Treasure Seekers: Glories of the Ancient Aegean Page #3

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Frank Calvert who owned another mound,

the site of many prior civilizations.

Calvert believed his mound held

the real Troy far beneath the surface.

Frank Calvert explained to Schliemann

that he had done some excavations there

which took him below the Greek

and Roman levels,

into deep deposits where were earlier.

So he said there was a very good chance

that in these deep burial deposits

you will find the Troy

of the Trojan War.

And that convinced Schliemann;

it gave him something to do.

But Schliemann didn't have a clue

how to begin.

Dear Mr. Calvert, have I to take a tent

and iron baluster and pillar with me?

What sort of hat is best

against the scorching sun?

Please give me an exact statement of

all of the implements of whatever kind

and of all the necessaries

you would advise me to take with me.

With Calvert's encouragement Schliemann

began digging in earnest in October 1871.

On the first day, he hired 8 men.

By day three there were 80.

Caution was not his style.

Assuming Homer's Troy lay

at the bottom of the mound,

Schliemann had his men dig a great

gash right through the center of it.

One must plunge immediately

into the depths.

Only then will one find things.

On their way down the men uncovered

not one city, but many of them.

But Schliemann didn't let these other

Troys get in his way.

You can see when he began that

his methods were very, very crude.

He was going in with winches

and crowbars and battering rams.

The horrifying tales are spelled out

in some of his writings.

Nowadays, one just blenches

at the thought of it.

Numbers of immense blocks of stone

which we continually come upon

cause great trouble and have to be

got out and removed.

All of my workmen hurry to see

the enormous weight roll down

and settle itself at some distance

in the plain.

Schliemann was discarding

priceless relics

from thousands of years

of civilization on the site.

Thankfully, rains closed

the season early.

But the next year he was back,

this time attacking the mound

with 150 men under the command

of a railroad engineer.

Often by Schliemann's side

was his new Greek wife, Sophia,

who won his heart

by reciting from the Iliad.

Forging ahead,

Schliemann continued to aim straight

for the bottom of the mound,

haphazardly uncovering

ancient stone walls

and collecting pottery and other

artifacts along the way.

What Schliemann did was to go down

deep into this complex, complex site.

And he did try to understand

how the layers had built up

one on top of the other.

He wasn't bad at either;

he was quite observant.

Of course now we would do it

in much finer detail than he did,

but he was the one to reveal

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