Читать книгу Troy and Its Remains - Heinrich Schliemann - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Form of the Work—Changing and progressive opinions due to the Novelty of the Discoveries—Chronology—Duration of the GREEK Ilium—Four successive strata of remains beneath its ruins on the hill of Hissarlik—Remains of the Earliest Settlers, who were of the Aryan race—Symbols on their terra-cottas—The Second Settlers, the Trojans of Homer—The Tower of Ilium, Scæan Gate, and City Walls, covered with the ashes of a conflagration—Skeletons denoting a bloody war—The Royal Treasure—Small extent of Troy: not beyond the hill of Hissarlik—Poetical exaggerations of Homer, who only knew it by tradition—The city was wealthy and powerful, though small—Stone weapons and implements, not denoting the “Stone Age”—Contemporaneous use of copper, silver, and gold, for tools, weapons, vases, and ornaments—Inscriptions proving the use of a written language—Splendid remains of pottery—Symbols proving that the Trojans were an Aryan race—Their buildings of stone and wood—Antiquity of the City—The Third Settlers, also of the Aryan race—Their pottery coarser—Musical instruments—Their mode of building—Fewer implements of copper, but those of stone abundant—The Fourth Settlers, of the Aryan race, built the Wooden Ilium—Their progressive decline in civilization—Some copper implements, with tools and weapons of stone—The Greek Ilium built about B.C. 700: ceased to exist in the fourth century after Christ—Evidence of Coins—No Byzantine remains—The Walls of Lysimachus—Metals found in the various strata: copper and bronze, silver, gold, lead: no iron or tin—Sculptures of the Greek age—Metopé of the Sun-God—Images of the owl-faced Athena common to all the pre-Hellenic strata: their various forms—The perforated whorls of terra-cotta, with Aryan symbols—The sign of the Suastika 卐—The plain whorls—Discussion of the site of Troy—Traditionally placed on that of the Greek Ilium—View of Demetrius and Strabo refuted—Opinion of Lechevalier for Bunarbashi, generally accepted, but erroneous—No remains of a great city there—The site really that of Gergis—Fragments of Hellenic pottery only—The three so-called tombs of heroes also Greek—Proposed sites at Chiplak and Akshi-Koï refuted by the absence of remains—Modern authorities in favour of Hissarlik—Ancient types of pottery still made in the Troad—Covers with owl-faces, and vases with uplifted wings—Colouring materials of the pottery—The inscriptions—The author’s relations with the Turkish Government—Professor Max Müller on the owl-headed goddess—Some probable traces of another settlement between the fourth pre-Hellenic people and the Greek colonists.

THE present book is a sort of Diary of my excavations at Troy, for all the memoirs of which it consists were, as the vividness of the descriptions will prove, written down by me on the spot while proceeding with my works.[32]

If my memoirs now and then contain contradictions, I hope that these may be pardoned when it is considered that I have here revealed a new world for archæology, that the objects which I have brought to light by thousands are of a kind hitherto never or but very rarely found, and that consequently everything appeared strange and mysterious to me. Hence I frequently ventured upon conjectures which I was obliged to give up on mature consideration, till I at last acquired a thorough insight, and could draw well-founded conclusions from many actual proofs.

One of my greatest difficulties has been to make the enormous accumulation of débris at Troy agree with chronology; and in this—in spite of long-searching and pondering—I have only partially succeeded. According to Herodotus (VII. 43): “Xerxes in his march through the Troad, before invading Greece (B.C. 480) arrived at the Scamander and went up to Priam’s Pergamus, as he wished to see that citadel; and, after having seen it, and inquired into its past fortunes, he sacrificed 1000 oxen to the Ilian Athena, and the Magi poured libations to the manes of the heroes.”

This passage tacitly implies that at that time a Greek colony had long since held possession of the town, and, according to Strabo’s testimony (XIII. i. 42), such a colony built Ilium during the dominion of the Lydians. Now, as the commencement of the Lydian dominion dates from the year 797 B.C., and as the Ilians seem to have been completely established there long before the arrival of Xerxes in 480 B.C., we may fairly assume that their first settlement in Troy took place about 700 B.C. The house-walls of Hellenic architecture, consisting of large stones without cement, as well as the remains of Greek household utensils, do not, however, extend in any case to a depth of more than two meters (6½ feet) in the excavations on the flat surface of the hill.

