Page:Troy-and-its-remains by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/78

All that can be said of the first settlers is that they belonged to the Aryan race, as is sufficiently proved by the Aryan religious symbols met with in the strata of their ruins (among which we find the Suastika卍), both upon the pieces of pottery and upon the small curious terra-cottas with a hole in the centre, which have the form of the crater of a volcano or of a carrousel (i. e. a top).^[1]

The excavations made this year (1873) have sufficiently proved that the second nation which built a town on this hill, upon the débris of the first settlers (which is from 13 to 20 feet deep), are the Trojans of whom Homer sings. Their débris lies from 7 to 10 meters, or 23 to 33 feet, below the surface. This Trojan stratum, which, without exception, bears marks of great heat, consists mainly of red ashes of wood, which rise from 5 to 10 feet above the Great Tower of Ilium, the double Scæan Gate, and the great enclosing Wall, the construction of which Homer ascribes to Poseidon and Apollo; and they show that the town was destroyed by a fearful conflagration. How great the heat must have been is clear also from the large slabs of stone upon the road leading from the double Scean Gate down to the Plain: for when I laid this road open a few months ago, all the slabs appeared as uninjured as if they had been put down quite recently; but after they had been exposed to the air for a few days, the slabs of the upper part of the road, to the extent of some