Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/102

My architects have proved to me that, together with M. Burnouf, my collaborator in 1879, I had not rightly distinguished and separated the ruins of the two following settlements, namely, the Second and Third; that we had rightly considered as foundations belonging to the second city the walls of large blocks, 2.50 m. deep (marked q, R, on Plan III. in Ilios); but that we had been mistaken in not connecting with it the layer of calcined ruins which lies immediately upon these walls, and belongs to the second city, and in attributing this burnt stratum to the third settlement, with which it has nothing to do. We had been led into this error by the colossal masses of débris of baked, or, more rightly, of burnt bricks of the second city, which in a very great many places had not been removed by the third settlers, and were lying on a level with their house-foundations, and often even much higher. These débris of burnt bricks are partly derived from houses destroyed in a terrible fire, partly they are the remains of brick walls, which, after having been completely built up of crude bricks, have for solidity's sake been artificially baked by large masses of wood piled up on both sides of them and set on fire simultaneously. The Burnt City proper is, therefore, not the Third, but the Second city, all of whose buildings have been completely destroyed; but, the third city having been built immediately upon it, the layer of débris of the second city is often but insignificant, and in some places even only 0.20 m. deep. The house-founda-