Troja/Chapter 1

By my excavations on the hill of Hissarlik in 1879, in company with Professor Rudolf Virchow of Berlin and M. Emile Burnouf of Paris, I supposed that I had settled the Trojan question for ever. I thought I had proved that the small town, the third in succession from the virgin soil, whose house-substructions I had brought to light at an average depth of from 7 to 8 mètres beneath the ruins of four later cities, which in the course of ages had succeeded each other above them on the same site, must necessarily be the Ilium of the legend immortalized by Homer; and I maintained this theory in my work Ilios, which I published at the end of 1880. But after its publication I became sceptical, not indeed regarding the position of Troy, for there could be no question but that Hissarlik marked its site, but respecting the extent of the city; and my doubts increased as time wore on. I soon found it no longer possible to believe that the divine poet—who, with the fidelity of an eye-witness and with so much truth to nature, has drawn the picture, not only of the plain of Troy with its promontories, its rivers, and its heroic tombs, but of the whole Troad, with its numerous different nations and cities, with the Hellespont, Cape Lectum, Ida, Samothrace, Imbros, Lesbos, and Tenedos, as well as all the mighty phenomena of nature displayed in the country—that this same poet could have ​represented Ilium as a great,^[1] elegant,^[2] flourishing, and well-inhabited,^[3] well-built^[4] city, with large streets,^[5] if it had been in reality only a very little town; so small indeed, that, even supposing its houses, which appear to have been built like the present Trojan village-houses, and, like them, but one story high, to have been six stories high, it could hardly have contained 3000 inhabitants. Nay, had Troy been merely a small fortified borough, such as the ruins of the third city denote, a few hundred men might have easily taken it in a few days, and the whole Trojan war, with its ten years' siege, would either have been a total fiction, or it would have had but a slender foundation. I could accept neither hypothesis, for I found it impossible to think that, whilst there were so many large cities on the coast of Asia, the catastrophe of a little borough could at once have been taken up by the bards; that the legend of the event could have survived for centuries, and have come down to Homer to be magnified by him. to gigantic proportions, and to become the subject of his divine poems.

Besides, the tradition of all antiquity regarding the war of Troy was quite unanimous, and this unanimity was too characteristic not to rest on a basis of positive facts, which so high an authority as Thucydides^[6] accepts as real history. Tradition was even unanimous in stating that the capture of Troy had taken place eighty years before the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus. Furthermore, as mentioned in my Ilios,^[7] the Egyptian documents give us historic evidence that Ilium and the kingdom of Troy had a real existence; for in the poem of Pentaur, ​in the "Sallier" hieratic papyrus, preserved in the British Museum, the Dardani or Dandani (Dardanians) and the people of Iluna (Ilion)^[8] are mentioned, together with the Liku (Lycians) and the people of Pidasa (Pedasus), the Kerkesh or Gergesh (the Gergithians), the Masu (Mysians), and the Akerit^[9] (Carians), among the confederates who came to the help of the Hittites (or Khita) under the walls of Kadesh on the Orontes, in the fifth year of Ramses II. (cir. 1333–1300 B.C.). What struck me still more was, that these are precisely the same peoples who are enumerated in the second book of the Iliad as auxiliaries of the Trojans in the defence of their city. It is therefore an established fact, that there was in the Troad, probably about the 14th century B.C., a kingdom of the Dardanians, one of whose principal towns was named Ilium; a kingdom which ranked among the most powerful of Asia Minor, and sent its warriors into Syria to do battle with the Egyptian troops for the defence of Asia; and this agrees admirably with what Homer, and in fact all Greek tradition, says of the power of Troy. Besides, Professor Henry Brugsch-Pasha mentions,^[10] that in the mural paintings and inscriptions on a pylon of the temple of Medinet Abou at Thebes may be seen in two groups thirty-nine nations, countries, and cities, which joined in a confederacy against Ramses III. (cir. 1200 B.C.), invaded Egypt, and were defeated by that king. In the first group appear the peoples called Purosata or ​Pulosata (Pelasgians—Philistines!), Tekri, Tekkari (Teucrians),^[11] and Danau (Danai?). In the second group he finds names which are of particular interest for us: Asi, which suggests the name of Assos, a Mysian city in the Troad, or of Issa, the ancient name of Lesbos, which equally belongs to the Troad, or of Issus in Cilicia; Kerena or Kelena, which seems to be Colonae in the Troad; U-lu, which brings Ilium to mind and seems to be identical with it; Kanu, which may be Caunus in Caria; L(a)res, Larissa, which may or may not be the Trojan city Larissa or Larisa, there being many cities of that name; Maulnus or Mulnus, which recals to mind the Cilician Mallus: Atena, which may be Adana; and Karkamash, which Prof. Brugsch identifies with Coracesium, both likewise in Cilicia.^[12] Now it is a remarkable fact, to which M. François Lenormant^[13] has already called attention, that the Dardanians, who stand prominent among the confederates against Ramses II., do not appear in these two groups of invaders, who fought, a little more than a century later, against Ramses III., and that the Teucrians appear in their stead. May not this change of name of the Trojans have been caused by the war and capture of Troy and the destruction or dispersion of the people? It is, however, to be remarked that Herodotus always calls the ancient Trojans of epic poetry Teucrians, whereas the Roman poets use the names Teucrians and Trojans as equivalent.^[14]

