Hindrances through Greek festivals--Thickness of the layers of
_débris_ above the native rock--Date of the foundation of
Troy--Impossibility of the _Bunarbashi_ theory--Homeric epithets
suitable to Hissarlik--Etymology of Ἴλιος, signifying probably the
“fortress of the Sun"--The _Aruna_ of the Egyptian
records--Progress of the platform, and corresponding excavation on
the south--The bulwark of Lysimachus--Ruins of great
buildings--Marks of civilization increasing with the depth--Vases,
and fragments of great urns--A remarkable terra-cotta--A whorl with
the appearance of an inscription.
On the Hill of Hissarlik, May 11th, 1872.
Since my report of the 25th of last month I have only been able to have
ten days’ digging, owing to the various Greek festivals, for even the
poorest Greek of this district would not work on a church festival even
if he could earn 1000 francs in an hour. Turkish workmen were not to be
had, for they are at present occupied with field work. The weather has
been and still is very favourable for making excavations, as the heat
during the day does not yet rise above 20° Réaumur (77° Fahrenheit) in
the shade, and then it never rains here from the beginning of May till
October, except during thunderstorms, and they rarely last more than
half an hour at a time. Moreover, the Plain of Troy is at present still
healthy; the notorious Trojan fevers do not actually begin till July,
when the many stagnant waters have evaporated, and the pestilential
miasma arises from the decomposition of the millions of dead frogs, and
from the dried-up marshes, the ground of which cracks with the heat of
the sun. My wife and I have therefore still six weeks before us, with
the precaution of taking quinine to guard against fever.
I have cleared out the Roman well, which has been repeatedly mentioned,
to a depth of 20 meters (65½ feet), and I find that it is walled only
as far as 52½ feet below the surface of the hill, and then runs into
the limestone rock which forms the native soil. I have caused Georgios
Photidas to make a small tunnel in this rock from the well, and have now
become quite convinced that the ground--upon which, according to Homer,
the Trojan king Dardanus, who had up to that time lived at the foot of
many-fountained Ida, built the town of Dardania (Troy) in the
Plain[127]--is covered with a layer of _débris_ about 16 meters, or
52½ English feet, thick. I must here remind the reader that the ruins
of the Greek colony, which settled on the spot, scarcely extend to a
depth of 6½ feet; that consequently if, with Strabo (XIII. 1, 43) we
suppose the establishment of this colony to have taken place under the
Lydian dominion, that is about 700 B.C., and calculate the duration of
the reigns of the six kings (Dardanus, Erichthonios, Tros, Ilus,
Laomedon, and Priam) who, according to the Iliad (XX. 215-240), preceded
the destruction of Troy, at 200 years, and thus presume the town to have
been founded about 1400 years before Christ, the accumulation of
_débris_ must in this place have amounted to 14 meters, or 46 feet,
during the first 700 years.
I am firmly convinced that, on a glance at my excavations, every one of
the remaining advocates of the antiquated theory that Troy is to be
looked for at the back of the Plain, upon the heights of Bunarbashi,
will at once condemn that theory, for the Acropolis and town which once
stood upon those heights, and the small area of which is accurately
defined by the ruins of the surrounding walls and by the precipices, is
scarcely large enough to have contained a population of 2000 souls; the
accumulation of _débris_ moreover is extremely small. In many places,
even in the middle of the Acropolis, the naked rock protrudes, and
between the area of this small town and Bunarbashi the ground--in some
places pointed, in others abrupt, but in all parts irregular--shows that
no village, much less a town, can ever have stood upon it. Immediately
above Bunarbashi, and in fact wherever there was any earth at all, I and
my guide, with five workmen, made (in August 1868) a long series of
borings at distances of 100 meters (328 feet) apart, as far as the
Scamander, but we found the primary soil in all cases directly, and the
rock at quite an insignificant depth; and nowhere was there a trace of
fragments of pottery or other indications that the place could ever have
been inhabited by human beings. Even in Bunarbashi itself I found the
primary soil at a depth of less than 2 feet. Besides this, if Troy had
been built at the back of the Plain, upon the heights of Bunarbashi,
Homer (_Iliad_, XX. 216-218) would not have expressly said that previous
to its foundation by Dardanus it had not yet been built in the Plain.
