Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/328

opposite bank of the Scamander, having been built simultaneously with it, and having been together with it the key to the road which leads through the valley of the Scamander into Asia Minor. I have further proved that the accumulation of ancient ruins and débris, which exceeds sixteen mètres in depth on the hill of Hissarlik, is quite insignificant on the Bali Dagh, as well as at Eski Hissarlik and on Mount Fulu Dagh, and amounts to nothing in the only two places in the Troad where the most ancient human settlements ought to have existed, and where the archaeologist might confidently expect to find a rich abundance of most ancient prehistoric ruins, namely, Kurshunlu Tepeh (Dardanié and Palaescepsis), and the Chalidagh (Cebrené). I have proved that the most ancient remains on all these sites, scanty as they are, belong most probably to the period between the ninth and the fifth centuries B.C., and that there is no trace among them of prehistoric pottery.

By my exploration of the "heroic tombs," I have further proved, that the tumulus which by Homer and the tradition of all antiquity had been attributed to Achilles, as well as one of the two tumuli ascribed to Antilochus and Patroclus, cannot claim a higher antiquity than the ninth century B.C., that is to say, the Homeric age; whereas the tumulus, to which tradition pointed as the tomb of Protesilaus, may with the very greatest probability be attributed to the age of the second city of Hissarlik, which perished in a direful calamity. My excavations in this tumulus have also confirmed the ancient tradition which brought the earlier inhabitants of Ilium from Europe and not from Asia. I have further discovered at the foot of Cape Sigeum a large tumulus, which was known in antiquity and was probably attributed by tradition to the hero Antilochus, but which has not come under the notice of any modern explorer and is indicated on no map of the Troad. My exploration in 1882 has also been