Chapter VIII: Introduction: Contents (1)

Form of the Work--Changing and progressive opinions due to the
Novelty of the Discoveries--Chronology--Duration of the GREEK
ILIUM--Four successive strata of remains beneath its ruins on the
hill of _Hissarlik_--Remains of the _Earliest Settlers_, who were
of the Aryan race--Symbols on their terra-cottas--The _Second
Settlers_, the Trojans of Homer--The Tower of Ilium, Scæan Gate,
and City Walls, covered with the ashes of a
conflagration--Skeletons denoting a bloody war--The Royal
Treasure--Small extent of Troy: not beyond the hill of
Hissarlik--Poetical exaggerations of Homer, who only knew it by
tradition--The city was wealthy and powerful, though small--Stone
weapons and implements, _not_ denoting the “Stone
Age"--Contemporaneous use of copper, silver, and gold, for tools,
weapons, vases, and ornaments--Inscriptions proving the use of a
written language--Splendid remains of pottery--Symbols proving that
the Trojans were an Aryan race--Their buildings of stone and
wood--Antiquity of the City--The _Third Settlers_, also of the
Aryan race--Their pottery coarser--Musical instruments--Their mode
of building--Fewer implements of copper, but those of stone
abundant--The _Fourth Settlers_, of the Aryan race, built the
_Wooden Ilium_--Their progressive decline in civilization--Some
copper implements, with tools and weapons of stone--The _Greek
Ilium_ built about B.C. 700: ceased to exist in the fourth century
after Christ--Evidence of Coins--No Byzantine remains--The Walls of
Lysimachus--Metals found in the various strata: copper and bronze,
silver, gold, lead: no iron or tin--Sculptures of the Greek
age--Metopé of the Sun-God--Images of the owl-faced Athena common
to all the pre-Hellenic strata: their various forms--The perforated
whorls of terra-cotta, with Aryan symbols--The sign of the
_Suastika_ 卐--The plain whorls--Discussion of the site of
Troy--Traditionally placed on that of the Greek Ilium--View of
Demetrius and Strabo refuted--Opinion of Lechevalier for
Bunarbashi, generally accepted, but erroneous--No remains of a
great city there--The site really that of Gergis--Fragments of
Hellenic pottery only--The three so-called tombs of heroes also
Greek--Proposed sites at Chiplak and Akshi-Koï refuted by the
absence of remains--Modern authorities in favour of
Hissarlik--Ancient types of pottery still made in the Troad--Covers
with owl-faces, and vases with uplifted wings--Colouring materials
of the pottery--The inscriptions--The author’s relations with the
Turkish Government--Professor Max Müller on the owl-headed
goddess--Some probable traces of another settlement between the
fourth pre-Hellenic people and the Greek colonists.

The present book is a sort of Diary of my excavations at Troy, for all the memoirs of which it consists were, as the vividness of the descriptions will prove, written down by me on the spot while proceeding with my works.[32]

If my memoirs now and then contain contradictions, I hope that these may be pardoned when it is considered that I have here revealed a new world for archæology, that the objects which I have brought to light by thousands are of a kind hitherto never or but very rarely found, and that consequently everything appeared strange and mysterious to me. Hence I frequently ventured upon conjectures which I was obliged to give up on mature consideration, till I at last acquired a thorough insight, and could draw well-founded conclusions from many actual proofs.

One of my greatest difficulties has been to make the enormous accumulation of _débris_ at Troy agree with chronology; and in this--in spite of long-searching and pondering--I have only partially succeeded. According to Herodotus (VII. 43): “Xerxes in his march through the Troad, before invading Greece (B.C. 480) arrived at the Scamander and went up to Priam’s Pergamus, as he wished to see that citadel; and, after having seen it, and inquired into its past fortunes, he sacrificed 1000 oxen to the Ilian Athena, and the Magi poured libations to the manes of the heroes.”

This passage tacitly implies that at that time a Greek colony had long since held possession of the town, and, according to Strabo’s testimony (XIII. i. 42), such a colony built Ilium during the dominion of the Lydians. Now, as the commencement of the Lydian dominion dates from the year 797 B.C., and as the Ilians seem to have been completely established there long before the arrival of Xerxes in 480 B.C., we may fairly assume that their first settlement in Troy took place about 700 B.C. The house-walls of Hellenic architecture, consisting of large stones without cement, as well as the remains of Greek household utensils, do not, however, extend in any case to a depth of more than two meters (6½ feet) in the excavations on the flat surface of the hill.