The primary soil of Hissarlik is indeed less than 20 meters (65½
feet) above the Plain, immediately at the foot of the hill; but at all
events the Plain itself, and especially that part bordering upon the
hill, has increased in height considerably in the course of 31
centuries. But even if this had not been the case, still the Troy built
upon this hill running out into the Plain would, on account of its high
and imposing position, deserve the Homeric epithets of ὀφρυόεσσα,
αἰπεινή, and ἠνεμόεσσα, especially the latter; for one of my greatest
troubles here is the continual high wind, and it cannot possibly have
been otherwise in Homer’s time. It is assuredly time that the Bunarbashi
theory, which stands in direct contradiction with all the statements of
the Iliad, should now at last come to an end. The theory, in fact, would
never have arisen had its advocates, instead of spending one hour,
remained a whole day on the heights, and made investigations even with
the aid of a single workman.
As I observed in my last report, I here find the sun represented in the
centre of all the innumerable round ornamented terra-cottas in the form
of the volcano and top (_carrousel_), and yesterday I even found one
upon which the central sun was surrounded by five other suns, each of
them with twelve rays.[128]
I know very well that some would derive the name of the town of Ilium
(Ἴλιος or Ἴλιον) from the Sanscrit word _vilû_, “fortress,” and Ἥλιος
from a lost masculine form of Σελήνη, probably Σείριος, and the thought
involuntarily forces itself upon me, when looking at the above-mentioned
terra-cottas with the five suns in a circle round the central sun, that
the image of the Sun which occurs thousands and thousands of times must
be connected with the name of Troy, namely Ἴλιος, for Ἴλιον only occurs
once in Homer (Iliad, XV. 71); he always elsewhere speaks of Ἴλιος, and
always uses this word as a feminine. Homer, it is true, always says
Ἠέλιος instead of Ἥλιος, but in my opinion the root of both is ἕλη or
εἵλη, from the verb αἱρέω, the aorist of which is εἷλον. In Germany,
according to the Erasmian pronunciation εἵλη is certainly pronounced
_heila_, and εἷλον, _heilon_; but in the modern Greek pronunciation εἵλη
is _ili_; εἷλον, _ilon_; and Ἥλιος, _ilios_. There are a number of
proofs that the Erasmian pronunciation is radically wrong, and that the
modern Greek is the correct one. Among these I will only mention that
all the Greek words which passed over into the Russian language, when
Russia embraced Christianity 900 years ago, are pronounced in Russian
exactly as they still are in Greece; and moreover that those who
decipher the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions (especially, I believe, J.
Oppert, in Paris), have pointed out that the Greek names, which occur in
these inscriptions from the time of the Seleucidæ, are represented in
the cuneiform writing exactly according to the modern Greek
pronunciation. Now, if out of the word εἵλη, ἕλη, or εἷλον, there has
arisen Ἠέλιος and Ἥλιος, then surely by the sameness of the
pronunciation there may have arisen out of one of the first three words
in pre-Homeric times Ἴλιος in the feminine for πόλις Ἡλίου or Ἰλίου,
signifying “Sun-castle,” for the earlier meaning of πόλις was certainly
castle, fortress, or acropolis, as for instance in the Iliad, VI. 88,
257, 317, XXII. 383. Although I am well aware that Egyptian scholars
have hitherto found no relationship between the hieroglyphic and
Sanscrit languages, yet I cannot help mentioning that three years ago,
in the Institute of France, I heard a lecture by the Vicomte de Rougé,
who had found in a papyrus the names of the powers leagued against
Rameses III., and among these the state of _Arouna_ or _Aruna_, which he
without hesitation identified with Ilium, as he thought that this was
the only way in which the latter word could be rendered in the
hieroglyphic language. Now, curiously enough, according to Max
Müller[129] and Adalbert Kuhn,[130] the Sanscrit word _Aruna_ signifies
“charioteer of the sun.” I leave it to Egyptian and Sanscrit scholars to
judge whether and how far this may serve to confirm what I have said
above.
Although since Easter I have been obliged to pay my men 1 piaster more
per diem, which makes their wages 10 piasters or 2 francs a day, still I
am now working with 130 men; and I firmly hope by the 1st of October to
have carried my great platform through the entire hill, preserving
exactly the same breadth; for while my wife and I, with 85 workmen, are
busy on the platform on the north side, Georgios Photidas and 45 men
have for 10 days been working towards us from a second platform on the
south side. Unfortunately, however, the slope of the hill on the south
side is so slight, that we were forced to begin this work 16¼ feet
below the surface, in order to have room and freedom for removing the
_débris_; we have, however, given it a dip of 14°, so that it must reach
the primary soil at a length of about 75 meters (246 feet). This
southern platform is under the sole direction of Georgios Photidas, for
he has proved himself to be a very skilful engineer, and he works
forward very quickly through his cleverly devised side terraces. He has
hitherto, however, had only light _débris_ to remove, and has not yet
come upon that very hard, tough, damp _débris_ which I have on my
platform at the depth of 10 to 16 meters (33 to 52½ feet). To-day he
has brought to light a splendid bastion, composed of large finely-hewn
blocks of limestone, not joined by either cement or lime, which,
however, does not seem to me to be older than the time of Lysimachus. It
is certainly very much in our way, but it is too beautiful and venerable
for me to venture to lay hands upon it, so it shall be preserved.
