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Chapter 8:
On the Hill of Hissarlik, May 11th, 1872.
SINCE
my report of the 25th of last month I have only been able to have ten
days’ digging, owing to the various Greek festivals, for even the
poorest Greek of this district would not work on a church festival even
if he could earn 1000 francs in an hour. Turkish workmen were not to be
had, for they are at present occupied with field work. The weather has
been and still is very favourable for making excavations, as the heat
during the day does not yet rise above 20° Réaumur (77° Fahrenheit) in
the shade, and then it never rains here from the beginning of May till
October, except during thunderstorms, and they rarely last more than
half an hour at a time. Moreover, the Plain of Troy is at present still
healthy; the notorious Trojan fevers do not actually begin till July,
when the many stagnant waters have evaporated, and the pestilential
miasma arises from the decomposition of the millions of dead frogs, and
from the dried-up marshes, the ground of which cracks with the heat of
the sun. My wife and I have therefore{123} still six weeks before us,
with the precaution of taking quinine to guard against fever.
I
have cleared out the Roman well, which has been repeatedly mentioned,
to a depth of 20 meters (65˝ feet), and I find that it is walled only
as far as 52˝ feet below the surface of the hill, and then runs into
the limestone rock which forms the native soil. I have caused Georgios
Photidas to make a small tunnel in this rock from the well, and have
now become quite convinced that the ground—upon which, according to
Homer, the Trojan king Dardanus, who had up to that time lived at the
foot of many-fountained Ida, built the town of Dardania (Troy) in the
Plain[127]—is covered with a layer of débris about 16 meters, or 52˝
English feet, thick.
I must here remind the reader that the ruins of
the Greek colony, which settled on the spot, scarcely extend to a depth
of 6˝ feet; that consequently if, with Strabo (XIII. 1, 43) we suppose
the establishment of this colony to have taken place under the Lydian
dominion, that is about 700 B.C., and calculate the duration of the
reigns of the six kings (Dardanus, Erichthonios, Tros, Ilus, Laomedon,
and Priam) who, according to the Iliad (XX. 215-240), preceded the
destruction of Troy, at 200 years, and thus presume the town to have
been founded about 1400 years before Christ, the accumulation of débris
must in this place have amounted to 14 meters, or 46 feet, during the
first 700 years.
I am firmly convinced that, on a glance at my
excavations, every one of the remaining advocates of the
antiquated{124} theory that Troy is to be looked for at the back of the
Plain, upon the heights of Bunarbashi, will at once condemn that
theory, for the Acropolis and town which once stood upon those heights,
and the small area of which is accurately defined by the ruins of the
surrounding walls and by the precipices, is scarcely large enough to
have contained a population of 2000 souls; the accumulation of débris
moreover is extremely small. In many places, even in the middle of the
Acropolis, the naked rock protrudes, and between the area of this small
town and Bunarbashi the ground—in some places pointed, in others
abrupt, but in all parts irregular—shows that no village, much less a
town, can ever have stood upon it.
Immediately above Bunarbashi, and in
fact wherever there was any earth at all, I and my guide, with five
workmen, made (in August 1868) a long series of borings at distances of
100 meters (328 feet) apart, as far as the Scamander, but we found the
primary soil in all cases directly, and the rock at quite an
insignificant depth; and nowhere was there a trace of fragments of
pottery or other indications that the place could ever have been
inhabited by human beings. Even in Bunarbashi itself I found the
primary soil at a depth of less than 2 feet. Besides this, if Troy had
been built at the back of the Plain, upon the heights of Bunarbashi,
Homer (Iliad, XX. 216-218) would not have expressly said that previous
to its foundation by Dardanus it had not yet been built in the Plain.
The
primary soil of Hissarlik is indeed less than 20 meters (65˝ feet)
above the Plain, immediately at the foot of the hill; but at all events
the Plain itself, and especially that part bordering upon the hill, has
increased in height considerably in the course of 31 centuries. But
even if this had not been the case, still the Troy built upon this hill
running out into the Plain would, on account of its high and imposing
position, deserve the Homeric epithets of ?f???essa, a?pe???, and
??eµ?essa, especially{125} the latter; for one of my greatest troubles
here is the continual high wind, and it cannot possibly have been
otherwise in Homer’s time. It is assuredly time that the Bunarbashi
theory, which stands in direct contradiction with all the statements of
the Iliad, should now at last come to an end. The theory, in fact,
would never have arisen had its advocates, instead of spending one
hour, remained a whole day on the heights, and made investigations even
with the aid of a single workman.
