Fig.38: Section through the eastern castle wall VI in square K 5.
On top of the solid substructure there is still an almost 2 m high upper wall, which is only 1.80 - 2.00 m thick. Earlier (Troy 1893,
p. 44) I had taken it for an ingredient from the seventh layer, because
it shows a different type of construction from the substructure. It is
made up of small rectangular stones, the shape of which we can best
compare with bricks, in a manner similar to that of the western wall;
they are 0.15-0.18 m high and have an average length of 0.50 m and a
width of 0.25 m.
Now that this type of construction has also
been found in other buildings of the VI layer, we are no longer
entitled to attribute it to a younger layer. Because of its (p.118)
excellent execution, it also does not fit the VII layer at all. But the
real difference in the construction of the lower and upper walls, in
connection with the fact that the remains of an upper wall made of mud
bricks are still preserved on the solid stone substructure of the large
tower VI g (on photo 14, marked b), entitles us to accept a conversion.
The upper wall will have originally consisted of unfired bricks on the
entire east side and only later, but still during the existence of the
VIth Layer to have been redone in stone. This explains at least
to some extent that the individual stones were given the mass of bricks
or, more correctly, half bricks.
This, as it seems to me, secure
assumption also explains another fact, which hitherto has not been easy
to understand. From the section shown in fig.38, it follows that the
floor inside the castle is not, as one might expect and I assumed
earlier (Troy 1893, fig.10),
at the height of the upper edge of the sloped base wall, but about 1m
lower. So there was an almost 3m wide and high gallery running along
the inner side of the ring wall, the purpose of which was unclear and
the excellent design of which was quite incomprehensible given the low
load.
If we now consider that the upper stone wall has taken
the place of an older brick wall, certainly of lesser strength because
of its better material, we are naturally led to the supposition that
the older mud wall was the full strength of the stone one Substructure,
namely had a thickness of 4.60 m. No one will want to maintain that
this is too large a measure for brick walls; the walls of the second
layer have already reached about this level, maybe even surpassed it.
The supposed, almost 3m wide gallery thus becomes the substructure or
base of the brick wall and thus has a sensible purpose: it should
support the calcareous wall and protect it from the ingress of earth
moisture. When the stone upper wall was built, the floor inside the
castle had already risen so much that it was about the height of the
supposed gallery. From then on, the latter was no longer visible at
all, a single wide path stretched from the superstructure of the ring
wall to the retaining walls of the inner building.
We will have
to show later that the shape of the gate VI S can only be understood if
one assumes an older, thick brick wall. This, too, can only be hinted
at as further confirmation that the VI h tower was probably erected at
the same time as the stone structure of the castle wall. We cannot go
into detail here, because the towers and gates are to be dealt with
separately.
The eastern castle wall extends in the same design
from tower VI g to gate VI T. Wall thickness and embankment, size and
joint formation of the stones, design and thickness of the upper wall
remain the same along this entire stretch (p.119). The two important
changes in their direction, which occur in K 6 and H 9, are evidently
caused by the two gates VI S and VI T. In general the outline of the
eastern wall is a regular one, and corresponds to a circle of about 100
m radius; however, it does not form a curved line, but rather a polygon
with straight sides that are a little over 9 m long.
It is
noticeable that this dimension is twice the upper wall thickness of
4.60m. Since this is probably due to the fact that both numbers
correspond to a round sum of old cubits, the size of the cubit can
perhaps be determined from this. If we assume a cubit of 0.48 m or 0.52
m, as we calculated above on pp. 38 and 62, then we do not get round
numbers. Such only arise when the cubit was 0.45 - 0.46 m. We then get
10 cubits as the wall thickness, 20 cubits as the length of the
individual polygon sides and 4 cubits as the thickness of the stone
upper wall. It should not go unmentioned that with such a size of the
old cubits other dimensions of the VI layer also result in round
amounts. I call i.e.. the inside width of building VI A with 9.15m=20
cubits and the length of the hall in the same building with 11.25m=25
cubits. We must refrain from going into more detail here.
