In Search of the Trojan War (12 page)

What was remarkable about Tiryns was that here Mycenaean palace civilisation came to life with some very close parallels with Homer’s descriptions, and it is somewhat surprising that Schliemann refrained from evolving them (perhaps he was being encouraged to be less hasty in jumping to conclusions!). As any visitor to the site today knows, Tiryns gives a particularly vivid impression of the world of the Bronze-Age warlords: the ascent up the ramp to the main entrance, flanked on the right by an immense tower of Cyclopean stones, and on the left by corbelled galleries to give covering fire; the massive entrance passage leading to a main gate which must have looked much as the Lion Gate at Mycenae; then the colonnaded outer hall and courtyard
which led into a magnificent columned inner court facing the royal hall, the megaron (royal hall) with its porch, anteroom and throne-room; the throne-room itself with a large circular hearth in the centre, its walls decorated with alabaster and inlaid with a bordering of blue glass paste (just as Homer mentions); all this could be recovered from the foundations and debris which lay only inches below the remains of the Byzantine church. Particularly exciting for Schliemann were fragments of frescoes showing battle and hunting scenes, and one extraordinary depiction of a youth leaping a bull (a theme already known from signet rings). The layout of the palace, the hearth, the bathroom, the blue glass kyanos, all seemed reflected in Homer’s portrayal of the Heroic Age. ‘I have brought to light the great palace of the legendary kings of Tiryns,’ wrote Schliemann, ‘so that from now until the end of time … it will be impossible ever to publish a book on ancient art that does not contain my plan of the palace of Tiryns.’ Typical Schliemann hyperbole – but he was not, this time, indulging in pure fantasy: one learned critic called his book ‘the most important contribution to archaeological science that has been published this century’.

THE ‘PALACE OF MINOS’ AT KNOSSOS: ‘THE ORIGINAL HOME OF MYCENAEAN CIVILISATION’?

After the deserved success of the Tiryns dig, with the book finished and ready to come out, Schliemann fretted after other fields to conquer, and wrote in March 1885:

I am fatigued and have an immense desire to withdraw from excavations and to pass the rest of my life quietly. I feel I cannot stand any longer this tremendous work. Besides, wherever I hitherto put the spade into the ground, I always discovered new worlds for archaeology at Troy, Mycenae, Orchomenos, Tiryns – each of them have brought to light wonders. But fortune is a capricious woman, perhaps she would now turn me her back; perhaps I should henceforwards only
find fiascos! I ought to imitate Rossini, who stopped after having composed a few but splendid operas, which can never be excelled.

And it must be said that the last ten years of Schliemann’s career form an anticlimax to the sensational discoveries of the 1870s. How could they not? In the main, though, it was a question of luck, as so much archaeology is. Schliemann’s instinct did not fail him. Behind it, as always, lay the simple assumption that behind the Homeric world was a real prehistoric Aegean world; that the places Homer says were important dynastic centres were in fact palace sites of the Bronze Age. This simple assumption may seem obvious now, but it is only through archaeology that it has been possible to demonstrate it. (Remember, too, that in the nineteenth century no one knew, as we have since 1952, that Greek was the language of the palaces: very few scholars would have bet on this in Schliemann’s day.)

Late in 1888 Schliemann headed for the southern Peloponnese and searched in vain for King Nestor’s palace at Pylos, which had provided the second biggest contingent in the Trojan War. He had already visited the area in 1874, looking for the ‘cave of Nestor’ on the steep acropolis of Koryphasion near Pylos Bay; there in a cavern he found sherds of the ‘so-called Mycenaean type’, the first such find on the western coast. But at Pylos he found no royal graves, and the location of the palace itself – a famous conundrum since antiquity – evaded Schliemann. It was not until roadmaking activities started in the year of his death that the first hints were gathered of the whereabouts of the palace on Englianos hill; subsequently tholos tombs were found in the vicinity in 1912 and 1926, prior to the dramatic uncovering of the palace in 1939 (
see here
).