As I find in Ilium no inscriptions later than those belonging to the second century after Christ, and no coins of a later date than Constans II. and Constantine II., but very many belonging to these two emperors, as well as to Constantine the Great, it may be regarded as certain that the town began to decay even before the time of Constantine the Great, who, as is well known, at first intended to build Constantinople on that site; but that it remained an inhabited place till about the end of the reign of Constans II., that is till about A.D. 361. But the accumulation of _débris_ during this long period of 1061 years amounts only to two meters or 6½ feet, whereas we have still to dig to a depth of 12 meters or 40 feet, and in many places even to 14 meters or 46½ feet, below this, before reaching the native ground which consists of shelly limestone (_Muschelkalk_). This immense layer of _débris_ from 40 to 46½ feet thick, which has been left by the four different nations that successively inhabited the hill _before_ the arrival of the Greek colony, that is before 700 B.C., is an immensely rich _cornucopia_ of the most remarkable terra-cottas, such as have never been seen before, and of other objects which have not the most distant resemblance to the productions of Hellenic art. The question now forces itself upon us:--Whether this enormous mass of ruins may not have been brought from another place to increase the height of the hill? Such an hypothesis, as every visitor to my excavations may convince himself at the first glance, is perfectly impossible; because in all the strata of _débris_, from the native rock, at a depth of from 14 to 16 meters (46 to 52½ feet) up to 4 meters (13 feet) below the surface, we continually see remains of masonry, which rest upon strong foundations, and are the ruins of real houses; and, moreover, because all the numerous large wine, water, and funereal urns that are met with are found in an upright position. The next question is:--But how many centuries have been required to form a layer of _débris_, 40 and even 46½ feet thick, from the ruins of pre-Hellenic houses, if the formation of the uppermost one, the Greek layer of 6½ feet thick, required 1061 years? During my three years’ excavations in the depths of Troy, I have had daily and hourly opportunities of convincing myself that, from the standard of our own or of the ancient Greek mode of life, we can form no idea of the life and doings of the four nations which successively inhabited this hill before the time of the Greek settlement. They must have had a terrible time of it, otherwise we should not find the walls of one house upon the ruined remains of another, in continuous but _irregular_ succession; and it is just because we can form no idea of the way in which these nations lived and what calamities they had to endure, that it is impossible to calculate the duration of their existence, even approximately, from the thickness of their ruins. It is extremely remarkable, but perfectly intelligible from the continual calamities which befel the town, that the civilization of all the four nations constantly declined; the terra-cottas, which show continuous _décadence_, leave no doubt of this.

The first settlement on this hill of _Hissarlik_ seems, however, to have been of the longest duration, for its ruins cover the rock to a height of from 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 feet). Its houses and walls of fortification were built of stones, large and small, joined with earth, and manifold remains of these may be seen in my excavations. I thought last year that these settlers were identical with the Trojans of whom Homer sings, because I imagined that I had found among their ruins fragments of the double cup, the Homeric “δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον.” From closer examination, however, it has become evident that these fragments were the remains of simple cups with a hollow stem, which can never have been used as a second cup. Moreover, I believe that in my memoirs of this year (1873) I have sufficiently proved that Aristotle (_Hist. Anim._, IX. 40) is wrong in assigning to the Homeric “δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον” the form of a bee’s cell, whence this cup has ever since been erroneously interpreted as a double cup, and that it can mean nothing but a cup with a handle on either side. Cups of such a form are _never_ met with in the _débris_ of the first settlement of this hill; but they frequently occur, and in great quantities, among those of the succeeding people, and also among those of the two later nations which preceded the Greek colony on the spot. The large golden cup with two handles, weighing 600 grammes (a pound and a half), which I found in the royal treasure at the depth of 28 feet in the _débris_ of the second people, leaves no doubt of this fact.[33]

Fragment of _painted_ pottery from the lowest stratum (16 M.).]

The terra-cottas which I found on the native rock, at a depth of 14 meters (46 feet), are all of a more excellent quality than any met with in the upper strata. They are of a brilliant black, red, or brown colour, ornamented with patterns cut and filled with a white substance; the flat cups have horizontal rings on two sides, the vases have generally two perpendicular rings on each side for hanging them up with cords. Of painted terra-cottas I found only one fragment.[34]

All that can be said of the first settlers is that they belonged to the Aryan race, as is sufficiently proved by the Aryan religious symbols met with in the strata of their ruins (among which we find the _Suastika_ 卐), both upon the pieces of pottery and upon the small curious terra-cottas with a hole in the centre, which have the form of the crater of a volcano or of a _carrousel_ (_i.e._ a top).[35]

The excavations made this year (1873) have sufficiently proved that the second nation which built a town on this hill, upon the _débris_ of the first settlers (which is from 13 to 20 feet deep), are the Trojans of whom Homer sings. Their _débris_ lies from 7 to 10 meters, or 23 to 33 feet, below the surface. This Trojan stratum, which, without exception, bears marks of great heat, consists mainly of red ashes of wood, which rise from 5 to 10 feet above the Great Tower of Ilium, the double Scæan Gate, and the great enclosing Wall, the construction of which Homer ascribes to Poseidon and Apollo; and they show that the town was destroyed by a fearful conflagration. How great the heat must have been is clear also from the large slabs of stone upon the road leading from the double Scæan Gate down to the Plain: for when I laid this road open a few months ago, all the slabs appeared as uninjured as if they had been put down quite recently; but after they had been exposed to the air for a few days, the slabs of the upper part of the road, to the extent of some 10 feet, which had been exposed to the heat, began to crumble away, and they have now almost disappeared, while those of the lower portion of the road, which had not been touched by the fire, have remained uninjured, and seem to be indestructible. A further proof of the terrible catastrophe is furnished by a stratum of scoriæ of melted lead and copper, from 1/5 to 1-1/5 of an inch thick, which extends nearly through the whole hill at a depth of from 28 to 29½ feet. That Troy was destroyed by enemies after a bloody war is further attested by the many human bones which I found in these heaps of _débris_, and above all by the skeletons with helmets, found in the depths of the temple of Athena;[36] for, as we know from Homer, all corpses were burnt and the ashes were preserved in urns. Of such urns I have found an immense number in all the pre-Hellenic strata on the hill. Lastly, the Treasure, which some member of the royal family had probably endeavoured to save during the destruction of the city, but was forced to abandon, leaves no doubt that the city was destroyed by the hands of enemies. I found this Treasure on the large enclosing wall by the side of the royal palace, at a depth of 27½ feet, and covered with red Trojan ashes from 5 to 6½ feet in depth, above which was a post-Trojan wall of fortification 19½ feet high.

