|
Chapter 6:
Work at Hissarlik in 1872.
On the Hill of Hissarlik, April 5th, 1872.
MY
last report was dated November 24th, 1871. On the first of this month,
at 6 o’clock on the morning of a glorious day, accompanied by my wife,
I resumed the excavations with 100 Greek workmen from the neighbouring
villages of Renkoï, Kalifatli, and Yenishehr. Mr. John Latham, of
Folkestone, the director of the railway from the Piræus to Athens, who
by his excellent management brings the shareholders an annual dividend
of 30 per cent., had the kindness to give me two of his best workmen,
Theodorus Makrys of Mitylene, and Spiridion Demetrios of Athens, as
foremen.
To each of them I pay 150 fr. (6l.) per month, while the daily
wages of the other men are but 1 fr. 80 cent. Nikolaos Zaphyros, of
Renkoï, gets 6 fr., as formerly; he is of great use to me on account of
his local knowledge, and serves me at once as cashier, attendant, and
cook. Mr. Piat, who has undertaken the construction of the railroad
from the Piræus to Lanira, has also had the kindness to let me have his
engineer, Adolphe Laurent, for a month, whom I shall have to pay 500
fr. (20l.), and his travelling expenses. But in addition{99} there are
other considerable expenses to be defrayed, so that the total cost of
my excavations amounts to no less than 300 fr. (12l.) daily.
Now
in order to be sure, in every case, of thoroughly solving the Trojan
question this year, I am having an immense horizontal platform made on
the steep northern slope, which rises at an angle of 40 degrees, a
height of 105 feet perpendicular, and 131 feet above the level of the
sea. The platform extends through the entire hill, at an exact
perpendicular depth of 14 meters or 46½ English feet, it has a breadth
of 79 meters or 233 English feet, and embraces my last year’s
cutting.[102] M. Laurent calculates the mass of matter to be removed at
78,545 cubic meters (above 100,000 cubic yards): it will be less if I
should find the native soil at less than 46 feet, and greater if I
should have to make the platform still lower. It is above all things
necessary for me to reach the primary soil, in order to make accurate
investigations.
To make the work easier, after having had the
earth on the northern declivity picked down in such a manner that it
rises perpendicularly to the height of about 8½ feet from the bottom,
and after that at an angle of 50 degrees, I continue to have the débris
of the mighty earth wall loosened in such a manner that this angle
always remains exactly the same. In this way I certainly work three
times more rapidly than before, when, on account of the small breadth
of the channel, I was forced to open it on the summit of the hill in a
direct horizontal direction along its entire length. In spite of every
precaution, however, I am unable to guard my men or myself against the
stones which continually come rolling down, when the steep wall is
being picked away. Not one of us is without several wounds in his feet.
During
the first three days of the excavations, in{100} digging down the slope
of the hill, we came upon an immense number of poisonous snakes, and
among them a remarkable quantity of the small brown vipers called
antelion (??t?????), which are scarcely thicker than rain worms, and
which have their name from the circumstance that the person bitten by
them only survives till sunset. It seems to me that, were it not for
the many thousands of storks which destroy the snakes in spring and
summer, the Plain of Troy would be uninhabitable, owing to the
excessive numbers of these vermin.
Through the kindness of my
friends, Messrs. J. Henry Schröder and Co., in London, I have obtained
the best English pickaxes and spades for loosening and pulling down the
rubbish, also 60 excellent wheel-barrows with iron wheels for carrying
it away.
For the purpose of consolidating the buildings on the
top of the hill, the whole of the steep northern slope has evidently
been supported by a buttress, for I find the remains of one in several
places. This buttress is however not very ancient, for it is composed
of large blocks of shelly limestone, mostly hewn, and joined with lime
or cement. The remains of this wall have only a slight covering of
earth; but on all other places there is more or less soil, which, at
the eastern end of the platform, extends to a depth of between 6½ and
10 feet.
Behind the platform, as well as behind the remains of
the buttress, the débris is as hard as stone, and consists of the ruins
of houses, among which I find axes of diorite, sling-bullets of
loadstone, a number of flint knives, innumerable handmills of lava, a
great number of small idols of very fine marble, with or without the
owl’s-head and woman’s girdle, weights of clay in the form of pyramids
and with a hole at the point, or made of stone and in the form of
balls; lastly, a great many of those small terra-cotta whorls, which
have already been so frequently spoken of in my previous reports.