As I find in Ilium no inscriptions later than those belonging to the second century after Christ, and no coins of a later date than Constans II. and Constantine II., but very many belonging to these two emperors, as well as to Constantine the Great, it may be regarded as certain that the town began to decay even before the time of Constantine the Great, who, as is well known, at first intended to build Constantinople on that site; but that it remained an inhabited place till about the end of the reign of Constans II., that is till about A.D. 361. But the accumulation of débris during this long period of 1061 years amounts only to two meters or 6½ feet, whereas we have still to dig to a depth of 12 meters or 40 feet, and in many places even to 14 meters or 46½ feet, below this, before reaching the native ground which consists of shelly limestone (Muschelkalk). This immense layer of débris from 40 to 46½ feet thick, which has been left by the four different nations that successively inhabited the hill before the arrival of the Greek colony, that is before 700 B.C., is an immensely rich cornucopia of the most remarkable terra-cottas, such as have never been seen before, and of other objects which have not the most distant resemblance to the productions of Hellenic art. The question now forces itself upon us:—Whether this enormous mass of ruins may not have been brought from another place to increase the height of the hill? Such an hypothesis, as every visitor to my excavations may convince himself at the first glance, is perfectly impossible; because in all the strata of débris, from the native rock, at a depth of from 14 to 16 meters (46 to 52½ feet) up to 4 meters (13 feet) below the surface, we continually see remains of masonry, which rest upon strong foundations, and are the ruins of real houses; and, moreover, because all the numerous large wine, water, and funereal urns that are met with are found in an upright position. The next question is:—But how many centuries have been required to form a layer of débris, 40 and even 46½ feet thick, from the ruins of pre-Hellenic houses, if the formation of the uppermost one, the Greek layer of 6½ feet thick, required 1061 years? During my three years’ excavations in the depths of Troy, I have had daily and hourly opportunities of convincing myself that, from the standard of our own or of the ancient Greek mode of life, we can form no idea of the life and doings of the four nations which successively inhabited this hill before the time of the Greek settlement. They must have had a terrible time of it, otherwise we should not find the walls of one house upon the ruined remains of another, in continuous but irregular succession; and it is just because we can form no idea of the way in which these nations lived and what calamities they had to endure, that it is impossible to calculate the duration of their existence, even approximately, from the thickness of their ruins. It is extremely remarkable, but perfectly intelligible from the continual calamities which befel the town, that the civilization of all the four nations constantly declined; the terra-cottas, which show continuous décadence, leave no doubt of this.

The first settlement on this hill of Hissarlik seems, however, to have been of the longest duration, for its ruins cover the rock to a height of from 4 to 6 meters (13 to 20 feet). Its houses and walls of fortification were built of stones, large and small, joined with earth, and manifold remains of these may be seen in my excavations. I thought last year that these settlers were identical with the Trojans of whom Homer sings, because I imagined that I had found among their ruins fragments of the double cup, the Homeric “δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον.” From closer examination, however, it has become evident that these fragments were the remains of simple cups with a hollow stem, which can never have been used as a second cup. Moreover, I believe that in my memoirs of this year (1873) I have sufficiently proved that Aristotle (Hist. Anim., IX. 40) is wrong in assigning to the Homeric “δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον” the form of a bee’s cell, whence this cup has ever since been erroneously interpreted as a double cup, and that it can mean nothing but a cup with a handle on either side. Cups of such a form are never met with in the débris of the first settlement of this hill; but they frequently occur, and in great quantities, among those of the succeeding people, and also among those of the two later nations which preceded the Greek colony on the spot. The large golden cup with two handles, weighing 600 grammes (a pound and a half), which I found in the royal treasure at the depth of 28 feet in the débris of the second people, leaves no doubt of this fact.[33]

No. 1 Fragment of painted pottery from the lowest stratum (16 M.).