Trusting to the data of the Iliad, the exactness of which I used to believe in as in the Gospel itself, I imagined that _Hissarlik_, the hill which I have ransacked for three years, was the Pergamus of the city, that Troy must have had 50,000 inhabitants, and that its area must have extended over the whole space occupied by the Greek colony of Ilium.[37]

Notwithstanding this, I was determined to investigate the matter accurately, and I thought that I could not do so in any better way than by making borings. I accordingly began cautiously to dig at the extreme ends of the Greek Ilium; but these borings down to the native rock brought to light only walls of houses, and fragments of pottery belonging to the Greek period,--not a trace of the remains of the preceding occupants. In making these borings, therefore, I gradually came nearer to the fancied Pergamus, but without any better success; till at last as many as seven shafts, which I dug at the very foot of the hill down to the rock, produced only Greek masonry and fragments of Greek pottery. I now therefore assert most positively that Troy was limited to the small surface of this hill; that its area is accurately marked by its great surrounding wall, laid open by me in many places; that the city had no Acropolis, and that the Pergamus is a pure invention of Homer; and further that the area of Troy in post-Trojan times down to the Greek settlement was only increased so far as the hill was enlarged by the _débris_ that was thrown down, but that the Ilium of the Greek colony had a much larger extent at the time of its foundation.[38]

Though, however, we find on the one hand that we have been deceived in regard to the size of Troy, yet on the other we must feel great satisfaction in the certainty, now at length ascertained, that Troy really existed, that the greater portion of this Troy has been brought to light by me, and that the Iliad--although on an exaggerated scale--sings of this city and of the fact of its tragic end. Homer, however, is no historian, but an epic poet, and hence we must excuse his exaggerations.

As Homer is so well informed about the topography and the climatic conditions of the Troad, there can surely be no doubt that he had himself visited Troy. But, as he was there long after its destruction, and its site had moreover been buried deep in the _débris_ of the ruined town, and had for centuries been built over by a new town, Homer could neither have seen the Great Tower of Ilium nor the Scæan Gate, nor the great enclosing Wall, nor the palace of Priam; for, as every visitor to the Troad may convince himself by my excavations, the ruins and red ashes of Troy alone--forming a layer of from five to ten feet thick--covered all these remains of immortal fame; and this accumulation of _débris_ must have been much more considerable at the time of Homer’s visit. Homer made no excavations so as to bring those remains to light, but he knew of them from tradition; for the tragic fate of Troy had for centuries been in the mouths of all minstrels, and the interest attached to it was so great that, as my excavations have proved, tradition itself gave the exact truth in many details. Such, for instance, is the memory of the Scæan Gate in the Great Tower of Ilium, and the constant use of the name Scæan Gate in the plural, because it had to be described as double,[39] and in fact it has been proved to be a double gate. According to the lines in the Iliad (XX. 307, 308), it now seems to me extremely probable that, at the time of Homer’s visit, the King of Troy declared that his race was descended in a direct line from Æneas.[40]

Now as Homer never saw Ilium’s Great Tower, nor the Scæan Gate, and could not imagine that these buildings lay buried deep beneath his feet, and as he probably imagined Troy to have been very large--according to the then existing poetical legends--and perhaps wished to describe it as still larger, we cannot be surprised that he makes Hector descend from the palace in the Pergamus and hurry through the town in order to arrive at the Scæan Gate; whereas that gate and Ilium’s Great Tower, in which it stands, are in reality directly in front of the royal house. That this house is really the king’s palace seems evident from its size, from the thickness of its stone walls, in contrast to those of the other houses of the town, which are built almost exclusively of unburnt bricks, and from its imposing situation upon an artificial hill directly in front of or beside the Scæan Gate, the Great Tower, and the great surrounding Wall. This is confirmed by the many splendid objects found in its ruins, especially the enormous royally ornamented vase with the picture of the owl-headed goddess Athena, the tutelary divinity of Ilium (see No. 219, p. 307); and lastly, above all other things, by the rich Treasure found close by it (Plate II.). I cannot, of course, prove that the name of this king, the owner of this treasure, was really PRIAM; but I give him this name because he is so called by Homer and in all the traditions. All that I can prove is, that the palace of the owner of this treasure, this last Trojan king, perished in the great catastrophe, which destroyed the Scæan Gate, the great surrounding Wall, and the Great Tower, and which desolated the whole city. I can prove, by the enormous quantities of red and yellow calcined Trojan ruins, from five to ten feet in height, which covered and enveloped these edifices, and by the many post-Trojan buildings, which were again erected upon these calcined heaps of ruins, that neither the palace of the owner of the Treasure, nor the Scæan Gate, nor the great surrounding Wall, nor Ilium’s Great Tower, were ever again brought to light. A city, whose king possessed such a treasure, was immensely wealthy, considering the circumstances of those times; and because Troy was rich, it was powerful, had many subjects, and obtained auxiliaries from all quarters.

