the discovery of Troy

淇园之竹

When he was a hungry, unhappy little boy Heinrich Schliemann had heard the story of Troy. An old man had read him the poems of Homer. He accepted them at once as true stories and he never changed his mind, and from that time he was determined to see the city himself. This became his main object in life.

Homer's story was about the great King Priam of Troy. Prism's son, Paris, stole Helen, the beautiful wife of another king, called Menelaus. Helen of Troy has never been forgotten. Her beauty started a long war between two Greek cities, but nobody blames her; Homer praised her great beauty, and she is admired for being the most beautiful woman in history.

When Helen was captured Menelaus collected his friends together, and with the King of Mycenae, whose name was Agamemnon, he sailed to Troy. However, Prism refused to return Helen and so the long war began. Both sides fought with courage for years, but the Greeks were unable to break through the huge walls of Troy.

Eventually they decided on a trick. They built a great, hollow, wooden horse outside the city, and the Trojans believed this was some holy treasure valued by the Greeks. During the fighting, therefore, the Trojans stole the horse and dragged it inside the city, not knowing that a few Greeks were hidden inside the horse. When it was dark these men crept out of the horse and opened the city gates. The Greeks were ready to rush inside, and so Troy was seized. King Prism, Homer writes, only had time to bury his treasure in the city before the Greeks killed him.

Schliemann was determined to find the ruins of Troy. The way Homer had described the great city proved to him that it was an actual place. He believed that it lay behind the protection of high walls, and he was sure that some of these walls were still standing. His intention was to find them and to prove that the city of Troy was real.

When Schliemann was forty-six years old he had amassed a large fortune, and so he had enough money to carry out his intentions. In Homer's poem the place where Troy had stood was often mentioned, and Schliemann followed the poet's directions for the journey. The directions led him to the coast of Turkey where there were several hills which could contain the ruins of Troy. He was looking for a place near a port where the Greek ships could have come.

Schliemann knew, the instant he saw it, that he had found the actual place where the ruins of Troy were buried. A hill called Hissarlek stood one mile from the coast. Greek ships could have come into harbour near the city. It was a good natural fort. Schliemann was sure that he had found the right place, and he started digging instantly.

There was one strange difficulty in finding Homer's Troy. There were so many cities in the hill of Hissarlek that it was impossible for Schliemann to know which one was Troy! Seven cities had been built here on top of each other, and at the bottom of all these, there was a Stone Age village.

In fact, Schliemann missed the actual Troy of Homer's poem. He dug too deeply and went down through the city for which he was hunting — the walls he found were the walls of an older city. He did not have the knowledge that we now have, and so he destroyed many important things. But he proved that the stories of Homer were about real history — Troy had been an actual city, and perhaps Helen had been an actual woman. There had been a great civilization in Greece long before Athens became famous.

Schliemann, while digging at Troy, found many wonderful things, but he was still not satisfied when the end of his work came near. One dream had not yet come true: he had hoped to find the treasure of King Priam. Homer had written that the treasure had been hidden in fear and haste while the Greeks destroyed Troy. Schliemann could never be really satisfied until he had found it. Although thousands of years had passed, Heinrich Schliemann still expected to find Priam's treasure waiting for him!

He had planned to leave the work on 15th June, 1873. On 14th June he found the treasure! Probably it wasn't King Priam's actual treasure; but it was certainly treasure that had belonged to some great man. Schliemann's wife saw it first, hidden in a wall. There were dozens of workmen around the couple, but they sent them away and Schliemann and his wife dug the treasure out themselves.

There was a priceless fortune in gold; more than twelve hundred gold rings had been hidden, for example, and two dozen gold necklaces and a couple of fine gold crowns were also there. Schliemann placed one crown on his wife's head — perhaps, he thought, the last person wearing it had been Helen of Troy.

Archaeologists are still digging at Troy and are still finding interesting things. Slowly they are separating one city from another; they are examining every spoonful of earth. But patient digging was not work that Schliemann enjoyed; he was only satisfied with big finds. When he had found a treasure he wanted to move on. Having found Priam's treasure he was then ready to leave Troy.

Once more he was determined to dig in a place that Homer had described, and his next intention was to follow King Agamemnon from his victory at Troy back to his own city of Mycenae in Greece. Mycenae had been a grander city than Troy; Homer had called Mycenae 'rich in gold' and Schliemann was always eager to find more treasure.

Archaeologists were already working at Mycenae. It was not an unknown place, like Hissarlek. Everyone was hoping to find the graves of its kings. Later Greeks had written about the fortune buried with them, a fortune that had never been found.

Other diggers were working outside the walls of Mycenae. The ground inside the walls was hard rock, and most people thought that nobody could be buried in rock; but Schliemann had read a Greek history describing the grave of Agamemnon inside the walls, and he accepted this as the truth and began drilling through the rock. As usual, he was lucky.

Twenty-three feet down Schliemann found five graves cut out of the rock, and wonderful gold treasure met his eyes. The treasure at Troy had indeed been collected and hidden in a hurry. This new fortune had been buried with a great king and his family for their lasting honour. Everything was gold. Gold was sewn all over the clothes of the royal family. They wore gold crowns and rings and chains. Two babies were covered completely in gold. There were rare gold cups and swords with gold handles. The men wore gold shields for their protection and gold masks over their heads. When Schliemann lifted the finest mask he saw the actual face of the ancient king — his eyes, his mouth, his perfect teeth. Even the skin of the face was still there. Staring at the perfection of this face was probably Schliemann's greatest moment. He sent a message to the then King of Greece in Athens:

'I have looked upon the face of Agamemnon!'

No archaeologist has been luckier than Heinrich Schliemann. Treasure seemed to rise out of the earth around him! But his discoveries were not completely accidental. It was not just by accident that he found Troy and the graves at Mycenae. He was determined to follow the advice of the poet Homer and in so doing he deserved his great success.

郭襄

最幸运的盗墓者。