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]