As I observed in my last report, I here find the sun represented in the centre of all the innumerable round ornamented terra-cottas in the form of the volcano and top (carrousel), and yesterday I even found one upon which the central sun was surrounded by five other suns, each of them with twelve rays.[128]
I know very well that some would derive the name of the town of Ilium (Ἴλιος or Ἴλιον) from the Sanscrit word vilû, “fortress,” and Ἥλιος from a lost masculine form of Σελήνη, probably Σείριος, and the thought involuntarily forces itself upon me, when looking at the above-mentioned terra-cottas with the five suns in a circle round the central sun, that the image of the Sun which occurs thousands and thousands of times must be connected with the name of Troy, namely Ἴλιος, for Ἴλιον only occurs once in Homer (Iliad, XV. 71); he always elsewhere speaks of Ἴλιος, and always uses this word as a feminine. Homer, it is true, always says Ἠέλιος instead of Ἥλιος, but in my opinion the root of both is ἕλη or εἵλη, from the verb αἱρέω, the aorist of which is εἷλον. In Germany, according to the Erasmian pronunciation εἵλη is certainly pronounced heila, and εἷλον, heilon; but in the modern Greek pronunciation εἵλη is ili; εἷλον, ilon; and Ἥλιος, ilios. There are a number of proofs that the Erasmian pronunciation is radically wrong, and that the modern Greek is the correct one. Among these I will only mention that all the Greek words which passed over into the Russian language, when Russia embraced Christianity 900 years ago, are pronounced in Russian exactly as they still are in Greece; and moreover that those who decipher the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions (especially, I believe, J. Oppert, in Paris), have pointed out that the Greek names, which occur in these inscriptions from the time of the Seleucidæ, are represented in the cuneiform writing exactly according to the modern Greek pronunciation. Now, if out of the word εἵλη, ἕλη, or εἷλον, there has arisen Ἠέλιος and Ἥλιος, then surely by the sameness of the pronunciation there may have arisen out of one of the first three words in pre-Homeric times Ἴλιος in the feminine for πόλις Ἡλίου or Ἰλίου, signifying “Sun-castle,” for the earlier meaning of πόλις was certainly castle, fortress, or acropolis, as for instance in the Iliad, VI. 88, 257, 317, XXII. 383. Although I am well aware that Egyptian scholars have hitherto found no relationship between the hieroglyphic and Sanscrit languages, yet I cannot help mentioning that three years ago, in the Institute of France, I heard a lecture by the Vicomte de Rougé, who had found in a papyrus the names of the powers leagued against Rameses III., and among these the state of Arouna or Aruna, which he without hesitation identified with Ilium, as he thought that this was the only way in which the latter word could be rendered in the hieroglyphic language. Now, curiously enough, according to Max Müller[129] and Adalbert Kuhn,[130] the Sanscrit word Aruna signifies “charioteer of the sun.” I leave it to Egyptian and Sanscrit scholars to judge whether and how far this may serve to confirm what I have said above.
Although since Easter I have been obliged to pay my men 1 piaster more per diem, which makes their wages 10 piasters or 2 francs a day, still I am now working with 130 men; and I firmly hope by the 1st of October to have carried my great platform through the entire hill, preserving exactly the same breadth; for while my wife and I, with 85 workmen, are busy on the platform on the north side, Georgios Photidas and 45 men have for 10 days been working towards us from a second platform on the south side. Unfortunately, however, the slope of the hill on the south side is so slight, that we were forced to begin this work 16¼ feet below the surface, in order to have room and freedom for removing the débris; we have, however, given it a dip of 14°, so that it must reach the primary soil at a length of about 75 meters (246 feet). This southern platform is under the sole direction of Georgios Photidas, for he has proved himself to be a very skilful engineer, and he works forward very quickly through his cleverly devised side terraces. He has hitherto, however, had only light débris to remove, and has not yet come upon that very hard, tough, damp débris which I have on my platform at the depth of 10 to 16 meters (33 to 52½ feet). To-day he has brought to light a splendid bastion, composed of large finely-hewn blocks of limestone, not joined by either cement or lime, which, however, does not seem to me to be older than the time of Lysimachus. It is certainly very much in our way, but it is too beautiful and venerable for me to venture to lay hands upon it, so it shall be preserved.
On the south side the accumulation of débris from the Greek period is much more considerable than on the north side and upon the plateau; and thus far Georgios Photidas constantly finds Greek pottery and those terra-cottas with two holes at one end, which, in my excavations hitherto, ceased entirely at a depth of 2 meters (6½ feet). The greater portion of these round articles have the potter’s stamp already mentioned, representing a bee or fly with outspread wings above an altar. (See Cuts, Nos. 37-40, p. 65.)
I have also given the platform on the north side an inclination of 10° in a length of 66 feet, so as to be able to work forward on the primary soil, without the indescribable trouble of lowering it another 6½ feet, and of thus having to remove 4000 cubic yards of débris. This primary soil sufficiently proves that all those enormous masses of immense stones, generally more or less hewn, with which, as already said, I had continually to battle at a depth of from 10 to 14 meters (33 to 46 feet), are the remains of large buildings, which in the course of centuries have been erected successively upon the ruins of others. For it does not appear conceivable to me that even a large palace, were it six storeys high, could leave such colossal ruins, which, as they reach down to the rock, are nearly 20 feet in height.
For some days these masses of stone have diminished in number, but we continually find many single large blocks. Instead of the stone strata, however, we now have before us, upon the whole breadth of the platform (230 feet), and to the height of 20 feet (hence at a depth of from 10 to 16 meters, 33 to 52½ feet), a damp wall as hard as stone, composed of ashes mixed with small shells, bones, boars’ tusks, &c., exactly like that which we before found at the east end. This mass is so tough, that it is only by making shafts, and breaking down the walls by means of huge iron levers, that we manage to get on at all.
The signs of a higher civilization increasing with the greater depth—which I mentioned in my last report when speaking of the large urn with Assyrian inscriptions—continue down to the native soil. Close above it I find a great quantity of fragments of brilliant black and sometimes red or brown pottery, with engraved decorations, of a quality more excellent than I have hitherto met with even in the highest strata, among the ruins of the Greek period. I also found several fragments of cups, the lower part of which likewise forms a cup, but not a large one, and hence I do not doubt that these are fragments of double cups (δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον). In Homer it indeed seems as if all double cups were made of gold or silver with a gilt rim,[131] but I do not doubt that there were at the same time also double cups made of clay.[132]