As I observed in my last
report, I here find the sun represented in the centre of all the
innumerable round ornamented terra-cottas in the form of the volcano
and top (carrousel), and yesterday I even found one upon which the
central sun was surrounded by five other suns, each of them with twelve
rays.[128]
I know very well that some would derive the name of
the town of Ilium (????? or ?????) from the Sanscrit word vilű,
“fortress,” and ????? from a lost masculine form of Se????, probably
Se?????, and the thought involuntarily forces itself upon me, when
looking at the above-mentioned terra-cottas with the five suns in a
circle round the central sun, that the image of the Sun which occurs
thousands and thousands of times must be connected with the name of
Troy, namely ?????, for ????? only occurs once in Homer (Iliad, XV.
71); he always elsewhere speaks of ?????, and always uses this word as
a feminine. Homer, it is true, always says ?????? instead of ?????, but
in my opinion the root of both is ??? or e???, from the verb a????, the
aorist of which is e????. In Germany, according to the Erasmian
pronunciation e??? is certainly pronounced heila, and e????, heilon;
but in the modern Greek pronunciation e??? is ili; e????, ilon; and
?????, ilios.
There are a number of proofs that the Erasmian
pronunciation is radically wrong, and that the modern Greek is the
correct one. Among these{126} I will only mention that all the Greek
words which passed over into the Russian language, when Russia embraced
Christianity 900 years ago, are pronounced in Russian exactly as they
still are in Greece; and moreover that those who decipher the Assyrian
cuneiform inscriptions (especially, I believe, J. Oppert, in Paris),
have pointed out that the Greek names, which occur in these
inscriptions from the time of the Seleucidć, are represented in the
cuneiform writing exactly according to the modern Greek pronunciation.
Now, if out of the word e???, ???, or e????, there has arisen ??????
and ?????, then surely by the sameness of the pronunciation there may
have arisen out of one of the first three words in pre-Homeric times
????? in the feminine for p???? ????? or ?????, signifying
“Sun-castle,” for the earlier meaning of p???? was certainly castle,
fortress, or acropolis, as for instance in the Iliad, VI. 88, 257, 317,
XXII. 383. Although I am well aware that Egyptian scholars have
hitherto found no relationship between the hieroglyphic and Sanscrit
languages, yet I cannot help mentioning that three years ago, in the
Institute of France, I heard a lecture by the Vicomte de Rougé, who had
found in a papyrus the names of the powers leagued against Rameses
III., and among these the state of Arouna or Aruna, which he without
hesitation identified with Ilium, as he thought that this was the only
way in which the latter word could be rendered in the hieroglyphic
language. Now, curiously enough, according to Max Müller[129] and
Adalbert Kuhn,[130] the Sanscrit word Aruna signifies “charioteer of
the sun.” I leave it to Egyptian and Sanscrit scholars to judge whether
and how far this may serve to confirm what I have said above.
Although
since Easter I have been obliged to pay my men 1 piaster more per diem,
which makes their wages 10 piasters or 2 francs a day, still I am now
working with{127} 130 men; and I firmly hope by the 1st of October to
have carried my great platform through the entire hill, preserving
exactly the same breadth; for while my wife and I, with 85 workmen, are
busy on the platform on the north side, Georgios Photidas and 45 men
have for 10 days been working towards us from a second platform on the
south side. Unfortunately, however, the slope of the hill on the south
side is so slight, that we were forced to begin this work 16Ľ feet
below the surface, in order to have room and freedom for removing the
débris; we have, however, given it a dip of 14°, so that it must reach
the primary soil at a length of about 75 meters (246 feet).
This
southern platform is under the sole direction of Georgios Photidas, for
he has proved himself to be a very skilful engineer, and he works
forward very quickly through his cleverly devised side terraces. He has
hitherto, however, had only light débris to remove, and has not yet
come upon that very hard, tough, damp débris which I have on my
platform at the depth of 10 to 16 meters (33 to 52˝ feet). To-day he
has brought to light a splendid bastion, composed of large finely-hewn
blocks of limestone, not joined by either cement or lime, which,
however, does not seem to me to be older than the time of Lysimachus.
It is certainly very much in our way, but it is too beautiful and
venerable for me to venture to lay hands upon it, so it shall be
preserved.
On the south side the accumulation of débris from the
Greek period is much more considerable than on the north side and upon
the plateau; and thus far Georgios Photidas constantly finds Greek
pottery and those terra-cottas with two holes at one end, which, in my
excavations hitherto, ceased entirely at a depth of 2 meters (6˝ feet).
The greater portion of these round articles have the potter’s stamp
already mentioned, representing a bee or fly with outspread wings above
an altar. (See Cuts, Nos. 37-40, p. 65.)
