The existence of the nation which succeeded the Trojans was likewise of a long duration, for all the layers of débris at the depth of from 10 to 7 meters (33 to 23 feet) belong to it. They also were of Aryan descent, for they possessed innumerable Aryan religious symbols. I think I have proved that several of the symbols were common to our ancestors at a time when Germans, Pelasgians, Hindoos, Persians, Celts, and Greeks still formed one nation. I found no trace of a double cup among this people, but instead of it, those curious cups (vase-covers) which have a coronet below in place of a handle; then those brilliant red fanciful goblets, in the form of immense champagne-glasses, with two mighty handles on the sides: they are round below, so that they also can only stand on their mouths. Further, those small covers, from about 4 to 4¾ inches high, with owls’ faces, with a kind of helmet on the lower end, furnished with a high button or tuft, which is, no doubt, intended to represent the crest of a helmet and served as a handle. This cup likewise can only stand on its mouth.[160] Further, all those splendid vessels of burnt earthenware—as, for instance, funereal, water, or wine urns, 5 feet high and from 1¾ to 3¼ feet in diameter; also smaller funereal urns, plates, dishes, and vases, of exceedingly fanciful forms, and from about 8 to 10 inches in height, with the owl’s face of the tutelary goddess of Troy, two female breasts, and a navel, besides the two upraised arms on each side of the head, which served as handles; further, all of those vessels with a beak-shaped mouth, bent back, and either short or long. Most of these vessels are round below, so that they cannot stand; others have three feet; others, again, are flat-bottomed. The neck of many is so much bent backwards that it resembles a swan or a goose. To this class also belong all of those globular and egg-shaped vessels, small and large, with or without a neck like a chimney, which have a short ring on either side, and a hole in the same direction in the lip, through which was passed the string for suspending them; many have in addition three little feet. All are of uniform colour, either brown, yellow, red, or black; some have rows of leaves or twigs as decorations. I also meet with very curious vases, in the shape of animals, with three feet. The mouth of the vessel is in the tail, which is upright and very thick, and which is connected with the back by a handle. Upon one of these last-mentioned vases there are decorations, consisting of three engraved stripes of three lines each. I formerly found the Priapus only at a depth of 7 meters (23 feet); but a short time ago I found one at a depth of 13 meters (42½ feet). I now find it again at 8 meters (26 feet) that is, among the ruins of the nation of which I am at present speaking. In these strata we also meet with an immense quantity of those round terra-cottas (the whorls), which, it is true, deviate from the wheel-shape of the articles found on the primary soil owing to their greater thickness, and are also not of such excellently-burnt clay as those; but, as anyone may convince himself by examining the drawings, they are embellished with uncommonly beautiful and ingenious symbolical signs. Among these the Sun-god always occupies the most prominent position; but the fire-machine of our primeval ancestors, the holy sacrificial altar with blazing flames, the holy sôma-tree or tree of life, and the rosa mystica, are also very frequently met with here. This mystic rose, which occurs very often in the Byzantine sculptures, and the name of which, as is well known, is employed to designate the Holy Virgin in the Roman Catholic Litanies, is a very ancient Aryan religious symbol, as yet, unfortunately, unexplained.[161] It is very ancient, because I find it at a depth of from 7 to 10 meters (23 to 33 feet) in the strata of the successors to the Trojans, which must belong to a period about 1200 years before Christ.[162]
