APPENDIX.
ON THE INSCRIPTIONS FOUND AT HISSARLIK.
By The Editor.
AS soon as Dr. Schliemann’s wonderful discoveries at Hissarlik were made known, one of the most important questions that arose in the mind of all scholars was:—Has he found any Inscriptions, to throw the certain light of written testimony on the language and ethnic affinities, the history and social condition, the religion, science, and literature, of the old inhabitants of the hill, whose records form as yet no part of ancient history?
Dr. Schliemann’s private communications during the progress of his work had called forth the efforts of eminent Orientalists—such as Martin Haug, Émile Burnouf, and Max Müller—to attempt the discovery of true writing among the vast variety of strange and novel patterns impressed upon the terra-cotta whorls, balls, seals, vases, and other objects in his collection; for some of these bore a likeness to written characters which could hardly be deceptive.[314] It mattered not for this enquiry, by what name the habitations, whose successive strata were revealed, had been called of old. No one whose opinion was worth regarding disputed their very high antiquity, which implied the great age of the objects found. Apart even from its traditional claim to be the Ilium of Homer, the site lay in the track of the primitive migrations of the Indo-European race from their cradle in the East to their settlements in the West; and not of one migration only, but of their passage to and fro between the shores of Asia and of Europe; as well as upon the path of their commerce and military expeditions, after they were settled in their homes. For, lest we be misled by the arbitrary distinction between the continents, which is stereotyped in the names of Asia and Europe—that is, East and West—it must be borne in mind that the Hellespont and Bosporus (as the latter name expresses) were ferries rather than sundering seas, and the islands of the Ægean were stepping-stones. The close affinities of the early settlers on both shores had long since been proved; and, in particular, the presence of the great Pelasgo-Hellenic or Græco-Italic family had been traced on both. The very ancient habitation of the north-western parts of Asia Minor by the Ionians—the oriental name of the whole Hellenic race—long before their traditional colonization from the peninsula of Hellas—had been maintained by Ernst Curtius twenty years ago,[315] and more fully established by recent Egyptologers[316]—thus confirming the most ancient ethnic record, that the Isles of the Gentiles were divided among the families of the Sons of Javan.[317] Thus, before the first trench was dug at Hissarlik, a clue was already supplied to the race of the primitive inhabitants, if any such had dwelt there, and to the nature of their language, if they had left any written records.
Among the patterns engraved upon the whorls and other terra-cottas, many were soon found, as Dr. Schliemann has fully shown, to be the most ancient sacred emblems of the Aryan race; and the discovery of these at all depths, below the ruins of Greek Ilium, attested the common Aryan descent of all the nations that had dwelt successively on the hill before the historic Grecian colony. The absence of any trace of Egyptian influence, and almost equally of Assyrian, seemed to attest an independent and very ancient Aryan civilization; while the general character of the works in terra-cotta, resembling those found in Cyprus and some of the islands of the Ægean, appeared to belong to the style which Professor Conze, of Vienna, had defined as the earliest Greek or European Indo-Germanic. The characters, which looked so exactly like writing, were certainly not hieroglyphs in any of their varieties; nor—though there were some cuneiform marks—was there any true cuneiform writing; while the few semblances of Phœnician characters were soon found to be deceptive. This last fact, again, helped to carry back the time of the settlement of Hissarlik beyond the age when Greeks and Phœnicians had entered into close relations of civilization on the shores of the Ægean, that is, before the date of the Homeric poems, which are full of allusions to Phœnician influence.