The Archaeological Search for the Ancient City of Troy - Essay Example

?Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy. Everyone knows this from school. However, only a few know that in even now there is "the Trojan War" waged in the scientific world, according to German scholar Erich Zehren. The beginning of this "war", and even modern "bombing", often have roots in the feelings of envy and hostility toward succeeding amateur, because archeology is the most complex of all sciences, despite its apparent simplicity and accessibility of almost everyone who ever took the spade in his hands. All this is true and untrue at the same time. The truly scientific debate does not subside for a hundred and twenty-five years now. The subject is - which Troy is it? – The Homer’s? – Or...? The name of Heinrich Schliemann is a symbol of unwavering dedication and focus. According to the myth that he created, in the early childhood little Henry has set a fantastic goal - to find Homer's Troy and immortalize his own name. For this he earned a fortune and turned his life into one of the most amusing stories in world history. In this a very interesting tale’s finale: Troy has been found and wiped out. Heinrich Schliemann was born in 1822 in the family of a Protestant pastor in Germany. During his childhood he heard many stories about ancient castles and buried treasures. Those stories along with the "World History for Children" book, which he got when he was 8 as a gift from his father, according to him, became the impetus for the journey to a mythical Troy. Later, in his autobiography Schliemann wrote that when he saw pictures of Troy, the city, glorified by the blind Homer in the immortal "Iliad", he decided once and for all to find the city. Archaeology, the science of finding and excavation the ancient civilizations hardly existed in the beginning the XIX century. And Schliemann's idea of basing his search on the work of literature, taking it at a face value sounded crazy. What if the poet, albeit the great one, used metaphors and wrote about imaginary things? Heinrich’s father fell into financial problems and the boy had to look for an employment. Beside the work, he was spending his money on further his education. Wanting to verify the statement “A man who speaks two languages is worth two men”, Henry decides to study foreign languages, starting with the mother tongue – German, polishing pronunciation. Using his own method of learning within only three months he learned English and French – within next months. On March 1844, after being fired from his next job, he approached the richest import and export firm in Amsterdam “Schroeder and Co" and offers himself as a commercial agent to work with foreign partners. “Schroder and Co” had the trading business virtually everywhere in the world and Heinrich proved to be a real catch for them. Not only he knew languages, he also knew how to trade. He was working for two people and receiving one salary. After a year of hard work he has made a great success – the director of the company made ??him his personal assistant. At that time the most profitable market for the company was Russia. Technical complexity of its development was that the representatives of Russian trading companies generally did not know any foreign language. It was difficult to negotiate. Schliemann took the initiative to rectify the situation and started to learn the Russian language. Soon he became fluent in it and was stationed to Russia. In 1846 Russia met Schliemann with intolerable cold. The path to his dream journey to Troy lied through the endless snow, which still had to be turned into gold. Spring brought Heinrich Schliemann fabulous profits. He started his own company and over the next few years he creates an entire trading empire, which specialized in the purchase of European goods in Amsterdam and selling them in Russia. It seemed the market in Russia is conquered, and Schliemann left to America, where he invested in gold mining. Profiteering gold was successful, but the outbreak of the Crimean War in Russia in 1854 opened new horizons for the company. Schliemann’s company became the general contractor of the Russian army and started an unprecedented fraud. Especially for this military campaign, his company designed boots with cardboard soles, coats with poor quality fabric, straps that sagged under the ammunition weight, leaking flasks, etc. All the goods were presented as such of the best quality. It is difficult to say to what extend these kinds of supply has affected the Russian army which was defeated during that war, but in any case, the supplier had behaved like a criminal. Many years later, he asked the Russian Tsar Alexander II for permission to enter the country to research Scythian burial mounds. The Emperor’s answer to the petition was very brief: "Let him come to be hanged!" From 1867 Schliemann was travelling the world, and came to America in 1868. The same year he took a trip to Greece. In Ithaca he was working on finding the Palace of Odysseus. He was taking his clues from legends. He was successful in his search and discovered a group of over 20 vases, filled with ashes. Then he published a book “Ithaka, der Peloponnesus und Troja”. In this book he described his experience with excavations. This book was written in two languages – German and French. Since then Schliemann often was writing his books in two languages. After he wrote his fifth book, his writings were sent to University of Rostock were he applied for a PhD degree “in abstentia.” which he received later. (Beuster, 2009, 3) In 1869, Schliemann married a Greek woman Sophia Engastromenos and together they got fully emerged in the search for Troy. The existence of Troy was never forgotten by scientists, but there were many discussions as to precise location of it. Schliemann himself thought it was situated in Pinarbasi. (Beuster, 2009, 5) The next year they left for Turkey where he got a confirmation that Hisarlik is where Troy should be looked for. His first dig at that hill Schliemann took illegally. After he received permission from Constantinople officials, he had begun excavations in