Professor Delitzsch, a member of the society gave his well-known and much-attacked lecture on "Babel and Bible," which, unfortunately, fell upon the ears of a public as yet too ignorant and unprepared, and led to all sorts of misinterpretations, some of them in church circles.
I strove hard to clear up the matter. Since I realized that the importance of Assyriology, then enlisting the efforts of many prominent men, including clergymen of both religions, was not yet understood and appreciated by the general public, I had my trusted friend and brilliant theater director, Count Hülsen-Haeseler, produce the play "Assurbanipal," after long preparation, under the auspices of the German Orient Society. Assyriologists of all countries were invited to the dress rehearsal; in the boxes, all mixed up together, were professors, Protestant and Catholic clergymen, Jews and Christians. Many expressed to me their thanks for having shown, by this performance, how far research work had already progressed and for having, at the same time, revealed more clearly to the general public the importance of Assyriology.
My sojourn at Corfu likewise afforded me the pleasure of serving archæology and of busying myself personally with excavation. The accidental discovery of a relief head of a Gorgon near the town of Corfu led me to take charge of the work myself. I called to my aid the experienced excavator and expert in Greek antiques, Professor Dörpfeld, who took over the direction of the excavation work. This savant, who was as enthusiastic as I for the ancient Hellenic world, became in the course of time a faithful friend of mine and an invaluable source of instruction in questions relating to architecture, styles, and so on among the ancient Greeks and Achæans.
"ILIAD" AS A GUIDE BOOK
It was a joy to hear Dörpfeld read and elucidate the old Homeric poems, and establish, by means of a map and following the hints and descriptions of the poet, the location of the old Achæan settlements destroyed later by the Doric migration. It appeared that the names of the old places had often been transferred by the dispossessed inhabitants to the new places. This made the identification of the location more difficult. Nevertheless, Dörpfeld had rediscovered the location of a whole series of them, with the help of his Homer, which he carried in his hand like a Baedeker, hitting upon it by following the minute geographical descriptions given by Homer.
This interested me so much that I took a trip by water, with the Empress, in the company of Dörpfeld, in order to put the matter to the test. We went to Leukas (Ithaca) and visited, one after another, the places made famous by the "Odyssey," while Dörpfeld read from his Homer the descriptive text referring to each. I was amazed and had to admit that the region and the description tallied exactly.
The excavations begun by me in Corfu under Dörpfeld's direction had valuable archæological results, since they produced evidence of an extremely remote epoch of the earliest Doric art. The relief of the Gorgon has given rise already to many theories—probable and improbable—combined, unfortunately, with a lot of superfluous acrimonious discussion. From all this, it seems to me, one of the piers for the bridge sought by me between Asia and Europe is assuming shape.
I sent reports regularly to the Archæological Society, and I also brought the well-known Professor Caro from Athens to work with me. I was busy with preparations for lectures to be delivered before the society during the winter of 1914-15, and with searching discussions on many disputed questions, which I hoped to bring toward a solution "sine ira et studio." It was a pleasure to me to be visited almost regularly, at Corfu, by English and American archæologists, former pupils of Dörpfeld, who helped zealously in throwing light on the difficult problems which often came up. Since they were at work in Asia Minor, I was deeply interested in hearing what importance they attached to the Asiatic influence on early Greek art—as a result of their discoveries—and how readily they recognized a connection with the East in the finds made at Corfu. In 1914, Professor Duhn of Heidelberg visited the excavations at Corfu and, after thorough investigation, gave his support to the views held by Dörpfeld and me. I shall tell in a separate piece of writing about the result of my Corfu excavations.
That was the sort of thing which, in the spring of 1914, occupied the thoughts of the German Emperor, who, lusting for robbery and conquest, is accused of having bloodthirstily brought on the World War. While I was exploring and discussing Gorgons, Doric columns, and Homer, they were already mobilizing against us in the Caucasus and Russia. And the Tsar, at the beginning of the year, when asked about his travel plans, had replied: "Je resterai chez moi cette année, car nous aurons la guerre!" ("I shall stay at home this year, for we are going to have war!")