Museum of Antiquity: A Description of Ancient Life

by L. W. Yaggy; T. L. Haines

The houses of Troy were all very high, and had several stories, as is obvious from the thickness of the walls, the construction and colossal heaps of debris. The city was immensely rich, and as it was wealthy, so was it powerful and its buildings large. The ruins are found in a badly decayed state, because of the great fires that occurred there, and the neighboring towns were largely built with stone from the ruins of Troy; Archæanax is said to have built a long wall around Sigeum with its stones.

A portion of a large building was laid bare, the walls of which are 6¼ feet thick, and consist for the most part of hewn blocks of limestone joined with clay. None of the stones seem to be more than 1 foot 9 inches long, and they are so skillfully put together, that the walls form a smooth surface. This house is built upon a layer of yellow and brown ashes and ruins, at a depth of 20 feet, and the portion of the walls preserved reaches up to within 10 feet below the surface of the hill. In the house, as far as has been excavated, only one vase, with two breasts in front and one breast at the side, has been found.

GOLDEN CUPS OF PRIAM.[ToList]

This is the first house that Dr. Schliemann excavated, which is quite evident by what he writes about it: "It is with a feeling of great interest that, from this great platform, that is, at a perpendicular height of from thirty-three to forty-two feet, I see this very ancient building (which may have been erected 1000 years before Christ) standing as it were in mid air."

A room was excavated which is ten feet high and eleven and one-fourth wide; it was at one time much higher; its length has not been ascertained.

One of the compartments of the uppermost houses, below the Temple of Athena and belonging to the pre-Hellenic period, appears to have been used as a wine-merchant's cellar or as a magazine, for in it there are nine enormous earthen jars of various forms, about five and three-fourths feet high and four and three-fourths feet across, their mouths being from twenty-nine and one-half to thirty-five and one-fourth inches broad. Each of these earthen jars has four handles, three and three-fourths inches broad, and the clay of which they are made has the enormous thickness of two and one-fourth inches.

A house of eight rooms was also brought to light at a depth of twenty-six feet. It stands upon the great Tower, directly below the Greek Temple of Athena. Its walls consist of small stones cemented with earth, and they appear to belong to different epochs; for, while some of them rest directly upon the stones of the Tower, others were not built till the Tower was covered with eight inches, and in several cases even with three and one-fourth feet, of debris. These walls also show differences in thickness; one of them is four and one-half feet, others are only twenty-five and one-half inches, and others again not more than nineteen and two-thirds inches thick. Several of these walls are ten feet high, and on some of them may be seen large remnants of the coatings of clay, painted yellow or white. Black marks, the result of fire, upon the lower portion of the walls of the other rooms which have been excavated, leave no doubt that their floors were of wood, and were destroyed by fire. In one room there is a wall in the form of a semicircle, which has been burnt as black as coal. All the rooms as yet laid open, and not resting directly upon the Tower, have been excavated down to the same level; and, without exception, the debris below them consists of red or yellow ashes and burnt ruins. Above these, even in the rooms themselves, were found nothing but either red or yellow wood-ashes, mixed with bricks that had been dried in the sun and subsequently burnt by the conflagration, or black debris, the remains of furniture, mixed with masses of small shells: in proof of this there are the many remains which are still hanging on the walls.

A very large ancient building was found standing upon the wall or buttress. At this place the wall appears to be about seventy-nine feet wide, or thick. The site of this building, upon an elevation, together with its solid structure, leave no doubt that it was the grandest building in Troy; nay, that it must have been the Palace of Priam. This edifice, now first laid open from beneath the ashes which covered it in the burning of the city, was found by Dr. Schliemann in the very state to which, in Homer, Agamemnon threatens to reduce it: "The house of Priam blackened with fire."