Troy had therefore no separate Acropolis; but as one was necessary for the great deeds of the Iliad, it was added by the poetical invention of Homer, and called by him Pergamus, a word of quite unknown derivation.

Last year I ascribed the building of the Great Tower of Ilium to the first occupants of the hill; but I have long since come to the firm conviction that it is the work of the second people, the Trojans, because it is upon the north side only, within the Trojan stratum of ruins, and from 16 to 19½ feet above the native soil, that it is made of actual masonry. I have, in my letters, repeatedly drawn attention to the fact, that the terra-cottas which I found upon the Tower can only be compared with those found at a depth of from 36 to 46 feet. This, however, applies only to the beauty of the clay and the elegance of the vessels, but in no way to their types, which, as the reader may convince himself from the illustrations to this work, are utterly different from the pottery of the first settlers.

It has been hitherto thought that the occurrence of stone implements indicates the “Age of Stone.” My excavations here in Troy, however, prove this opinion to be completely erroneous; for I very frequently find implements of stone even immediately below the _débris_ belonging to the Greek colony, that is at a depth of 6½ feet, and they occur in very great quantities from a depth of 13 feet downwards. Those, however, in the Trojan _stratum_, from 23 to 33 feet below the surface, are in general of much better workmanship than those above. I wish to draw attention to the fact that unfortunately, when writing the present book, I made the mistake, which is now inconceivable to me, of applying the name of _wedges_ to those splendidly-cut weapons and implements, the greater part of which are made of diorite, but frequently also of very hard and transparent green stone, such as are given here and in several later illustrations. They are, however, as anyone can convince himself, not wedges but axes, and the majority of them must have been used as battle-axes. Many, to judge from their form, seem to be excellently fitted to be employed as lances, and may have been used as such. I have collected many hundreds of them. But, together with the thousands of stone implements, I found also many of copper; and the frequently discovered moulds of mica-schist for casting copper weapons and implements, as well as the many small crucibles, and small roughly made bowls, spoons, and funnels for filling the moulds, prove that this metal was much used. The strata of copper and lead scoriæ, met with at a depth of from 28 to 29½ feet, leave no doubt that this was the case. It must be observed that all the copper articles met with are of pure copper, without the admixture of any other metal.[41] Even the king’s Treasure contained, besides other articles made of this metal, a shield with a large boss in the centre; a great caldron; a kettle or vase; a long slab with a silver vase welded on to it by the conflagration; and many fragments of other vases.[42]

GENERAL VIEW OF THE TREASURE OF PRIAM. (Depth 8½ M.)

_a._ Key of the Treasure Chest.
_b._ The Golden Diadems, Fillet, Ear-rings, and Small Jewels.
_c._ Silver “Talents” and Vessels of Silver and Gold.
_d._ Silver Vases and curious Plate of Copper.
_e._ Weapons and Helmet-Crests of Copper or Bronze.
_f._ Copper Vessel.
_g._ Copper Caldron.
_h._ Copper Shield.
]

This Treasure of the supposed mythical king Priam, of the mythical heroic age, which I discovered at a great depth in the ruins of the supposed mythical Troy, is at all events a discovery which stands alone in archæology, revealing great wealth, great civilization and a great taste for art, in an age preceding the discovery of bronze, when weapons and implements of pure copper were employed contemporaneously with enormous quantities of stone weapons and implements. This treasure further leaves no doubt that Homer must have actually seen gold and silver articles, such as he continually describes; it is, in every respect, of inestimable value to science, and will for centuries remain the object of careful investigation.

Unfortunately upon none of the articles of the Treasure do I find an inscription, or any other religious symbols, except the 100 idols of the Homeric “θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,” which glitter upon the two diadems and the four ear-rings. These are, however, an irrefragable proof that the Treasure belongs to the city and to the age of which Homer sings.

(_b_). The Inscription thereon.]

Yet a written language was not wanting at that time. For instance, I found at a depth of 26 feet, in the royal palace, the vase with an inscription, of which a drawing is here given; and I wish to call especial attention to the fact, that of the characters occurring in it, the letter like the Greek P occurs also in the inscription on a seal, found at the depth of 23 feet; the second and third letter to the left of this upon a whorl of terra-cotta,[43] likewise found at a depth of 23 feet; and the third letter also upon two small funnels of terra-cotta, from a depth of 10 feet (see p. 191). I further found in the royal palace the excellent engraved inscription on a piece of red slate; but I see here only one character resembling one of the letters of the inscription on the above-mentioned seal. My friend the great Indian scholar, Émile Burnouf, conjectures that all these characters belong to a very ancient Græco-Asiatic local alphabet. Professor H. Brunn, of Munich, writes to me that he has shown these inscriptions to Professor Haug, and that he has pointed out their relationship and connection with the Phœnician alphabet (from which the Greek alphabet is however derived), and has found certain analogies between them and the inscription on the bronze table which was found at Idalium in Cyprus, and is now in the _Cabinet des Médailles_ in Paris. Professor Brunn adds that the connection of things found at Troy with those found in Cyprus is in no way surprising, but may be very well reconciled with Homer, and that at all events particular attention should be paid to this connection, for, in his opinion, Cyprus is the cradle of Greek art, or, so to speak, the caldron in which Asiatic, Egyptian, and Greek ingredients were brewed together, and out of which, at a later period, Greek art came forth as the clear product.