April 1870. In a relatively short period of time he and his assistants have found at least seven perished cities. And then in 1873 on the day that was tentatively scheduled as the last day of his excavations he found the thing which crowned all his work, and exalted him in the eyes of the whole world – the king Priam’s treasure. Schliemann felt really elated! This treasure brought him both public and academic recognition. (Allen, 1999, 178) With great efforts Schliemann, against his agreements with Turkey, smuggled "treasure of Priam" out of Turkey in a basket with vegetables. Then he behaved like the most ordinary merchant: he began to bargain with the governments of France, England and Russia in order to the best deal to sell golden treasure of Troy. The Turkish government, meanwhile, studied the newspapers that were full of stories about "amateurism" of the Troy’s discoverer, and charged against Schliemann because he appropriated gold which was mined in the Turkish land and smuggle it out of Turkey. Turks stopped the prosecution only after a lofty fine and cancellation of the permission for further excavations. Schliemann had a goal of digging through many layers down to the virgin soil. He knew that Troy was covered with the remains of many centuries following the Trojan War. But he was digging through all those layers, regardless. Nowadays archeologists are also using this method, but for different reasons that Schliemann had. For Schliemann it was a thing of “intuition”, even though it was based on the research (Beuster, 2009,9) Schliemann determined the Homeric stratum this way: the lowest stratum represented a primitive city. Surely, great poet could not be inspired by such a small village, therefore the next level that had majestic city walls and signs of the fire must be The Troy. Schliemann did not have any idea about the stratigraphy, so he assumed that what he found suited the best to be called Troy. He found remainders of the gates, which he named immediately. He found paved streets; however, he did not found anything substantial to prove it was Homer’s Troy. (Allen, 1999, 162) Only shortly before Heinrich’s death it was proved that in the heat of passion he made ??a mistake, the Troy he found was not in the second and the third stratum below, but in the sixth stratum. The treasure that Schliemann found belonged to the king, who lived thousand years before Priam. There were many controversies going on about the finding. Some people admired what Schliemann did; others thought of him as a crook and “amateur” and therefore disregarded his work and made fun of him. When he published his book dedicated to Troy, not only archaeologists, professors and academics but also ordinary journalists openly wrote about Heinrich Schliemann as an absurd amateur, who based his search on poetry. However, the famous "amateur" was certainly not the first one who decided to follow Homer. In XVIII century French archeologist Le Chevalier was digging at Troas. In 1864, Austrian von Hahn laid the exploratory excavation (for 6 years before Schliemann) exactly at the spot where Schliemann later dug up - on the Hisarlik hill. But the one who excavated the city of Troy was still Schliemann! After his death, German scientists did not want for Schliemann to be considered as the discoverer of Troy. When his young colleague dug up Troy VI, one of the stratums which Schliemann skipped, the scientists rejoiced: Let it be not the respected, albeit young, but an archaeologist with a good school! If we look further from this position, then Homer's Troy was not found till the postwar period – Troy VII was dug up by an American Carl W. Blegen. When Germans found out about it, they immediately proclaimed Homeric Troy - the Troy of Heinrich Schliemann! Modern science counted XII cultural stratums of Troy. Schliemann’s Troy II referred to about 2600-2300 BC. Troy I – for 2900-2600 BC – Early Bronze Age. The late Troy has ceased to exist, quietly faded away in 500s AC. Its name is different New Ilium, not Troy. After long hesitations Heinrich decided to give "treasure of Priam" as a gift to Berlin. It happened in 1881, and then thankful Berlin, with the consent of Kaiser Wilhelm I declared Schliemann an honorary citizen of the city. (Schliemann, 2010, 349) Schliemann might be a very controversial figure – he changed even some facts in his autobiography. Some might think of him as a crook, and there are many episodes in his life that support this statement. However, he was a prominent person, pursuing his dream. He was self taught merchant, which abandoned his job and started doing something absolutely different – archeological excavations. And he was doing it to his own expense. However, no one would argue the fact that he was very lucky amateur. He found not only the city of Troy, but the royal tombs at Mycenae, though he never realized whose graves he had dug up there. He has written seven books. He knew many languages, including ancient Greek. He learned it to be able to read Greek authors in their original language It was essential for him as Heinrich Schliemann set the goal – to follow the "poet of poets" Homer literally word by word and to find the legendary city of Troy. Works cited: Allen, Susan Heuck “Finding the walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik” University of California Press, 1999. Print Beuster, Diana “Heinrich Schliemann at Troy and the So-called 'Treasure of Priam", GRIN Verlag, 2009. Print Calder, William M. and other “Myth, Scandal and History” Detroit: Wayne State University Press .1986. Print Schliemann, Heinrich ”Mycenae: A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries at Mycenae and Tiryns” Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print Schliemann, Heinrich “Tiryns: The Prehistoric Palace of the Kings of Tiryns. The Results of the Latest Excavations” Cambridge University Press. 2010. Print Schliemann, Heinrich , Smith, Philip ”Troy and Its Remains: A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries Made on the Site of Ilium, and in the Trojan Plain” Cambridge Library Collection - Archaeology Cambridge University Press. 2010. Print Read More