Following the track of the heroes, Schliemann explored the Evrótas valley in Sparta, looking for the palace of Menelaos and Helen herself. He ascended the Menelaion hill at Therapne, overlooking the modern town of Sparta, where the massive plinth of the later classical shrine to Helen and Menelaos still stands. Again disappointed, Schliemann declared that there were
no remains from the Bronze Age on the site. Ironically enough, it was only months afterwards that the Greek archaeologist Tsountas (who had followed Schliemann at Mycenae) noted signs which did indeed point to Mycenaean occupation of the Menelaion site; in 1910 an important building was excavated by the British only 100 yards from the shrine, and dramatic new finds in the 1970s suggest that the main palace site in Lakonia at the time of the Trojan War was indeed on this site (
see here
): Helen, if she existed, may well have lived here.

Many other sites were suggested to Schliemann by his growing army of admirers. Perhaps the most interesting in the light of future discoveries was that of the English scholar Boscawen who was working on Hittite inscriptions, then an absolutely new field. On 14 January 1881 he wrote to Schliemann: ‘We have often expressed the wish that some day you would cast a favourable eye on the pre-Hellenic remains in Asia Minor, especially those at Boghaz Keui and [Alaça] eyuk on the Halys.’ Boghaz Köy indeed would turn out to be one of the greatest of all Bronze-Age sites in the Mediterranean (
see here
). But Schliemann’s eye was on Crete. There he hoped to crown his achievement.

Many scholars of the time thought Crete might provide the link between the Aegean world and the great civilisations of the Near East. For Schliemann the attempt to obtain permission to dig there became one of the obsessions of the last ten years of his life. ‘My days are numbered,’ he wrote as early as 1883, ‘and I would love to explore Crete before I am gone.’ His collaborator Virchow agreed: ‘No other place is apt to yield a way station between Mycenae and the East.’ So Schliemann’s visit to Knossos in the spring of 1886 was exciting, even for him (legend has it that on his landfall he scandalised the local Turks by falling on his knees and offering a prayer of thanks to Dictaean Zeus!).

There had in fact already been an excavation at Knossos in 1878 by a local man, the aptly named Minos Kalokairinos, who was probably inspired by Schliemann’s dig at Mycenae. Schliemann knew of his finds, for they had been published by his correspondent Fabricius and had provoked much interest.
Kalokairinos showed Schliemann the finds in his house in Heraklion and then took him out to the site, where rooms were still exposed to a height of 6 or 7 feet, one still ‘coated with two broad bands of deep red colour’. What he saw there so excited Schliemann that he wrote from the spot to his friend Max Müller (in English), on 22 May 1886:

Dr Dörpfeld and I have examined most carefully the site of Knossos which is marked by potsherds and ruins of the Roman time. Nothing is visible above ground, which might be referred to the so-called heroic age – not even a fragment of terracotta – except on a hillock, almost the size of the Pergamos of Troy, which is situated in the middle of the town and appears to us to be altogether artificial. Two large well-wrought blocks of hard limestone, which were peeping out from the ground induced Mr Minos Kalokairinos of Heracleion to dig here five holes in which came to light an outer wall and parts of walls with antae of a vast edifice
similar
to the prehistoric palace of Tiryns, and apparently of the same age, for the pottery in it is perfectly identical with that found in Tiryns. …

Schliemann resolved to dig there:

By its splendid situation close to the Asiatic coast, its delicious climate and its exuberant fertility, Crete must have been coveted from the first by the peoples of the coastlands; besides the most ancient myths refer to Crete and especially to Knossos, I should therefore not at all wonder if I found here on the virgin soil the remnants of a civilisation, in comparison to which even the Trojan War is an event of yesterday.

Schliemann once again could hardly have been closer to the mark, for this was precisely what Arthur Evans would uncover in 1900. Max Müller’s reply to this remarkable letter, written from Oxford on 5 June, gives an added twist: ‘Crete is a perfect rookery of nations, and there, if anywhere,
you ought to find the first attempts at writing, as adapted to Western wants
.’ (My italics.)

There have been few more brilliant predictions in the history of archaeology, for it was at Knossos that Linear B was discovered, the script of the Aegean Late Bronze Age. Indeed it is possible that before he died Schliemann saw a single Linear B tablet which was found in Kalokairinos’ excavation, the first known find in modern times.

The fascinating material in Kalokairinos’ collection (which was destroyed in the liberation of Crete in 1898) only fuelled Schliemann’s ambitions: ‘I would like to conclude my life’s work with a great undertaking in the to me familiar field of Homeric geography, that is to say, with the excavation of the prehistoric palace of Knossos.’ He was back in Crete negotiating for the purchase of the site in spring 1889, still hoping to dig ‘this palace so similar to that of Tiryns’. But the following year, unable to agree terms, he abandoned the project and returned to Troy. He was never to return to Crete, and deeply regretted his failure; writing in the last months of his life he admitted that it had been at Knossos that ‘I hoped to discover the original home of Mycenaean civilisation’.

