It would seem as if Troy, familiar to our childhood as the point of contact in poetry between the East and West, were reappearing in the science of archæology as a link between the eastern and western branches of the antiquities of the great Aryan family, extending its influence to our own island in another sense than the legend of Brute the Trojan. How great an increase of light may soon be expected from the deciphering of the Inscriptions found at Hissarlik may be inferred, in part, from the brief account, in the Appendix, of the progress thus far made. In fine, few dissentients will be found from the judgment of a not too favourable critic, that “Dr. Schliemann, in spite of his over-great enthusiasm, ... has done the world an incalculable service.”[14]
The decipherment of the inscriptions will probably go far to determine the curious question of the use of the terra-cotta whorls, found in such numbers in all the four pre-Hellenic strata of remains at Hissarlik. That they had some practical purpose may be inferred both from this very abundance, and from the occurrence of similar objects among the remains of various early races. Besides the examples given by Dr. Schliemann, they have been found in various parts of our own island, and especially in Scotland, but always (we believe) without decorations. On the other hand, the Aryan emblems and the inscriptions[15] marked upon them would seem to show that they were applied to, if not originally designed for, some higher use. It seems quite natural for a simple and religious race, such as the early Aryans certainly were, to stamp religious emblems and sentences on objects in daily use, and then to consecrate them as ex voto offerings, according to Dr. Schliemann’s suggestion. The astronomical significance, which Schliemann finds in many of the whorls, is unmistakeable in most of the terra-cotta balls; and this seems to furnish evidence that the people who made them had some acquaintance, at least, with the astronomical science of Babylonia.
The keen discussion provoked by Dr. Schliemann’s novel explanation of the θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη might be left “a pretty quarrel as it stands,”[16] did there not appear to be a key of which neither party has made sufficient use. The symbolism, which embodied divine attributes in animal forms, belonged unquestionably to an early form of the Greek religion, as well as to the Egyptian and Assyrian.[17] The ram-headed Ammon, the hawk-headed Ra, the eagle-headed Nisroch, form exact precedents for an owl-headed Athena, a personation which may very well have passed into the slighter forms of owl-faced, owl-eyed, bright-eyed. Indeed, we see no other explanation of the constant connection of the owl with the goddess, which survived to the most perfect age of Greek sculpture. The question is not to be decided by an etymological analysis of the sense of γλαυκῶπις in the Greek writers, long after the old symbolism had been forgotten, nor even by the sense which Homer may have attached to the word in his own mind. One of the most striking characters of his language is his use of fixed epithets; and he might very well have inherited the title of the tutelar goddess of the Ionian race with the rest of his stock of traditions. If γλαυκῶπις were merely a common attributive, signifying “bright-eyed,” it is very remarkable that Homer should never apply it to mortal women, or to any goddess save Athena. We are expressing no opinion upon the accuracy of Schliemann’s identification in every case; but the rudeness of many of his “owl-faced idols” is no stumbling-block, for the oldest and rudest sacred images were held in lasting and peculiar reverence. The Ephesian image of Artemis, “which fell down from Jove,” is a case parallel to what the “Palladium” of Ilium may have been.
