Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/302

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252
THE HEROIC TUMULI IN THE TROAD.
[Chap. VI.

For similar reasons I was very anxious to excavate the tumulus of Patroclus again, in order to gather the potsherds, which I felt sure of finding. The diameter of this tumulus at the base is 27 mètres, whilst according to the measurement of Choiseul-Gouffier[1] it was only 16 feet, or 5.33 m.: he must therefore have had a strange mode of measuring; but his whole work[2] is of the same character, and abounds with errors not less absurd and ridiculous. The diameter at the top is 8 mètres; the perpendicular height, 6 mètres. I sank in it from the top a shaft 3 mètres long and broad, and dug it down to the rock. I found this tumulus, from the top down to a depth of 3.45 m., to consist of light-coloured clay mixed with stones; then followed a layer, 0.40 m. deep, of red and light-coloured clay mixed with sand, and afterwards a layer, 0.40 m. deep, of very light-coloured clay; the lowest stratum, 1.25 m. deep, consists of dark brown clay. As we reached the rock at a depth of 5.50 m., it is evident that there was an elevation of the ground 0.50 m. high at the spot.

I found in this tumulus exactly the same archaic pottery as in the tumulus of Achilles, though in a much less considerable quantity; further, a long fragment of a flute of potstone, the lapis ollaris of Pliny, of which also the flutes are made which I found in my excavation in Ithaca and Mycenae.[3] I found here likewise neither human bones, nor ashes, nor charcoal, nor any other traces of a burial. We have, therefore, to add the conical mounds of Achilles and Patroclus to the six other tumuli, which my previous exploration had proved to be mere cenotaphia or memorials. That such cenotaphia or memorials were in general use at a remote antiquity, is proved by various passages in Homer. Thus, Pallas Athené directs Telemachus to erect a cenotaph

  1. ↑ C. G. Lenz, Die Ebene von Troia, etc., p. 64.
  2. ↑ Voyage Pittoresque de la Grèce. Paris, 1820.
  3. ↑ See Mycenae. p. 78.
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