Two
pieces of this kind, with{101} crosses on the under side, were found in
the terramares of Castione and Campeggine,[103] and are now in the
Museum of Parma. Many of these Trojan articles, and especially those in
the form of volcanoes, have crosses of the most various descriptions,
as may be seen in the lithographed drawings.[104] The form block-style
cross occurs especially often; upon a great many we find the sign ?, of
which there are often whole rows in a circle round the central point.
In my earlier reports I never spoke of these crosses, because their
meaning was utterly unknown to me.
Figs.66, 67, 68: Trojan Sling-bullets of Loadstone (9 and 10m depth).
This
winter, I have read in Athens many excellent works of celebrated
scholars on Indian antiquities, especially Adalbert Kuhn, Die
Herabkunft des Feuers; Max Müller’s Essays; Émile Burnouf, La Science
des Religions and Essai sur le Vêda, as well as several works by Eugène
Burnouf; and I now perceive that these crosses upon the Trojan
terra-cottas are of the highest importance to archæology.
I
therefore consider it necessary to enter more fully into the subject,
all the more so as I am now able to prove that both the block-style
cross and the ?, which I find in Émile Burnouf’s Sanscrit lexicon,
under the name of “suastika,” and with the meaning e? ?st?, or as the
sign of good wishes, were already regarded, thousands of years
before{102} Christ, as religious symbols of the very greatest
importance among the early progenitors of the Aryan races in Bactria
and in the villages of the Oxus, at a time when Germans, Indians,
Pelasgians, Celts, Persians, Slavonians and Iranians still formed one
nation and spoke one language.
For I recognise at the first
glance the “suastika” upon one of those three pot bottoms,[105] which
were discovered on Bishop’s Island near Königswalde on the right bank
of the Oder, and have given rise to very many learned discussions,
while no one recognised the mark as that exceedingly significant
religious symbol of our remote ancestors. I find a whole row of these
“suastikas” all round the famous pulpit of Saint Ambrose in Milan; I
find it occurring a thousand times in the catacombs of Rome.[106] I
find it in three rows, and thus repeated sixty times, upon an ancient
Celtic funereal urn discovered in Shropham in the county of Norfolk,
and now in the British Museum.[107] I find it also upon several
Corinthian vases in my own collection, as well as upon two very ancient
Attic vases in the possession of Professor Kusopulos at Athens, which
are assigned to a date as early, at least, as 1000 years before Christ.
I likewise find it upon several ancient coins of Leucas, and in the
large mosaic in the royal palace garden in Athens.
An English
clergyman, the Rev. W. Brown Keer, who visited me here, assures me that
he has seen the ? innumerable times in the most ancient Hindu temples,
and especially in those of Gaïna.[108] I find in the Ramayana that the
ships of king{103} Rama—in which he carried his troops across the
Ganges on his expedition of conquest to India and Ceylon—bore the ? on
their prows. Sanscrit scholars believe that this heroic epic (the
Ramayana) was composed at the latest 800 years before Christ, and they
assign the campaign of Rama at the latest to the thirteenth or
fourteenth century B.C., for, as Kiepert points out in his very
interesting article in the National-Zeitung, the names of the products
mentioned in the 2nd Book of Kings, in the reign of King Solomon, as
brought by Phœnician ships from Ophir, as for example, ivory, peacocks,
apes and spices, are Sanscrit words with scarcely any alteration.
Hence
we may surely regard it as certain, that it took at least three or four
centuries before the language of the conquerors was generally
introduced into the immensely large and densely peopled country of
India, especially as the number of the conquerors cannot have been very
large. In the myths of the Rigvêda, which were written before the
expedition into Northern India (Heptopotamia), the Aryan population is
always represented as inconsiderable in numbers.
Fig.69: The Foot-print of Buddha (carved on the Amraverti Tope, near the river Kistna; cf. footnote 8).
Émile
Burnouf, in his excellent work La Science des Religions, just
published, says, “The ? represents the two pieces of wood which were
laid cross-wise upon one{104} another before the sacrificial altars in
order to produce the holy fire (Agni), and whose ends were bent round
at right angles and fastened by means of four nails, suastika with
dots, so that this wooden scaffolding might not be moved. At the point
where the two pieces of wood were joined, there was a small hole, in
which a third piece of wood, in the form of a lance (called Pramantha)
was rotated by means of a cord made of cow’s hair and hemp, till the
fire was generated by friction.