The ethnological interpretation of the four strata of remains at Hissarlik is another of the questions which it would be premature to discuss; but a passing reference may be allowed to their very remarkable correspondence with the traditions relating to the site. First, Homer recognizes a city which preceded the Ilium of Priam, and which had been destroyed by Hercules; and Schliemann found a primeval city, of considerable civilization, on the native rock, below the ruins which he regards as the Homeric Troy. Tradition speaks of a Phrygian population, of which the Trojans were a branch, as having apparently displaced, and driven over into Europe, the kindred Pelasgians. Above the second stratum are the remains of a third city, which, in the type and patterns of its terra-cottas, instruments, and ornaments, shows a close resemblance to the second; and the link of connection is rivetted by the inscriptions in the same character in both strata. And so, in the Homeric poems, every reader is struck with the common bonds of genealogy and language, traditions and mutual intercourse, religion and manners, between the Greeks who assail Troy and the Trojans who defend it. If the legend of the Trojan War preserves the tradition of a real conquest of the city by a kindred race, the very nature of the case forbids us to accept literally the story, that the conquerors simply sailed away again.[18] It is far more reasonable to regard the ten years of the War, and the ten years of the Return of the Chiefs (Νόστοι) as cycles of ethnic struggles, the details of which had been sublimed into poetical traditions. The fact, that Schliemann traces in the third stratum a civilization lower than in the second, is an objection only from the point of view of our classical prepossessions. There are not wanting indications in Homer (as Curtius, among others, has pointed out) that the Trojans were more civilized and wealthy than the Greeks; and in the much earlier age, to which the conflict—if real at all—must have belonged, we may be sure that the Asiatic people had over their European kindred an advantage which we may venture to symbolize by the golden arms of Glaucus and the brazen arms of Diomed (Homer, Iliad, VI. 235, 236). Xanthus, the old historian of Lydia, preserves the tradition of a reflux migration of Phrygians from Europe into Asia, after the Trojan War, and says that they conquered Troy and settled in its territory. This migration is ascribed to the pressure of the barbarian Thracians; and the fourth stratum, with its traces of merely wooden buildings, and other marks of a lower stage of civilization, corresponds to that conquest of the Troad by those same barbarian Thracians, the tradition of which is preserved by Herodotus and other writers. The primitive dwellings of those races in Thrace still furnish the flint implements, which are most abundant in the fourth stratum at Hissarlik.
The extremely interesting concurrence of instruments of stone with those of copper (or bronze, see [p. 361]) in all the four strata at Hissarlik, may be illustrated by a case which has fallen under our notice while dismissing this sheet for press. A mound recently opened at the Bocenos, near Carnac (in the Morbihan), has disclosed the remains of a Gallic house, of the second century of our era, in which flint implements were found, intermixed with pottery of various styles, from the most primitive to the finest examples of native Gallic art, and among all these objects was a terra-cotta head of the Venus Anadyomene.[19] Such facts as these furnish a caution against the too hasty application of the theory of the Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron.
Another illustration is worth adding of the persistence of the forms of objects in common use in the same region. (See p. 47.) Mr. Davis, in his recently published travels in Asia Minor,[20] describes a wooden vessel for carrying water, which he saw at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, of the very same form as the crown-handled vase-covers of terra-cotta found in such numbers by Schliemann (see [p. 25], [48], [86], [95], &c.). “They are made of a section of the pine: the inside is hollowed from below, and the bottom is closed by another piece of wood exactly fitted into it.” The two drawings given by Mr. Davis closely resemble our cut, No. 51, p. 86.
Our last letter from Dr. Schliemann announced the approaching termination of his lawsuit with the Turkish Government, arising out of the dispute referred to in the ‘Introduction’ (p. 52). The collection has been valued by two experts; and Dr. Schliemann satisfies the demand of the Turkish Government by a payment in cash, and an engagement to continue the excavations in Troy for three or four months for the benefit of the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. We rejoice that he has not “closed the excavations at Hissarlik for ever” (see [p. 356]), and wait to see what new discoveries may equal or surpass those of the “Scæan Gates,” the “Palace,” and the “Treasure of Priam.”
Meanwhile, as the use of so mythical a name as that of Troy’s last king has furnished a special butt for critical scorn, it seems due to Dr. Schliemann to quote his reason for retaining it:—[21]
“I identify with the Homeric Ilion the city second in succession from the virgin soil, because only in that city were used the Great Tower, the great Circuit Wall, the great Double Gate, and the ancient palace of the chief or king, whom I call Priam, because he is called so by the tradition of which Homer is the echo; but as soon as it is proved that Homer and the tradition were wrong, and that Troy’s last king was called ‘Smith,’ I shall at once call him so.” Those who believe Troy to be a myth and Priam a shadow as unsubstantial as the shape, whose head