The
corners of the polygonal walls are emphasized by the small projections
already mentioned, which makes them very obvious; they would otherwise
have been scarcely visible given the slight difference in the direction
of the polygon sides. Great care is taken in the manufacture of the
projections, many being worked onto the stones themselves. We find them
along the entire wall line, as far as this is uncovered, and also on
the outside of Tower VI g. They recur on the inside of the ring wall
and also on the retaining walls of two inner buildings. We did not
mention them on the western castle wall, where they also occur, because
they are hardly recognizable as a result of severe weathering. Their
depth usually fluctuates between 0.10 and 0.15m and only occasionally
reaches the maximum of 0.30m.
Similar steps, repeated at certain
intervals, are not only attested to in other buildings of the Mycenaean
period, e.g. on the castle walls of Tiryns and Arne in Boeotia, but
also occur on ancient Egyptian walls. Examples include a mudbrick
border wall with a stone base on the island of Phyle and a brick
fortress wall in Abydos.
We also find them on Greek walls of
the classical period, e.g. at the great fortress wall, which separates
the Eleusinian from the Athenian plane, and at the city walls of
Samothrake and Samikon. In the three latter instances, however, the
projections are considerably larger than at Troy, and could therefore
serve as projecting towers to flank the wall. With the other buildings,
and especially with the Trojans, such a purpose is completely excluded
because of the small size of the projection.
[p.120] Are the small shoulders created by reduction from larger projections serving as flanking, as F. Noack (Athen. Mittheilungen
1894, p. 430) assumes and I myself thought possible (ibid., p. 384) ?
That seems improbable to me because, as far as we know, the large
protrusions that can be used as towers only occur on younger walls. For
what purpose were they created? In Troy, I believe, they had only an
artistic purpose. They should effectively break the long horizontal
wall line. A glance at Photos 15 and 16 proves that they are still
doing this. If one thinks away the projections of the wall in these
pictures, then a good part of the stately effect of the wall would also
disappear with the dark shadow lines. However, I don't think the
protruding corners have been invented for this artistic purpose, I
rather attribute their origin to a measure taken for technical reasons,
about which I would like to express at least a few conjectures..
The wall of Tiryns (see Tiryns,
p. 204) has been executed in single short stretches; so it did not grow
around the whole castle at the same time. The places where the
individual pieces met can still be recognized by the joints running
from top to bottom. In some of the latter I have measured a distance of
about 1 m, a measure which differs little from the usual distances at
Troy, and which recurs at the wall on the island of Phyle, among other
smaller distances.
In the case of the mudbrick wall in Abydos,
I measured individual pieces of about 14-15 m in length and also found
that the butt joints at the projections go through the wall in their
entire height and thickness, i.e. the individual pieces, just like in
Tiryns, each for itself are built. If the two abutting pieces of a wall
erected in this way were exactly aligned, it could easily happen that
the upper part of one piece of the wall was slightly in front of the
others stepped forward while it was still flush with that below. That
would have looked very ugly. However, if a step was arranged at the
large butt joint by pushing one piece of wall forward so far that it
protruded by 0.20 to 0.30m in front of the neighboring wall, not only
was the joint covered by the protruding edge, but any setting or the
crookedness of the individual wall could not be noticed at all, as long
as the difference did not become too great.
In addition, as A. Heinrich (Annual report of the Gymnasium in Graz for 1895, p. 35) has pointed out, the vertical posts (xxxxx xxxxxx, Ilias
XII, 259) mentioned by Homer on the wall of the Greek ship's camp may
well fit in the corners find space and may have given rise to the
emergence of the protruding corners. It may also be pointed out that a
(p.121) change in the size of the embankment on two adjacent pieces of
wall could be carried out much better with the presence of the
projections than without them. It is not unthinkable that for this
reason the projections were first placed on sloped walls.
No
matter how originally the projections may have come about, there can be
no doubt that they were created at the VI Castle in Troy only to
decorate the walls. In this connection another fact is important which
may be remembered, namely their occurrence on the retaining walls of
the inner buildings VI F and VI M and also on the inside of the castle
wall, where they are placed exactly in correspondence with the outer
projections. The inner ledges achieved what should not be overlooked,
that the strength of the castle walls remained the same throughout. So
there is only a shift in each step, not a reinforcement of the wall.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the projections in Troy also occur
in the V castle wall (see p. 105).
[Continue to Chapter 2, part 9]
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