These owl-faced female figures, which occur so frequently upon the cups, vases and idols, can represent but one goddess, and this goddess can be none other than Athena, the tutelary goddess of Troy, all the more so as Homer continually calls her “θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη;” for “γλαυκῶπις” has been wrongly translated by the scholars of every century, and does not signify “with bright and sparkling eyes,” but “with the face of an owl.” The natural conclusion, in the first place, is that Homer perfectly well knew that the owl-faced Athena was the tutelary goddess of Troy; secondly, that the locality whose depths I have ransacked for three years must be the spot “ubi Troja fuit;” and thirdly, that, in the progress of civilization, Pallas Athena received a human face, and her former owl’s head was transformed into her favourite bird, the owl, which as such is quite unknown to Homer. At a depth of from 4 to 9 meters (13 to 29½ feet), I also found some vases and cups with a human face, but which have a good deal of the owl about them.
As I did not find a trace of the owl’s face among the ruins of the Greek colony, we may regard it as certain that it had already advanced beyond the civilization of the old Ilians of whose town it took possession, and that it brought the idea of the goddess with a human face with it to Troy.
With regard to the often mentioned perforated terra-cottas in the form of a top and the crater of a volcano, adorned with Aryan religious symbols, it is possible that their original form was that of a wheel, for they occur frequently in this shape upon the primary rock at a depth of from 14 to 16 meters (46 to 52½ feet).[54] In the upper layers of débris, these objects in the form of wheels are indeed rare, but the representation of the wheel in motion, effected by the incisions being more numerous, still occurs very frequently.[55] In spite of all my searching and pondering, I have not yet succeeded in arriving at an opinion as to what these extremely interesting objects were used for. As has now become evident by the excavation of the temple of Athena, it is only among the pre-Hellenic peoples that they were adorned with Aryan symbols. In the Greek colony these occur but rarely; they are of a different form, and they possess no trace of carved decorations; instead of these, we find the much larger objects of terra-cotta, round, and twice perforated, which occasionally bear the mark of a kind of stamp.[56]
Through the kindness of my friend Professor Giuseppe G. Bianconi in Bologna, I have received the drawings of ten similar round articles of terra-cotta in the form of the top or volcano, which are preserved in the Museum of Modena, and were found in the terramares of that district, in the lake-habitations of the stone age. To my extreme astonishment, I found that six of them possessed the same ornamental carvings which I found upon the articles of the same form here in Troy. Three of them have a circle round the central sun, a triple cross, which, as I have endeavoured minutely to explain in my sixth memoir, was the symbol of the two pieces of wood of our Aryan forefathers for producing the holy fire, and is an emblem of the highest importance. The fourth represents one of these machines for producing fire with five ends, and Indian scholars may possibly find that one of the staves represents the piece of wood called “pramantha,” with which fire was generated by friction, and which the Greeks at a later time transformed into their Prometheus, who, as they imagined, stole fire from heaven. The fifth represents a somewhat different form of the fire producer of our remote ancestors; and the sixth has twelve circles round the central sun. Probably these are the twelve stations of the sun which are so frequently mentioned in the Rigvêda, and which are personified by the twelve Adityas, the sons of Adity (the Indivisible or Infinite Space), and represent the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
The same friend has also sent me drawings of eighteen similar round terra-cottas found in the graves of the cemetery in Villanova, and now in the Museum of Count Gozzadini in Bologna. As the count found an “aes rude” in one of the graves, he thinks that the cemetery, like it, belongs to the time of King Numa, that is, to about 700 years before Christ. G. de Mortillet,[57] however, ascribes a much greater age to the cemetery. But, at all events, fifteen of the eighteen drawings lying before me have a modern appearance compared with the ten in the Museum of Modena, and compared with my small terra-cottas in the form of tops, volcanoes, and wheels, found in Troy; for not only the decorations, but the forms also of the articles are very much more elaborate. Only three of the eighteen articles show a shape and decorations like those met with in Troy. All three have the form of a top: the first has seven suns in a circle round the central sun; the second has two crosses, one of which is formed by four stars, the other by four lines. The third has five triangles and five stars in the circle round the central point. The comparison of these eighteen articles with those from Troy convinces me that Count Gozzadini is right in ascribing no greater age to the cemetery of Villanova than 700 B.C.
But besides the articles ornamented with religious symbols, we meet in Troy with thousands of terra-cottas of a similar, but in most cases more lengthened form, with no decorations whatever; at a depth of 3 metres (10 feet), they occur also in the shape of cones.[58] Formerly, at a depth of 10 feet, I found similar pieces in blue or green stone, which I have also recently met with frequently at a depth of from 23 to 33 feet. Among the unembellished terra-cottas of this description I find some, but scarcely more than 2 per cent., which show signs of wear, and may have been used on spindles. The pieces adorned with carvings, on the other hand, never show signs of any kind of wear, and the symbols engraved upon them are filled with white clay so as to make them more striking to the eye.[59] This white clay must have disappeared directly, if the pieces had been used on spindles or as coins. They cannot have been worn as amulets, on account of their size and weight: I am therefore forced to believe that they were employed as offerings, or that they were worshipped as idols of the Sun, whose image is seen in the centre.
Unfortunately, owing to the great extent of my excavations, the hurry in which they were carried on, and the hardness of the débris, by far the greater portion of the terra-cotta vessels found by me in the depths of Ilium were brought out more or less broken. But everything that could in any way be repaired I have restored by means of shell-lac and gypsum, and in this state they are represented in the drawings.[60] In all cases where I found a piece broken off and wanting, I restored it according to the model of other vessels of the same kind which I obtained in an unbroken condition; but where such models were wanting, or where I had the slightest doubt, I did not attempt to restore the articles.
The town of Ilium, upon whose site I have been digging for more than three years, boasted itself to be the successor of Troy; and as throughout antiquity the belief in the identity of its site with that of the ancient city of Priam was firmly established and not doubted by anyone, it is clear that the whole course of tradition confirms this identity. At last Strabo lifted up his voice against it; though, as he himself admits, he had never visited the Plain of Troy, and he trusted to the accounts of Demetrius of Scepsis, which were suggested by vanity. According to Strabo,[61] this Demetrius maintained that his native town of Scepsis had been the residence of Æneas, and he envied Ilium the honour of having been the metropolis of the Trojan kingdom. He therefore put forward the following view of the case:—that Ilium and its environs did not contain space enough for the great deeds of the Iliad; that the whole plain which separated the city from the sea was alluvial land, and that it was not formed until after the time of the Trojan war. As another proof that the locality of the two cities could not be the same, he adds that Achilles and Hector ran three times round Troy, whereas one could not run round Ilium on account of the continuous mountain ridge (διὰ τὴν συνεχῆ ῥάχην). For all of these reasons he says that ancient Troy must be placed on the site of the “Village of the Ilians” (Ἰλιέων κώμη), 30 stadia or 3 geographical miles from Ilium and 42 stadia from the coast, although he is obliged to admit that not the faintest trace of the city has been preserved.[62]
Strabo, with his peculiarly correct judgment, would assuredly have rejected all these erroneous assertions of Demetrius of Scepsis, had he himself visited the Plain of Troy, for they can easily be refuted.