The terra-cottas which I found on the native rock, at a depth of 14 meters (46 feet), are all of a more excellent quality than any met with in the upper strata. They are of a brilliant black, red, or brown colour, ornamented with patterns cut and filled with a white substance; the flat cups have horizontal rings on two sides, the vases have generally two perpendicular rings on each side for hanging them up with cords. Of painted terra-cottas I found only one fragment.[34]

All that can be said of the first settlers is that they belonged to the Aryan race, as is sufficiently proved by the Aryan religious symbols met with in the strata of their ruins (among which we find the Suastika 卐), both upon the pieces of pottery and upon the small curious terra-cottas with a hole in the centre, which have the form of the crater of a volcano or of a carrousel (i.e. a top).[35]

The excavations made this year (1873) have sufficiently proved that the second nation which built a town on this hill, upon the débris of the first settlers (which is from 13 to 20 feet deep), are the Trojans of whom Homer sings. Their débris lies from 7 to 10 meters, or 23 to 33 feet, below the surface. This Trojan stratum, which, without exception, bears marks of great heat, consists mainly of red ashes of wood, which rise from 5 to 10 feet above the Great Tower of Ilium, the double Scæan Gate, and the great enclosing Wall, the construction of which Homer ascribes to Poseidon and Apollo; and they show that the town was destroyed by a fearful conflagration. How great the heat must have been is clear also from the large slabs of stone upon the road leading from the double Scæan Gate down to the Plain: for when I laid this road open a few months ago, all the slabs appeared as uninjured as if they had been put down quite recently; but after they had been exposed to the air for a few days, the slabs of the upper part of the road, to the extent of some 10 feet, which had been exposed to the heat, began to crumble away, and they have now almost disappeared, while those of the lower portion of the road, which had not been touched by the fire, have remained uninjured, and seem to be indestructible. A further proof of the terrible catastrophe is furnished by a stratum of scoriæ of melted lead and copper, from ⅕ to 1–⅕ of an inch thick, which extends nearly through the whole hill at a depth of from 28 to 29½ feet. That Troy was destroyed by enemies after a bloody war is further attested by the many human bones which I found in these heaps of débris, and above all by the skeletons with helmets, found in the depths of the temple of Athena;[36] for, as we know from Homer, all corpses were burnt and the ashes were preserved in urns. Of such urns I have found an immense number in all the pre-Hellenic strata on the hill. Lastly, the Treasure, which some member of the royal family had probably endeavoured to save during the destruction of the city, but was forced to abandon, leaves no doubt that the city was destroyed by the hands of enemies. I found this Treasure on the large enclosing wall by the side of the royal palace, at a depth of 27½ feet, and covered with red Trojan ashes from 5 to 6½ feet in depth, above which was a post-Trojan wall of fortification 19½ feet high.

Trusting to the data of the Iliad, the exactness of which I used to believe in as in the Gospel itself, I imagined that Hissarlik, the hill which I have ransacked for three years, was the Pergamus of the city, that Troy must have had 50,000 inhabitants, and that its area must have extended over the whole space occupied by the Greek colony of Ilium.[37]

Notwithstanding this, I was determined to investigate the matter accurately, and I thought that I could not do so in any better way than by making borings. I accordingly began cautiously to dig at the extreme ends of the Greek Ilium; but these borings down to the native rock brought to light only walls of houses, and fragments of pottery belonging to the Greek period—not a trace of the remains of the preceding occupants. In making these borings, therefore, I gradually came nearer to the fancied Pergamus, but without any better success; till at last as many as seven shafts, which I dug at the very foot of the hill down to the rock, produced only Greek masonry and fragments of Greek pottery. I now therefore assert most positively that Troy was limited to the small surface of this hill; that its area is accurately marked by its great surrounding wall, laid open by me in many places; that the city had no Acropolis, and that the Pergamus is a pure invention of Homer; and further that the area of Troy in post-Trojan times down to the Greek settlement was only increased so far as the hill was enlarged by the débris that was thrown down, but that the Ilium of the Greek colony had a much larger extent at the time of its foundation.[38]

Though, however, we find on the one hand that we have been deceived in regard to the size of Troy, yet on the other we must feel great satisfaction in the certainty, now at length ascertained, that Troy really existed, that the greater portion of this Troy has been brought to light by me, and that the Iliad—although on an exaggerated scale—sings of this city and of the fact of its tragic end. Homer, however, is no historian, but an epic poet, and hence we must excuse his exaggerations.