On the south side the accumulation of _débris_ from the Greek period is
much more considerable than on the north side and upon the plateau; and
thus far Georgios Photidas constantly finds Greek pottery and those
terra-cottas with two holes at one end, which, in my excavations
hitherto, ceased entirely at a depth of 2 meters (6½ feet). The
greater portion of these round articles have the potter’s stamp already
mentioned, representing a bee or fly with outspread wings above an
altar. (_See Cuts_, Nos. 37-40, p. 65.)
I have also given the platform on the north side an inclination of 10°
in a length of 66 feet, so as to be able to work forward on the primary
soil, without the indescribable trouble of lowering it another 6½
feet, and of thus having to remove 4000 cubic yards of _débris_. This
primary soil sufficiently proves that all those enormous masses of
immense stones, generally more or less hewn, with which, as already
said, I had continually to battle at a depth of from 10 to 14 meters (33
to 46 feet), are the remains of large buildings, which in the course of
centuries have been erected successively upon the ruins of others. For
it does not appear conceivable to me that even a large palace, were it
six storeys high, could leave such colossal ruins, which, as they reach
down to the rock, are nearly 20 feet in height.
For some days these masses of stone have diminished in number, but we
continually find many single large blocks. Instead of the stone strata,
however, we now have before us, upon the whole breadth of the platform
(230 feet), and to the height of 20 feet (hence at a depth of from 10 to
16 meters, 33 to 52½ feet), a damp wall as hard as stone, composed of
ashes mixed with small shells, bones, boars’ tusks, &c., exactly like
that which we before found at the east end. This mass is so tough, that
it is only by making shafts, and breaking down the walls by means of
huge iron levers, that we manage to get on at all.
The signs of a higher civilization increasing with the greater
depth--which I mentioned in my last report when speaking of the large
urn with Assyrian inscriptions--continue down to the native soil. Close
above it I find a great quantity of fragments of brilliant black and
sometimes red or brown pottery, with engraved decorations, of a quality
more excellent than I have hitherto met with even in the highest strata,
among the ruins of the Greek period. I also found several fragments of
cups, the lower part of which likewise forms a cup, but not a large one,
and hence I do not doubt that these are fragments of double cups (δέπας
ἀμφικύπελλον). In Homer it indeed seems as if all double cups were made
of gold or silver with a gilt rim,[131] but I do not doubt that there
were at the same time also double cups made of clay.[132]
[Illustration: No. 76. Fragment of a Vase of polished black Earthenware,
with Pattern inlaid in White, from the Lowest Stratum (14 M.).]
The other vessels, of which I found fragments, were made so as to be
carried by strings, as is proved by the two rings projecting beside one
another on either side. I also found upon the primary soil the head of a
brilliant black pitcher, with a beak-shaped mouth bent back; also the
fragment of a vessel painted white, but divided into two compartments by
black lines drawn horizontally; the upper compartment contains
undulating black lines, which are perhaps meant to represent water, the
lower one is filled with a row of arrow-shaped decorations, with square
pointed heads, in the centre of which there is always a dot.
[Illustration: No. 77. Fragment of Terra-cotta, perhaps part of a box,
found on the primitive Rock (16 M.).]
At the same depth I found fragments of large water or funereal urns with
engraved ornaments of various descriptions; also a square piece of
terra-cotta painted black and ornamented all round with lines and four
rows of dots filled with a white substance. As appears from the upper
and the lower side, and from the two perforations, it must have been the
setting and decoration of a wooden jewel-casket. It is made with so much
symmetry and looks so elegant, that I at first thought it was ebony
inlaid with ivory.
At the depth of 8 meters (26 feet) I found a terra-cotta seal an inch
and a half in length, with a hole for suspending it; there are a number
of signs upon it resembling the ancient Koppa--like that stamped upon
Corinthian coins.[133]
At a depth of 5 meters (16¼ feet), I found to-day a very pretty jar
with three feet, which is evidently intended to represent a woman,
probably the Ilian Athena, for it has two breasts and a navel.
[Illustration: No. 78. A Trojan Terra-cotta Seal (8 M.).]
The snakes seem to have been enticed out of their winter quarters by the
warm weather which has set in; for it is ten days since I have seen any.
Amid all the fatigues and troubles of the excavations there is this
among other pleasures, that time never hangs heavy on one’s hands.
[Illustration: No. 78ª. Terra-cottas with Aryan Emblems.]