The father of the holy fire
(Agni) is Twastri, i.e. the divine carpenter, who made the ? and the
Pramantha, by the friction of which the divine child was produced. The
Pramantha was afterwards transformed by the Greeks into Prometheus,
who, they imagined, stole fire from heaven, so as to instil into
earth-born man the bright spark of the soul. The mother of the holy
fire is the divine Mâjâ, who represents the productive force in the
form of a woman; every divine being has his Mâjâ. Scarcely has the weak
spark escaped from its mother’s lap, that is from the ?, which is
likewise called mother, and is the place where the divine Mâjâ
principally dwells—when it (Agni) receives the name of child.
In
the Rigvêda we find hymns of heavenly beauty in praise of this new-born
weak divine creature. The little child is laid upon straw; beside it is
the mystic cow, that is, the milk and butter destined as the offering;
before it is the holy priest of the divine Vâju, who waves the small
oriental fan in the form of a flag, so as to kindle life in the little
child, which is close upon expiring. Then the little child is placed
upon the altar, where, through the holy “sôma” (the juice of the tree
of life) poured over it, and through the purified butter, it receives a
mysterious power, surpassing all comprehension of the worshippers. The
child’s glory shines upon all around it; angels (dêvâs) and men shout
for joy, sing hymns in its praise, and throw themselves on their faces
before it. On its left is the rising sun, on its right the full moon on
the horizon, and both appear to grow{105} pale in the glory of the
new-born god (Agni) and to worship him.
But how did this
transfiguration of Agni take place? At the moment when one priest laid
the young god upon the altar, another poured the holy draught, the
spiritual “sôma” upon its head, and then immediately anointed it by
spreading over it the butter of the holy sacrifice. By being thus
anointed Agni receives the name of the Anointed (akta); he has,
however, grown enormously through the combustible substances; rich in
glory he sends forth his blazing flames; he shines in a cloud of smoke
which rises to heaven like a pillar, and his light unites with the
light of the heavenly orbs. The god Agni, in his splendour and glory,
reveals to man the secret things; he teaches the Doctors; he is the
Master of the masters, and receives the name of Jâtavêdas, that is, he
in whom wisdom is in-born.
Upon my writing to M. É. Burnouf to
enquire about the other symbol, the cross in the form block-style
cross, which occurs hundreds of times upon the Trojan terra-cottas, he
replied, that he knows with certainty from the ancient scholiasts on
the Rigvêda, from comparative philology, and from the Monuments
figurés, that Suastikas, in this form also, were employed in the very
remotest times for producing the holy fire. He adds that the Greeks for
a long time generated fire by friction, and that the two lower pieces
of wood that lay at right angles across one another were called
“sta????,” which word is either derived from the root “stri,” which
signifies lying upon the earth, and is then identical with the Latin
“sternere,” or it is derived from the Sanscrit word “stâvara,” which
means firm, solid, immovable. Since the Greeks had other means of
producing fire, the word sta???? passed into simply in the sense of
“cross.”
Other passages might be quoted from Indian scholars to
prove that from the very remotest times the ? and the block-style cross
were the most sacred symbols of our Aryan forefathers.{106}
In my present excavations I shall probably find a
definite explanation as to the purpose for which the articles
ornamented with such significant symbols were used; till then I shall
maintain my former opinion, that they either served as Ex votos or as
actual idols of Hephæstus.
Fig.70: Large Terra-cotta Vase, with the Symbols of the Ilian Goddess (4m depth).
Footnotes:
[102] See the Frontispiece and Plan II.
[103] Gabriel de Mortillet, Le Signe de la Croix avant le Christianisme.
[104] Plates XXI. to LII. at the end of the volume.
[105] Copied in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Organ der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie und Urgeschichte, 1871, Heft III.
[106] Émile Burnouf, La Science des Religions.
[107] A. W. Franks, Horæ ferales, pl. 30, fig. 19.
[108]
The cut, for which we are indebted to Mr. Fergusson, represents the
foot-print of Buddha, as carved on the Amraverti Tope, near the river
Kistna. Besides the suastika, repeated again and again on the heels,
the cushions, and the toes, it bears the emblem of the mystic rose,
likewise frequently repeated (comp. the lithographed whorls, Nos. 330,
339, &c.), and the central circles show a close resemblance to some
of the Trojan whorls.—[Ed.]
[Continue to Chapter 7]
|
|