As Homer is so well informed about the topography and the climatic conditions of the Troad, there can surely be no doubt that he had himself visited Troy. But, as he was there long after its destruction, and its site had moreover been buried deep in the débris of the ruined town, and had for centuries been built over by a new town, Homer could neither have seen the Great Tower of Ilium nor the Scæan Gate, nor the great enclosing Wall, nor the palace of Priam; for, as every visitor to the Troad may convince himself by my excavations, the ruins and red ashes of Troy alone—forming a layer of from five to ten feet thick—covered all these remains of immortal fame; and this accumulation of débris must have been much more considerable at the time of Homer’s visit. Homer made no excavations so as to bring those remains to light, but he knew of them from tradition; for the tragic fate of Troy had for centuries been in the mouths of all minstrels, and the interest attached to it was so great that, as my excavations have proved, tradition itself gave the exact truth in many details. Such, for instance, is the memory of the Scæan Gate in the Great Tower of Ilium, and the constant use of the name Scæan Gate in the plural, because it had to be described as double,[39] and in fact it has been proved to be a double gate. According to the lines in the Iliad (XX. 307, 308), it now seems to me extremely probable that, at the time of Homer’s visit, the King of Troy declared that his race was descended in a direct line from Æneas.[40]

Now as Homer never saw Ilium’s Great Tower, nor the Scæan Gate, and could not imagine that these buildings lay buried deep beneath his feet, and as he probably imagined Troy to have been very large—according to the then existing poetical legends—and perhaps wished to describe it as still larger, we cannot be surprised that he makes Hector descend from the palace in the Pergamus and hurry through the town in order to arrive at the Scæan Gate; whereas that gate and Ilium’s Great Tower, in which it stands, are in reality directly in front of the royal house. That this house is really the king’s palace seems evident from its size, from the thickness of its stone walls, in contrast to those of the other houses of the town, which are built almost exclusively of unburnt bricks, and from its imposing situation upon an artificial hill directly in front of or beside the Scæan Gate, the Great Tower, and the great surrounding Wall. This is confirmed by the many splendid objects found in its ruins, especially the enormous royally ornamented vase with the picture of the owl-headed goddess Athena, the tutelary divinity of Ilium (see No. 219, p. 307); and lastly, above all other things, by the rich Treasure found close by it (Plate II.). I cannot, of course, prove that the name of this king, the owner of this treasure, was really PRIAM; but I give him this name because he is so called by Homer and in all the traditions. All that I can prove is, that the palace of the owner of this treasure, this last Trojan king, perished in the great catastrophe, which destroyed the Scæan Gate, the great surrounding Wall, and the Great Tower, and which desolated the whole city. I can prove, by the enormous quantities of red and yellow calcined Trojan ruins, from five to ten feet in height, which covered and enveloped these edifices, and by the many post-Trojan buildings, which were again erected upon these calcined heaps of ruins, that neither the palace of the owner of the Treasure, nor the Scæan Gate, nor the great surrounding Wall, nor Ilium’s Great Tower, were ever again brought to light. A city, whose king possessed such a treasure, was immensely wealthy, considering the circumstances of those times; and because Troy was rich, it was powerful, had many subjects, and obtained auxiliaries from all quarters.

Troy had therefore no separate Acropolis; but as one was necessary for the great deeds of the Iliad, it was added by the poetical invention of Homer, and called by him Pergamus, a word of quite unknown derivation.

Last year I ascribed the building of the Great Tower of Ilium to the first occupants of the hill; but I have long since come to the firm conviction that it is the work of the second people, the Trojans, because it is upon the north side only, within the Trojan stratum of ruins, and from 16 to 19½ feet above the native soil, that it is made of actual masonry. I have, in my letters, repeatedly drawn attention to the fact, that the terra-cottas which I found upon the Tower can only be compared with those found at a depth of from 36 to 46 feet. This, however, applies only to the beauty of the clay and the elegance of the vessels, but in no way to their types, which, as the reader may convince himself from the illustrations to this work, are utterly different from the pottery of the first settlers.

No. 2. Small Trojan Axes of Diorite (8 M.).