I find in these Trojan layers of _débris_ an abundance of splendid pottery, and more especially large and small cups with two handles, or with one from below in the form of a crown;[44] vases with rings on the sides and with holes in the same direction in the lip, for hanging them up by cords; all kinds of domestic utensils; also a beautifully ornamented flute made of bone, several pieces of other flutes, and a splendidly ornamented piece of ivory, which is part of a lyre _with only four strings_.

Like the first settlers on this sacred spot, the Trojans also were of the Aryan race; for I find among their remains enormous quantities of the small articles of terra-cotta in the form of volcanoes and tops (_carrousels_), with carvings of Aryan religious symbols.

The building materials of the Trojans are of various kinds. With but few exceptions, all the house-walls which I have uncovered are composed of unburnt sun-dried bricks, which in the heat of the conflagration have become a kind of really burnt bricks. But the royal palace and two small buildings in the depths of the temple of Athena, as well as the Great Tower of Ilium, the Scæan Gate, and the great enclosing Wall, are generally composed of unhewn stones joined with earth, the less rough face of the stones being turned to the outside, so that the walls have a tolerably smooth appearance.

I thought last year, upon uncovering the Great Tower of Ilium, that it must have been at one time higher than it now is, namely 6 meters or 20 feet; but its flat-built top beside the Scæan Gate, and the _benches_ (not ruins, as I formerly thought) afterwards found upon it, prove that it can never have been higher.[45] I would draw especial attention to the fact, that the masonry of the Scæan Gate, upon being uncovered, looked as wonderfully fresh as if it had been erected quite recently. It is quite certain that it possessed strong wooden fortifications, and probably also a wooden tower above the gateway; for otherwise it is inexplicable to me how the entrance of the Gate can have been covered to the height of 10 feet by those red Trojan wood-ashes, and especially how it was that there, far from the other buildings, the heat should have been so great that even the thick slabs of stone have been destroyed by it.

Homer speaks of Troy as having been destroyed by Hercules previous to the Trojan war,[46] and it will ever remain an enigma to us whether this information, which had been preserved by traditions down to his time, really refers to the Ilium of Priam, or to the very ancient town of the first settlers.

As to the chronology of Troy, we have only the general supposition of antiquity that the Trojan War occurred about B.C. 1200, and Homer’s statement (_Iliad_, XX. 215-237) that Dardanus, the first Trojan King, founded Dardania, which town I agree with Virgil and Euripides in considering identical with Ilium, and that after him it was governed by his son Erichthonius, and then by his grandson Tros, by his great-grandson Ilus, and then by his son Laomedon, and by his grandson Priam. Even if we allow every one of these six kings a long reign of 33 years, we nevertheless scarcely carry the foundation of the town beyond 1400 B.C., that is 700 years before the Greek colony.

The site of Troy, which at the time of its foundation was 10 meters (about 33 feet) below the present surface, was only 7 meters (23 feet) below it after its destruction, when Ilium was again rebuilt by another people of Aryan origin; for, in the _débris_ of this people, which extends to a depth of from 7 to 4 meters (23 to 13 feet) below the present surface, I find the same objects of terra-cotta with religious symbols.

On the photographic plates of the Atlas I have carefully stated the depth at which every object was found, so that it is very easy to find out which of them belong to this people.[47] Their pottery resembles that of the Trojans, but it is worse and coarser, and we meet with many new types. Almost all their vases have a tube on either side for hanging them up by cords. I here found, at a depth of 16½ feet, part of a lyre made of stone, with six strings; and at a depth of 13 feet the beautifully ornamented ivory piece of another lyre, with seven strings, here shown.

The architecture of this people, as may be seen from the many house-walls which I have uncovered, was always of small stones joined with earth. Yet in two places in the depths of the temple of Athena there is a wall of sun-dried bricks, which appears to belong to this nation. Their houses were smaller, and less wood was employed in their construction than in those of the Trojans; for, although the ruins of houses lying one upon another show that several great convulsions have taken place, still we find here far fewer charred ruins than among those of the preceding people; nay, these layers of _débris_ have in the majority of cases a grey or black appearance, and they contain millions of small mussel-shells, bones, fish-bones, and so forth. It is curious that in these strata certain types of terra-cottas are only found exactly at the same depth, and that, for instance, the splendid _black_ cups in the form of an hourglass, and with two large handles, are confined to a depth of 6 meters (nearly 20 feet).

During the first two years of my excavations, at the depth of from 4 to 7 meters (13 to 23 feet), I found scarcely any copper, and consequently I believed that the metal was but rarely, if at all, known to this people. This year, however, I found a number of copper nails in this stratum, as well as some knives and battle-axes, together with moulds of mica-schist for casting them, besides other weapons and implements.[48] Yet copper must have been rare with them; for stone implements, such as knives of silex, hammers and axes of diorite, and so forth, are found by thousands.

