Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/307

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
§ IV.]
EXPLORATION OF TUMULUS OF PROTESILAUS.
257

adolescunt." This tumulus is now called "Kara Agatch Tepeh," which means, "hill planted with black trees." On my visit to the place, I went in company with my Turkish delegate Moharrem Effendi, a servant, two gendarmes, and four strong workmen, on horseback down to Koum Kaleh, whence we crossed the Hellespont in a boat to Seddul Bahr, and proceeded thence on foot. I was amazed to find not only the tumulus, but also the gardens around it, strewn with fragments of thick lustrous black pottery; of bowls with long horizontal tubes for suspension on two sides of the rim, like Nos. 37–42, pp. 217, 218, in Ilios; or of vases with double vertical tubular holes for suspension on the sides, like Nos. 23–25, pp. 214, 215, in Ilios; also with fragments of shining black bowls, with an incised ornamentation filled with chalk to strike the eye, like Nos. 28–35, p. 216, in Ilios. This pottery only occurs at Troy in the first city, and it is by far the most ancient I have ever seen. It is therefore quite inconceivable how, after having been exposed here for perhaps four thousand years to frost and heat, rain and sunshine, it could still look quite fresh; but it bewilders the mind still more to think how the chalk, with which the ornamentation was filled in, could have withstood for long ages the inclemencies of the seasons. I also picked up there many feet of terra-cotta tripods; saddle-querns of trachyte (like Nos. 74, 75, p. 234, and No. 678, p. 447, in Ilios); small knives or saws of chalcedony or flint (like Nos. 93–98, p. 246, in Ilios); some rude hammers of black diorite (like No. 83, p. 237, in Ilios), together with a very fine specimen of a perforated hammer and axe of diorite, which I represent here under No. 134, and a fine axe and hammer of grey diorite (like No. 621, p. 438, in Ilios), with grooves on both sides, showing that the perforation had been commenced but abandoned. I also picked up there a certain number of corn-bruisers of silicious stone (like Nos. 80, 81, p. 236, in Ilios).

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.