Fig. 197.—(Prague Museum.) Novacula?
Fig. 198.—(Klagenfurth Museum.) Novacula, Sickle? Razor?
TROJAN WEAPONS.
On the mainland north of Cyprus lies a most remarkable land which, forming a point of junction, a connecting-link between the East and the West, was one of the tracks of primitive emigration from Asia to Europe, and vice versâ. This tête de pont, commanding the island-bridge and the various stepping-stones of rock, is the famous Troas, occupied of old by a branch of the great Phrygian race. Hence the interest attaching to the excavations of Dr. Henry Schliemann. His works are too well known to require any detailed notice of the five (seven?) cities ‘whose successive layers of ruins, still marked by the fires that passed over them, are piled to the height of fifty (two and a half) feet above the old summit of the Hisárlik hill.’[612] The explorer’s labours, according to his editor, have passed through the ‘several stages of uncritical acceptance, hypercritical rejection, and discriminating belief’: I can only remark that the question of Troy appears farther from being settled (if possible) than it ever was; we now know only where it was not. The excavator began by placing his city of Priam in the second stratum from below, at a depth of twenty-three to thirty-three feet under the surface; and afterwards raised it to the third layer. It is regretable that the learned author did not submit his lively volume ‘Troy’ to a professed archæologist. We should not have heard so much about the Svasti, a Hittite ornament, nor should we have been told that the Trojans used ‘salt-cellars or pepper-boxes’ (p. 79); that the Ramayana Epic was ‘composed at the latest eight hundred years before Christ’ (p. 103), and that the ‘ivory, peacocks, and apes are Sanskrit words with scarcely any alteration.’[613] When, therefore, I speak of ‘Troy proper,’ and ‘Trojan stratum,’ I mean only Dr. Schliemann’s Troy.
The townlet had preserved, at the time of its destruction, the technological use of stone, which, indeed, was found in the four lower strata, and even in the Acropolis of Athens. It occurs, however, in conjunction with gold and silver, copper, bronze, and traces of iron, but no tin.[614] The people were, like most barbarians, very expert metallurgists; and if Dr. Schliemann’s diorite be true diorite,[615] they must have worked with highly-tempered tools. Copper, either pure or slightly alloyed, was the most common metal: we read of a key, a large double-edged axe, a vase-foot, nails, clothes-pins (ἔμβολα), a curious instrument like a horse’s bit (p. 261); a bar, a big ring, a chauldron (λέβης), a ridge (φάλος) for the helmet-crest (λόφος), two whole helmets, three crooked knives, and a lance with a mid-rib (p. 279). Upon the so-called ‘great Tower of Ilios’[616] was found a large mould of mica-schist for casting twelve different articles, axes and daggers. Thus we learn something about the long copper knives which the Homeric heroes carry besides their Swords and use in sacrifice: also we may now reasonably conclude that the Iliad-poets could not, as has often been asserted, have ignored the fusion and the casting of metals.[617] Near this important mould appeared a fine lance (p. 279), and long thin bars, either with heads or with the ends bent round, determined to be hair- or breast-pins. Iron showed only in a sling-bullet, although Dr. Schliemann often mentions ‘loadstone.’[618]
The ‘upper Trojan stratum’ yielded other moulds for bar-casting and a four-footed crucible, in which some copper was still visible. The gates supposed to be the Scæan or left-handed[619] had two copper bolts (p. 302). The so-called ‘Palace of Priam’[620] produced a dozen long thin pins for hair or dress; and one of a bundle of five, fused together by fire, had two separate heads, the upper lentil-shaped, and the lower perfectly round (p. 312). Thick nails, fitted for driving into wood, were rare; the labour of two years produced only two. Finally, there were fragments of a Sword, a lance, and other instruments.
Fig. 200.—Copper Sword with Sharp end, from the ‘Treasury of Priam.’