This people also seem to have disappeared simultaneously with the destruction of their town; for not only do I find, at a depth of from 4 meters up to 2 meters (13 to 6½ feet), many new types of terra-cotta vessels, but I no longer find any remains of house-walls; nay, even single stones are scarcely ever met with. At all events, directly after its destruction, the town was rebuilt of wood by another tribe of the Aryan race; for the small terra-cottas, adorned with Aryan religious symbols, although frequently of new types, occur in numbers in these layers of _débris_. Walls of fortification are indeed met with in these depths, but they had been built by the preceding people; as, for instance, the wall 19½ feet in height, whose base is at a depth of 5 to 6½ feet above the treasure, and which reached to within 1¼ ft. of the surface. This _wooden Ilium_ was, to all appearance, still less fortunate than the stone town of its predecessors; for, as is proved by the numerous calcined layers of _débris_, it was frequently desolated by fire. Whether these fires broke out accidentally, or were kindled by the hands of enemies, must for ever remain a riddle to us; but thus much is certain and evident from the terra-cottas found at these depths, that the civilization of the people, which had been but slight from the beginning, continued to decrease during the perpetual misfortunes of their town. I find, among the ruins of this nation, lances, battle-axes, and implements, of pure copper, and moulds for casting them; likewise a number of copper nails, which, however--as in the case of the preceding peoples who have inhabited this hill--are too long and thin to have been employed for fastening wood together, and must in all probability have been used as brooches: this seems to be proved by two nails of this kind on the top of which I found rows of perforated beads of gold or _electrum_ soldered upon them. These two copper nails were, it is true, found immediately below the surface, but they must in any case belong to the pre-Hellenic time.

In the ruins of this people, at a depth of from 13 to 6½ feet, we also meet with stone implements, such as hammers, splendidly polished axes and battle-axes of diorite, but considerably fewer than in the preceding stratum.

When the surface of the hill was about 2 meters (6½ feet) lower than it is now, Ilium was built by a Greek colony; and we have already endeavoured to prove that this settlement must have been founded about the year 700 B.C. From that time we find the remains of Hellenic house-walls of large hewn stones joined without cement. From about 1 meter (3¼ feet) below the surface, and upwards, there are also ruins of buildings, the stones of which are joined with cement or lime. We also meet with great numbers of copper coins of Ilium of the time of the Roman empire, from Augustus to Constans II. and Constantine II.; likewise older Ilian coins with the image of Athena, and medals of Alexandria Troas; also with some coins of Tenedos, Ophrynium and Sigeum, in some few cases at 3¼ feet, but generally at less than 20 inches below the surface. I once remarked erroneously that Byzantine coins were also met with here near the surface. But in my three years’ excavations I have not found a single medal of a later date than Constans II. and Constantine II., except two bad coins belonging to a Byzantine monastery, which may have been lost by shepherds; and, as there is here not the remotest trace of Byzantine masonry or of Byzantine pottery, it may be regarded as certain that the Ilium of the Greek colony was destroyed towards the middle of the fourth century after Christ, and that no village, much less a town, has ever again been built upon its site. The wall I mentioned in my memoir of the 1st of March, 1873,[49] as consisting of Corinthian pillars joined with cement, and which I believed to have belonged to the Middle Ages, must be referred to the time of Constantine I. or to Constans II., when the temple of Athena was destroyed by the pious zeal of the first Christians.

Of the walls and fortifications of the Greek colony, almost the only portions that have been preserved are those which were apparently built by Lysimachus. The lower and prominent portion of the wall of the Tower belongs to more ancient times, probably to the beginning of the Greek colony. Of great political convulsions or catastrophes there seem now to have been but few or none at all; for the accumulation of _débris_ during the long duration of the Greek colony, about 10½ centuries, amounts only to 2 meters (6½ feet).

Curiously enough, I find extremely little metal in the _débris_ of the Greek colony. Half-a-dozen scythe-shaped knives, a double-edged axe, about two dozen nails, a cup, a few lances and arrows, are pretty nearly all that I discovered. I have described these objects in my memoirs as made of copper; but upon a more careful examination they have been found to be bronze, and pure copper is no longer met with in the Greek colony. The only objects of iron which I found were a key of curious shape, and a few arrows and nails, close to the surface. From Homer we know that the Trojans also possessed iron, as well as the metal which he calls κύανος, and which, even in antiquity, was translated by χάλυψ (steel). I am sure, however, that I have not discovered even a trace of this metal, either among the Trojan ruins or among those of any of the other nations which preceded the Greek colony on the hill.[50] Yet articles of iron and steel may have existed: I believe positively that they did exist: but they have vanished without leaving a trace of their existence; for, as we know, iron and steel become decomposed much more readily than copper. Of tin, which Homer so repeatedly mentions, I found of course no trace: this metal, as we know, is corroded very rapidly even when lying in a dry locality. Lead is found in the ruins of all the different nations which have inhabited the hill; but, among those which preceded the Greek settlement, it is found principally in lumps of a hemispherical form. I find it first in general use only in the Greek colony, where it was employed as a means for uniting stones in building.

PLATE III.