It has been hitherto thought that the occurrence of stone implements indicates the “Age of Stone.” My excavations here in Troy, however, prove this opinion to be completely erroneous; for I very frequently find implements of stone even immediately below the débris belonging to the Greek colony, that is at a depth of 6½ feet, and they occur in very great quantities from a depth of 13 feet downwards. Those, however, in the Trojan stratum, from 23 to 33 feet below the surface, are in general of much better workmanship than those above. I wish to draw attention to the fact that unfortunately, when writing the present book, I made the mistake, which is now inconceivable to me, of applying the name of wedges to those splendidly-cut weapons and implements, the greater part of which are made of diorite, but frequently also of very hard and transparent green stone, such as are given here and in several later illustrations. They are, however, as anyone can convince himself, not wedges but axes, and the majority of them must have been used as battle-axes. Many, to judge from their form, seem to be excellently fitted to be employed as lances, and may have been used as such. I have collected many hundreds of them. But, together with the thousands of stone implements, I found also many of copper; and the frequently discovered moulds of mica-schist for casting copper weapons and implements, as well as the many small crucibles, and small roughly made bowls, spoons, and funnels for filling the moulds, prove that this metal was much used. The strata of copper and lead scoriæ, met with at a depth of from 28 to 29½ feet, leave no doubt that this was the case. It must be observed that all the copper articles met with are of pure copper, without the admixture of any other metal.[41] Even the king’s Treasure contained, besides other articles made of this metal, a shield with a large boss in the centre; a great caldron; a kettle or vase; a long slab with a silver vase welded on to it by the conflagration; and many fragments of other vases.[42]

PLATE II.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE TREASURE OF PRIAM. (Depth 8½ M.)

This Treasure of the supposed mythical king Priam, of the mythical heroic age, which I discovered at a great depth in the ruins of the supposed mythical Troy, is at all events a discovery which stands alone in archæology, revealing great wealth, great civilization and a great taste for art, in an age preceding the discovery of bronze, when weapons and implements of pure copper were employed contemporaneously with enormous quantities of stone weapons and implements. This treasure further leaves no doubt that Homer must have actually seen gold and silver articles, such as he continually describes; it is, in every respect, of inestimable value to science, and will for centuries remain the object of careful investigation.

Unfortunately upon none of the articles of the Treasure do I find an inscription, or any other religious symbols, except the 100 idols of the Homeric “θεὰ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη,” which glitter upon the two diadems and the four ear-rings. These are, however, an irrefragable proof that the Treasure belongs to the city and to the age of which Homer sings.

No. 3. (a). Inscribed Terra-cotta Vase from the Palace (8 M.). (b). The Inscription thereon.

No. 4. Inscribed Terra-cotta Seal (7 M.).

No. 5. Piece of Red Slate, perhaps a Whetstone, with an Inscription (7 M.).

Yet a written language was not wanting at that time. For instance, I found at a depth of 26 feet, in the royal palace, the vase with an inscription, of which a drawing is here given; and I wish to call especial attention to the fact, that of the characters occurring in it, the letter like the Greek P occurs also in the inscription on a seal, found at the depth of 23 feet; the second and third letter to the left of this upon a whorl of terra-cotta,[43] likewise found at a depth of 23 feet; and the third letter also upon two small funnels of terra-cotta, from a depth of 10 feet (see p. 191). I further found in the royal palace the excellent engraved inscription on a piece of red slate; but I see here only one character resembling one of the letters of the inscription on the above-mentioned seal. My friend the great Indian scholar, Émile Burnouf, conjectures that all these characters belong to a very ancient Græco-Asiatic local alphabet. Professor H. Brunn, of Munich, writes to me that he has shown these inscriptions to Professor Haug, and that he has pointed out their relationship and connection with the Phœnician alphabet (from which the Greek alphabet is however derived), and has found certain analogies between them and the inscription on the bronze table which was found at Idalium in Cyprus, and is now in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris. Professor Brunn adds that the connection of things found at Troy with those found in Cyprus is in no way surprising, but may be very well reconciled with Homer, and that at all events particular attention should be paid to this connection, for, in his opinion, Cyprus is the cradle of Greek art, or, so to speak, the caldron in which Asiatic, Egyptian, and Greek ingredients were brewed together, and out of which, at a later period, Greek art came forth as the clear product.

I find in these Trojan layers of débris an abundance of splendid pottery, and more especially large and small cups with two handles, or with one from below in the form of a crown;[44] vases with rings on the sides and with holes in the same direction in the lip, for hanging them up by cords; all kinds of domestic utensils; also a beautifully ornamented flute made of bone, several pieces of other flutes, and a splendidly ornamented piece of ivory, which is part of a lyre with only four strings.