Page:Troy-and-its-remains by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/123

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WORK AT HISSARLIK IN 1871.

CHAPTER I.
  • The site of Ilium described
  • Excavations in 1870: the City Wall of Lysimachus
  • Purchase of the site and grant of a firman
  • Arrival of Dr. and Madame Schliemann in 1871, and beginning of the Excavations
  • The Hill of Hissarlik, the Acropolis of the Greek Ilium
  • Search for its limits
  • Difficulties of the work
  • The great cutting on the North side
  • Greek coins found
  • Dangers from fever.

On the Hill of Hissarlik, in the Plain of Troy,
October 18th, 1871.

In my work 'Ithaca, the Peloponnesus, and Troy,' published in 1869, I endeavoured to prove, both by the result of my own excavations and by the statements of the Iliad, that the Homeric Troy cannot possibly have been situated on the heights of Bunarbashi, to which place most archæologists assign it. At the same time I endeavoured to explain that the site of Troy must necessarily be identical with the site of that town which, throughout all antiquity and down to its complete destruction at the end of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth century A.D.,[1] was called Ilium, and not until 1000 years after its disappearancethat is 1788 A.D.—was christened Ilium Novum by Le-

  1. ↑ This date refers to Dr. Schliemann's former opinion, that there were Byzantine remains at Hissarlik. He now places the final destruction of Ilium in the fourth century, on the evidence of the latest coins found there. See pp. 318, 319.—Ed.
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