BLOCK OF TRIGLYPHS, WITH METOPÉ OF THE SUN-GOD.

_Page 32._

From the Temple of Apollo in the Ruins of Greek Ilium.]

To judge from the area of the Ilium of the Greek colony,[51] it may have possessed 100,000 inhabitants. It must in its best days have been very rich, and the plastic art must have attained a high degree of perfection here. Accordingly the site of the town, which is covered with abundant relics of grand buildings, is strewn with fragments of excellent sculptures, and the splendid block of triglyphs--6½ feet in length and 2 feet 10 inches in height, with a _metopé_ which represents Phœbus Apollo with the four horses of the Sun--is one of the most glorious masterpieces that have been preserved from the time when Greek art was in its zenith. I discovered it in the depths of the temple of Apollo, and it now adorns my garden at Athens. In describing this treasure of art in my memoir of the 18th of June, 1872,[52] directly after having discovered it, I made the remark that it must have belonged to the time of Lysimachus, that is to say to about the year 306 B.C. I sent a plaster cast of it to the Museum of Casts in Munich, and the Director of the Museum, Professor H. Brunn, who is certainly one of the greatest authorities in the world respecting the plastic works of antiquity, wrote me the following communication with regard to it. “Even photographs furnish no adequate means of judging of plastic works, and, in the present case, the cast alone has quite convinced me that this work must be judged much more favourably than it has been in the ‘Archäologische Zeitung.’ I do not venture to speak decidedly about the triglyphs: the history of the Doric style after the time of the Parthenon and the Propylæa is still utterly obscure: yet the straight cutting of the channellings can certainly be referred to pre-Roman times. Of external criteria the halo of rays is the only one. According to the investigations of Stephani,[53] this first occurs about the time of Alexander the Great. For the special form of long and short rays, we have the coins of Alexander I., of Epirus and of Ceos (Carthæa), mentioned by Curtius. The most recent example that I have as yet found is the Hades vase of Canosa, in our Museum, which belongs _at latest_ to the second century before Christ; hence the extreme termini for the relief would be about the end of the fourth and the middle of the second centuries. The composition, as a work of art, shows the greatest skill in solving one of the most difficult problems. For the team of four horses ought _not_ to move on the surface of the relief, but to appear as if it came out of it in a half-turn. This has been attained principally by making the right hinder thigh of the horse in the foreground pressed back while the left foot steps forward, and moreover this same horse is slightly foreshortened, and the surface of the thigh lies deeper than the upper surface of the triglyphs, while, on the other hand, the surfaces of the withers and of the neck are higher, and the head, in conformity with the rules of Greek reliefs, is again almost parallel with the base. For this reason there is no indication of a chariot, which has to be imagined as concealed by the foremost horse. Moreover the position of the god is half turned forwards, slightly following that of the head, and here also the arm is again strongly turned inwards, but not so as to bring the position in conflict with the rules of relief. If the encroachment of the head on the upper border of the triglyph is considered inaccurate, I find in this a very happy thought, which may remind us of the differently conceived pediment of the Parthenon, where only the head and shoulders of Helios rise out of the chariot still under the ocean. Helios here, so to speak, bursts forth from the gates of day and sheds the light of his glory over all. These are beauties peculiar only to Greek art in the fulness of its power. The execution corresponds perfectly with the excellence of the ideas, and thus I do not hesitate to place the relief nearer to the commencement than to the end of the above limited space of time. If, therefore, for other reasons, you believe it to belong to the time of Lysimachus, I, from an archæological point of view, have no objection to make against the supposition, but I rejoice to see our treasure of monuments enriched by an original from those times.”

No. 10.--From 3 M.

No. 11.--From 2 M.

No. 12.--From 7 M. Interesting for _depth_ and _form_. ]

I have already proved the relationship of the four different peoples, who inhabited the site of Troy before the arrival of the Greek colony, by the small terra-cottas in the form of volcanoes and tops which are met with in quantities in all of the strata, and by the similarity of the Aryan religious symbols engraved upon them. I prove this relationship further, and above all, by the plastic representations of Athena, the owl-faced tutelary goddess of Ilium, for this representation is common to all the four nations which preceded the Greek colony. Immediately below the strata of the last, at a depth of 2 meters (6½ feet), I found this owl’s face upon terra-cotta cups with a kind of helmet, which likewise occur in all the succeeding layers of _débris_ to a depth of 12 meters (39½ feet), and are of very frequent occurrence down to a depth of 9 meters (29½ feet). These cups may, as my learned friend Émile Burnouf thinks, have served only as lids to the vases which occur contemporaneously with them, and which have two up-raised wings, and the breasts and abdomen of a woman, for they fit these vases perfectly. I found likewise in all the layers of _débris_, from a depth of 3 meters (nearly 10 feet) down to a depth of 10 meters (33 feet), vases with owls’ faces, two upraised wings (not arms, as I formerly thought), and the two large breasts and abdomen of a woman, and even, at a depth of 6 meters (nearly 20 feet), a vase upon which the navel is ornamented with a cross and four nails. As far down as a depth of 14 meters (46 feet) I found the upper portion of a vase and the fragment of a dish adorned with owls’ faces. Besides these, in all the layers of _débris_, from a depth of 6½ feet downwards, as far as the primary soil, there were found idols of very fine marble, of bone, of mica-schist, of slate, and even of ordinary limestone, which are from ¼ of an inch to 7¼ inches in length, and from 0·6 of an inch to 4·8 inches in breadth. Upon a great many of these there is an owl’s face, and some have even long female hair engraved upon them; many also have a woman’s girdle. As upon several of the idols, upon which I find the owl’s head, it is not cut, but represented in a red or black colour, I presume that this was once the case with all the idols which now possess no indications of an owl, and that the colour upon these latter has been destroyed by damp, during the course of thousands of years. Upon several idols of marble and bone there are mere indications of wings on the sides. But I also find the petrified vertebra of an antediluvian animal upon which the Trojans have carved a large owl’s head. Further, at a depth of 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 14 meters (10, 13, 20, 23, 26, 30 and 46 feet), I found twelve idols of terra-cotta, and all, with only one exception, have owls’ faces upon them; most of them also have the two breasts of a woman, and upon the back traces of long female hair. One of these owl-headed idols has the form of a vessel, with a funnel on each side in the shape of a smaller vessel; the front part of the body of the goddess, up to the neck, is covered by a long shield, and on the back of the body there is the long female hair hanging down, like that of the Karyatides in the Acropolis of Athens. Upon several of these terra-cotta idols there are indications of wings.