RETURN TO TROY

During these years Troy was still the central theme of Schliemann’s career as an excavator. Twenty years had now elapsed since he had first set foot in the Troad, and still the central driving mystery remained unsolved. Had Homer’s Troy stood at Hisarlik? If so, which level was it? Where were the indications of cultural contact with the world he had uncovered at Mycenae? Where
was
the Heroic Age? To examine these questions we must go back in time.

Flushed with his triumphs at Mycenae, Schliemann had returned to Troy in 1878 and 1879 for two major campaigns. He surveyed the plain and believed that he had ‘blown up’ the ancient and modern theory ‘that at the time of the Trojan War there was a deep gulf in the plain of Troy’. As for the city itself, closer inspection of the strata enabled Schliemann to recognise two
further ‘cities’: one, the sixth, he hesitantly thought a pre-Greek settlement founded by the Lydians (this was the level of the Grey Minyan pottery like that at Orchomenos); the other was in the older, prehistoric, levels and caused him to raise his Homeric city from second to third from bottom. The basic stratification had now taken shape and Schliemann seems to have felt his work on Hisarlik done: ‘I think my mission accomplished and in a week hence I shall stop forever excavating Troy,’ he wrote on 25 May 1879. The 1879 campaign was followed by the book which has justly been called his masterpiece,
Ilios
, remarkable not merely for its description of the finds and its thoroughgoing account of the literary sources, but for its scientific appendices by Schliemann’s friends and collaborators. It was, by the standards of the time, a considerable achievement by one who had on his own admission started out an amateur. As Rudolf Virchow wrote in the preface, ‘The treasure digger has become a scholar.’

With typical
élan
Schliemann wrote to his American publisher: ‘There is no other Troy to excavate … this my present work will remain in demand as long as there are admirers of Homer in the world, nay as long as this globe will be inhabited by men.’ But privately his doubts were still there. Had he really found Priam’s palace? If Mycenae and his Troy were contemporary, where were the connections? Now that he had excavated a mainland Mycenaean royal cemetery and knew what its culture looked like, the cultural isolation and backwardness of his Troy seemed all the stranger. So though his book claimed finality – such are the demands of publishers as well as Schliemann’s own bent – he could not disguise his own underlying concern. The facts simply did not fit. Indeed the only solution was that Homer had lived so long after the event that he had magnified a tiny kernel of fact into the great legend:

The imagination of the bards had full play; the small Ilium grew great in their songs. … I wish I could prove Homer to have been an eyewitness of the Trojan War! Alas, I cannot do it! … My excavations have reduced the Homeric Ilium to its real proportion.

In November 1879 he wrote to his German publisher, ‘Now the only question is whether Troy has
only existed in the poet’s imagination
, or in reality. If the latter is accepted, Hisarlik must and will be universally acknowledged to mark its site. …’ (My italics.) But of course, to admit that the glaring discrepancy between Homer and the archaeological fact was the product of poetic fantasy was but a short step from suggesting the whole thing was fiction. Within three years of the 1878–9 dig he wrote,

I thought I had settled the Trojan question forever … but my doubts increased as time wore on. … Had Troy been merely a small fortified borough, a few hundred men might have taken it in a few days and the whole Trojan War would either have been a total fiction, or it would have had but a slender foundation.

In the back of his mind was the thought that either Hisarlik was refusing to give up its secrets, or he had got the wrong place.

Still perplexed by the mystery that he had found no apparent relationship between the Mycenaean world and Troy, he went back to Turkey in May 1881 and spent fifteen days trekking on horseback, alone but for local guides, re-examining all the other sites in the Troad; if he was looking for another possible site for Troy he did not say, nor did he find one. But in 1882 he came back for another season. This time, as we have seen, he had lured Wilhelm Dörpfeld away from the team at Olympia, and the young man’s fine eye for architectural detail soon clarified the mess Schliemann had left from earlier campaigns. ‘I regret now not having such architects with me from the beginning,’ he wrote, ‘but even now it is not too late.’