I have also given the
platform on the north side an inclination of 10° in a length of 66
feet, so as to be able to work{128} forward on the primary soil,
without the indescribable trouble of lowering it another 6˝ feet, and
of thus having to remove 4000 cubic yards of débris. This primary soil
sufficiently proves that all those enormous masses of immense stones,
generally more or less hewn, with which, as already said, I had
continually to battle at a depth of from 10 to 14 meters (33 to 46
feet), are the remains of large buildings, which in the course of
centuries have been erected successively upon the ruins of others. For
it does not appear conceivable to me that even a large palace, were it
six storeys high, could leave such colossal ruins, which, as they reach
down to the rock, are nearly 20 feet in height.
For some days
these masses of stone have diminished in number, but we continually
find many single large blocks. Instead of the stone strata, however, we
now have before us, upon the whole breadth of the platform (230 feet),
and to the height of 20 feet (hence at a depth of from 10 to 16 meters,
33 to 52˝ feet), a damp wall as hard as stone, composed of ashes mixed
with small shells, bones, boars’ tusks, &c., exactly like that
which we before found at the east end. This mass is so tough, that it
is only by making shafts, and breaking down the walls by means of huge
iron levers, that we manage to get on at all.
The signs of a
higher civilization increasing with the greater depth—which I mentioned
in my last report when speaking of the large urn with Assyrian
inscriptions—continue down to the native soil. Close above it I find a
great quantity of fragments of brilliant black and sometimes red or
brown pottery, with engraved decorations, of a quality more excellent
than I have hitherto met with even in the highest strata, among the
ruins of the Greek period. I also found several fragments of cups, the
lower part of which likewise forms a cup, but not a large one, and
hence I do not doubt that these are fragments of double cups (d?pa?
?µf???pe????). In Homer it indeed seems as if all{129} double cups were
made of gold or silver with a gilt rim,[131] but I do not doubt that
there were at the same time also double cups made of clay.[132]
Fig.76: Fragment of a Vase of polished black Earthenware, with Pattern inlaid in White, from the Lowest Stratum (14m depth).
The
other vessels, of which I found fragments, were made so as to be
carried by strings, as is proved by the two rings projecting beside one
another on either side. I also found upon the primary soil the head of
a brilliant black pitcher, with a beak-shaped mouth bent back; also the
fragment of a vessel painted white, but divided into two compartments
by black lines drawn horizontally; the upper compartment contains
undulating black lines, which are perhaps meant to represent water, the
lower one is filled with a row of arrow-shaped decorations, with square
pointed heads, in the centre of which there is always a dot.
Fig.77: Fragment of Terra-cotta, perhaps part of a box, found on the primitive Rock (16m depth).
At the depth of 8 meters (26 feet)
I found a terra-cotta seal (fig.78) an inch and a half in length, with a hole
for suspending it; there are a number of signs upon it resembling the
ancient Koppa—like that stamped upon Corinthian coins.[133]
At a
depth of 5 meters (16Ľ feet), I found to-day a very pretty jar with
three feet, which is evidently intended to represent a woman, probably
the Ilian Athena, for it has two breasts and a navel.
Fig.78: A Trojan Terra-cotta Seal (8m depth).
The
snakes seem to have been enticed out of their winter quarters by the
warm weather which has set in; for it is ten days since I have seen any.
Amid
all the fatigues and troubles of the excavations there is this among
other pleasures, that time never hangs heavy on one’s hands.
Fig.78b: Terra-cottas with Aryan Emblems (left: 4 m depth; center: 3 m; right: 5m).
Footnotes:
[127] Iliad, XX. 216-218:—
Κτίσσε δὲ Δαρδανίην· ἐπεὶ οὔπω Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
Ἐν πεδίῳ πεπόλιστο, πόλις μερόπων ἀνθρώπων,
Ἀλλ’ ἔθ’ ὑπωρείας ᾤκεον πολυπίδακος Ἴδης.
“By Dardanus, of cloud-compelling Jove
Begotten, was Dardania peopled first,
Ere sacred Ilion, populous city of men,
Was founded on the plain; as yet they dwelt
On spring-abounding Ida’s lowest spurs.”
[128] See Plate XXII., No. 327.
[129] Essays, II. 324.
[130] Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 59.
[131] See, for example, Iliad, XI. 633-635, Odyssey, XV. 116, 446.
[132]
Dr. Schliemann found afterwards that these fragments did not belong to
double cups. (See Chap. XXII., p. 313, and ‘Introduction,’ p. 15.)
[133]
As the device on a seal may be presumed to be significant, and as
patterns strikingly similar to this occur on some of the whorls (e.g.
on Plate XLIV., No. 461), we have a strong argument for the
significance of the latter class of devices.—[Ed.]
[Continue to Chapter 9]
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