14. 14 M.
15. 9 M.
16. 8 M.
17. 4 M.
18. 9 M.
19. 14 M.
20. 8 M.
21. 7 M.
22.
23. 6 M.
24. 9 M.
25. 10 M.
26. 10 M.
27. 2 M.
28. 10 M.
29. 5 M.
30.

Nos. 14-30. Rude Idols found in the various Strata (2 to 14 M.).

No. 14 is of Ivory, with the same Decorations on both sides. Nos. 15, 16, 18, 20, 25, 26, 28, are of very fine Marble. No. 17 is of Green Slate. Nos. 23, 24, 27 are of Terra-cotta: and No. 19 is a Piece of a Dish.]

These owl-faced female figures, which occur so frequently upon the cups, vases and idols, can represent but one goddess, and this goddess can be none other than Athena, _the tutelary goddess of Troy_, all the more so as Homer continually calls her “θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη;” for “γλαυκῶπις” has been wrongly translated by the scholars of every century, and does not signify “with bright and sparkling eyes,” but “_with the face of an owl_.” The natural conclusion, in the first place, is that Homer perfectly well knew that the owl-faced Athena was the tutelary goddess of Troy; secondly, that the locality whose depths I have ransacked for three years must be the spot “ubi Troja fuit;” and thirdly, that, in the progress of civilization, Pallas Athena received a human face, and her former owl’s head was transformed into her favourite bird, the owl, which as such is quite unknown to Homer. At a depth of from 4 to 9 meters (13 to 29½ feet), I also found some vases and cups with a human face, but which have a good deal of the owl about them.

As I did not find a trace of the owl’s face among the ruins of the Greek colony, we may regard it as certain that it had already advanced beyond the civilization of the old Ilians of whose town it took possession, and that it brought the idea of the goddess with a human face with it to Troy.

With regard to the often mentioned perforated terra-cottas in the form of a top and the crater of a volcano, adorned with Aryan religious symbols, it is possible that their original form was that of a wheel, for they occur frequently in this shape upon the primary rock at a depth of from 14 to 16 meters (46 to 52½ feet).[54] In the upper layers of _débris_, these objects in the form of wheels are indeed rare, but the representation of the wheel in motion, effected by the incisions being more numerous, still occurs very frequently.[55] In spite of all my searching and pondering, I have not yet succeeded in arriving at an opinion as to what these extremely interesting objects were used for. As has now become evident by the excavation of the temple of Athena, it is only among the pre-Hellenic peoples that they were adorned with Aryan symbols. In the Greek colony these occur but rarely; they are of a different form, and they possess no trace of carved decorations; instead of these, we find the much larger objects of terra-cotta, round, and twice perforated, which occasionally bear the mark of a kind of stamp.[56]

Through the kindness of my friend Professor Giuseppe G. Bianconi in Bologna, I have received the drawings of ten similar round articles of terra-cotta in the form of the top or volcano, which are preserved in the Museum of Modena, and were found in the terramares of that district, in the lake-habitations of the stone age. To my extreme astonishment, I found that six of them possessed the same ornamental carvings which I found upon the articles of the same form here in Troy. Three of them have a circle round the central sun, a triple cross, which, as I have endeavoured minutely to explain in my sixth memoir, was the symbol of the two pieces of wood of our Aryan forefathers for producing the holy fire, and is an emblem of the highest importance. The fourth represents one of these machines for producing fire with five ends, and Indian scholars may possibly find that one of the staves represents the piece of wood called “pramantha,” with which fire was generated by friction, and which the Greeks at a later time transformed into their Prometheus, who, as they imagined, stole fire from heaven. The fifth represents a somewhat different form of the fire producer of our remote ancestors; and the sixth has twelve circles round the central sun. Probably these are the twelve stations of the sun which are so frequently mentioned in the Rigvêda, and which are personified by the twelve Adityas, the sons of Adity (the Indivisible or Infinite Space), and represent the twelve signs of the Zodiac.