INTRODUCTION.
CONTENTS.
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]