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Finding Troy
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Finding Troy
Finding Troy

Seven-year-old Heinrich vowed that he would be the one to find the fabulous city of Troy and unearth all the treasures that lay within it

Until about the 18th century, you didn’t need any qualifications to start excavating a historical site. Anybody could ‘conduct’ excavations: antique collectors or grave robbers, kings or adventurers.

They dug mostly for treasure, destroying valuable evidence of ancient life with their careless ways. When scholars started realising that a systematic study of these sites could help them understand ancient culture, they introduced rules to control excavations and Archaeology was born. The days of the amateur archaeologists were over. But not before some amazing discoveries were made by some very eccentric characters!

One such character was Heinrich Schliemann. Born in 1822 to a priest in a small German town, young Heinrich was fed on a steady diet of Greek fables by his father. His all-time favourite was the story of Troy as told in the poet Homer’s epic tale, the Illiad. It was a tale of adventure and war that stirred Heinrich’s imagination. You know the story of the Trojan Horse? The beautiful Helen kidnapped by Paris and carried away to Troy; her husband seeking to rescue her; the ten-year war between the Greeks and Trojans; the Greeks finally tricking the Trojans with a wooden horse filled with soldiers; the sacking and burning of the great city of Troy. Seven-year-old Heinrich vowed that he would be the one to find the fabulous city of Troy and unearth all the treasures that lay within it.

There were two problems, however. One was that in those days, people believed Homer’s story of Troy was more legend than fact. After all, it had been written over 2,000 years ago and featured a number of gods in starring roles! But Schliemann firmly believed that everything Homer had written had really happened. The second problem was a more practical one. Schliemann was poor. Where was he to find the money for his grand scheme of finding and excavating Troy?

When he turned fourteen, Schliemann was sent to work as a grocer’s assistant. While hauling heavy bags, he hurt his back and thus lost his job. He signed on as a cabin-boy on a ship, only to be ship wrecked almost as soon as the journey began! He was washed up on shore penniless and in rags.

Making his way to Holland, Schliemann started working as an office boy in a trading firm when he made a most unusual discovery: he had a gift for teaching himself languages. In two years, he had mastered six languages.  Schliemann became a trader; then a wildly successful merchant with international business interests. He even managed to make his way to America and meet the President of the United States. Through all this, Schliemann had not forgotten his obsession with Homer’s stories. At the age of forty-six, the self-made millionaire had solved one of his problems: he was now rich enough to give up everything and pursue his real calling – finding Troy. Most people thought he was quite mad and scoffed at his idea that Troy could be a real place.

Schliemann ignored them all and headed to Turkey. There, near a remote village named Bunarbashi, was a hillock that some suggested was the ancient Troy. Schliemann decided to make his own investigations.

Armed with his copy of the Illiad, he tramped round the place and soon concluded that this was not Troy. How did he know this? Simple! He used clues from the book.

Not one to give up so easily, Schliemann continued his search. Soon he came across another hill near a village named Hissarlik where all the clues from Homer did come together….you can imagine how excited he was!

By now, he had a degree in archaeology, had written a book on Troy and even found a Helen of his own (a beautiful young Greek wife called Sophia). In 1870, he set to work digging at Hissarlik with the aid of a hundred workers. Down-down-down they dug; and as they did, the ruins of citadels, dwellings, pot shards, weapons and ornaments literally poured out of the earth!  Schliemann used no archaeological methods and destroyed whatever he thought unimportant. He was looking for was Homer’s Troy and the legendary treasure of King Priam.

In the end, they found not one city, but eleven! They were like layers on a cake; each city was built on the ruins of the previous one with the oldest one at the very bottom. But which layer was Homer’s Troy? Schliemann identified it as Troy II (second from the bottom). Here were the remains of massive walls, a gigantic gate, magnificent art treasures and most importantly, evidence of a huge fire! Seven-year old Heinrich had been right – Homer’s Troy had indeed existed!

But Schliemann’s own fairy tale ending was yet to come. Having proved his point, he decided to end excavations at Hissarlik on June 15, 1873. A day before, he and Sophia were idly strolling about, 28 ft down from the surface.  Suddenly, his eye caught the glint of metal. Sophia quickly announced a holiday for the workers. When they were gone, with the aid of only a knife, Schliemann set to work on the ancient masonry and dug out a huge copper jug filled to the brim with gold! Out of the 3,000-year-old jug tumbled gold and silver pots, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, brooches, coronets… Schliemann put some of the priceless necklaces and rings on Sophia and took a photograph. That photograph remains one of the few records of what he called ‘Priam’s treasure’.
He smuggled it all out of the country to Germany from where it disappeared during the Second World War. Some of it reappeared in Russia years later but many of the pieces had disappeared for good.

Most people would have been content with that once-in-a-lifetime experience. But by the time Schliemann had finished his career, he had made more unbelievable archaeological discoveries guided by Homer, including another huge hoard of gold treasure! Later archaeologists found fault with many of his theories. But they all agreed that he was probably the luckiest archaeologist that lived.

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(Published 05 April 2012, 18:57 IST)