Upon the other 147½ feet of the platform I find everywhere, as far as to about 16½ feet high, colossal masses of large blocks of shelly limestone, often more or less hewn, but generally unhewn, which frequently lie so close one upon another that they have the appearance of actual walls. But I soon found that all of these masses of stone must of necessity belong to grand buildings which once have stood there and were destroyed by a fearful catastrophe. The buildings cannot possibly have been built of these stones without some uniting substance, and I presume that this was done with mere earth, for I find no trace of lime or cement. Between the immense masses of stone there are intermediate spaces, more or less large, consisting of very firm débris, often as hard as stone, in which we meet with very many bones, shells, and quantities of other remains of habitation. No traces of any kind of interesting articles were found in the whole length of the wall of débris, 229½ feet in length and 16¼ feet in height, except a small splendidly worked hair-or dress-pin of silver, but destroyed by rust. To-day, however, at a perpendicular depth of 14 meters (46 feet) I found a beautiful polished piece of mica-schist, with moulds for casting two breast-pins, and two other ornaments which are quite unknown to me—all of the most fanciful description. I also found a funereal or water urn, unfortunately completely broken, with decorations in the form of two flat wreaths which run right round it. The urn must have been 5 feet high, and at least 27½ inches in breadth. In both of the wreaths there is an uninterrupted row of cuneiform impressions, which at first sight seem to be Assyrian inscriptions; but on closer examination it is found that they are mere ornaments. The fragments of this vase show a thickness of about ¾ of an inch. Two other enormous urns, but completely broken, either for water, wine, or funereal ashes, with decorations in the form of several wreaths, forming perfect circles, were found on the 22nd and 23rd of this month, at from 19½ to 23 feet above the platform, and therefore, at a perpendicular depth of from 26 to 33 feet. Both must have been more than 6½ feet high, and more than 3¼ feet in diameter, for the fragments show a thickness of nearly 2 inches. The wreaths are likewise in bas-relief, and show either double triangles fitting into one another with circles, or flowers, or three rows or sometimes one row of circles. The last decoration was also found upon the frieze of green stone which Lord Elgin discovered in the year 1810 in the treasury of Agamemnon in Mycenæ, and which is now in the British Museum. Both this frieze, and the above-mentioned urns discovered by me in the depths of Ilium, distinctly point to Assyrian art, and I cannot look at them without a feeling of sadness when I think with what tears of joy and with what delight the ever-memorable German scholar, Julius Braun, who unfortunately succumbed three years ago to his excessive exertions, would have welcomed their discovery; for he was not only the great advocate of the theory that the Homeric Troy must be only looked for below the ruins of Ilium, but he was also the able defender of the doctrine, that the plastic arts and a portion of the Egyptian and Assyrian mythology had migrated to Asia Minor and Greece, and he has shown this by thousands of irrefutable proofs in his profound and excellent work, Geschichte der Kunst in ihrem Entwickelungsgange, which I most urgently recommend to all who are interested in art and archæology.
Both the urns found at a depth of 46 feet and those at from 26 to 33 feet, as well as all the funereal urns and large wine or water vessels which I formerly discovered, were standing upright, which sufficiently proves that the colossal masses of débris and ruins were gradually formed on the spot, and could not have been brought there from another place in order to increase the height of the hill. This is, moreover, a pure impossibility in regard to the immense numbers of gigantic blocks of stone, hewn and unhewn, which frequently weigh from 1 to 2 tons.
In the strata at a depth of from 7 to 10 meters (23 to 33 feet), I found two lumps of lead of a round and concave form, each weighing about two pounds; a great number of rusted copper nails, also some knives and a copper lance; further very many smaller and larger knives of white and brown silex in the form of single and double-edged saws; a number of whet-stones of green and black slate with a hole at one end, as well as various small objects of ivory.[109] In all the strata from 4 to 10 meters (13 to 33 feet) deep I found a number of hammers, axes and wedges of diorite, which, however, are decidedly of much better workmanship in the strata below the depth of 7 meters (23 feet) than in the upper ones. Likewise at all depths from 3 meters (10 feet) below the surface we find a number of flat idols of very fine marble; upon many of them is the owl’s face and a female girdle with dots; upon one there are in addition two female breasts.[110] The striking resemblance of these owls’ faces to those upon many of the vases and covers, with a kind of helmet on the owl’s head, makes me firmly convinced that all of the idols, and all of the helmeted owls’ heads represent a goddess, and indeed must represent one and the same goddess, all the more so as, in fact, all the owl-faced vases with female breasts and a navel have also generally two upraised arms: in one case the navel is represented by a cross with four nails.[111] The cups (covers) with owls’ heads, on the other hand, never have breasts or a navel, yet upon some of them I find long female hair represented at the back.[112]
The important question now presents itself:—What goddess is it who is here found so repeatedly, and is, moreover, the only one to be found, upon the idols, drinking-cups and vases? The answer is:—She must necessarily be the tutelary goddess of Troy, she must be the Ilian Athena, and this indeed perfectly agrees with the statement of Homer, who continually calls her θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη, “the goddess Athena with the owl’s face.” For the epithet “γλαυκῶπις” has been wrongly translated by the scholars of all ages, because they could not imagine that Athena should have been represented with an owl’s face. The epithet, however, consists of the two words γλαῦξ and ὠπή, and, as I can show by an immense number of proofs, the only possible literal translation is “with an owl’s face”; and the usual translation “with blue, fiery or sparkling eyes” is utterly wrong. The natural conclusion is that owing to progressive civilization Athena received a human face, and her former owl’s head was transformed into her favourite bird, the owl, which as such is unknown to Homer. The next conclusion is that the worship of Athena as the tutelary goddess of Troy was well known to Homer; hence that a Troy existed, and that it was situated on the sacred spot, the depths of which I am investigating.