To this overwhelming testimony for the power and greatness of Troy, a further proof has been added by the ten ​treasures of gold ornaments which I found in my excavations on Hissarlik, confirming the epithet "πολύχρυσος" which Homer gives to Troy. I therefore resolved upon continuing the excavations at Hissarlik, for five months more, to clear up the mystery, and to settle finally the important Trojan question. The firman obtained for me in the summer of 1878 by the good offices of my honoured friend Sir A. H. Layard, then English Ambassador at Constantinople, having expired, I had in the summer of 1881 applied to H. H. Prince Bismarck, through whose kind intervention I received, at the end of October in the same year, a new firman for continuing the excavations at Hissarlik, and on the site of the lower town of Ilium. As a supplement to the firman, he obtained for me some months later the permission to make, simultaneously with the exploration of Troy, excavations on any other site in the Troad I might desire, provided these latter were limited to one site at a time, and were made in the presence of a Turkish delegate. In order to be able to secure for science any light which might be obtained from ancient architectural remains, I engaged the services of two eminent architects—Dr. William Dörpfeld of Berlin, who had for four years managed the technical part of the excavations of the German Empire at Olympia, and Mr. Joseph Höfler of Vienna; both of whom had taken the first prizes in their respective Academies, so as to obtain State stipends for scientific travels in Italy. The monthly salary of the former was £35, that of the latter £15 and travelling expenses. I also engaged three able overseers; two of them were Peloponnesians, who had already served and distinguished themselves in the same capacity in the excavations at Olympia; one of them, Gregorios Basilopoulos, a native of Magouliana, near Gortynia, received for this Trojan campaign the name of Ilos; the other, Georgios Paraskevopoulos, a native of Pyrgos, was now baptized Laomedon. The latter was of great use to me by his gigantic frame and herculean ​strength, which inspired awe in my labourers and made them blindly obey him; each of them received 150 francs monthly. As third overseer I engaged Mr. Gustav Battus, son of the late French Consul Battus at the Dardanelles, with 300 fr. monthly wages. Fortunately, in June, 1879, I had left a Turkish watchman at Hissarlik, to guard my wooden barracks and the magazine, in which were stored all my machinery and implements for excavating. Thus I now found everything in the best order, and had only to cover my houses with new waterproof felt. As all of them were built in one continuous line, the danger of fire was great. I therefore separated them and put them up in different places, so that, in case one of the barracks caught fire, none of the others could be reached by the flames, even with the heaviest storm blowing. The barrack in which I and my servants lived had five rooms, two of which I occupied; another had two, a third had three, and a fourth had four bedrooms. We had, therefore, ample room, and could also conveniently lodge seven visitors. One barrack, of only one room, served as a dining-hall, and was called by that proud name, though it consisted of rude planks, through whose crevices the wind blew incessantly, so that frequently it was impossible to burn a lamp or light a candle. Another large barrack served as a store for the antiquities, which were to be divided between the Imperial Museum at Constantinople and myself. My honoured friends, Messrs. J. Henry Schröder & Co., of London, had kindly sent me a large supply of tins of Chicago corned beef, peaches, the best English cheese, and ox-tongues, as well as 240 bottles of the best English pale ale.^[15] We could always get fresh ​mutton, and as the Trojan wine of the villages of Yeni-Shehr, Yeni Kioi, and Ren Kioi, is magnificent, and excels even the very best Bordeaux wine, we had an abundance of good food; but of vegetables we could only get potatoes and spinach; the former are not grown at all in the plain of Troy, and had to be fetched from the town of the Dardanelles, whither they are imported probably from Italy. It appears very extraordinary that the villagers of the Troad, Greeks as well as Turks, do not use potatoes for food, though the soil is well adapted for the cultivation of this vegetable, and that they should use bread in its stead. In June and July we were supplied by the villagers with an abundance of hog-beans, kidney-beans, and artichokes, which appear to be, besides spinach, almost the sole kinds of vegetable they cultivate. It seems that garden peas are not cultivated in the Troad, for I could only buy them in June and July in the town of the Dardanelles, whither they were imported by sea.

I heard that the country was infested by marauders and highway robbers; besides that, the continual acts of brigandage in Macedonia, where a number of opulent men had been carried off by the robbers to the mountains and ransomed for heavy amounts, made me afraid of a like fate at Hissarlik. I therefore required at least eleven gendarmes for my safeguard. During my excavations at Hissarlik in 1878 and 1879 I had always kept ten gendarmes; but these were refugees from Bulgaria and Albania, and to such men I would not now entrust myself. I therefore applied to Hamid Pasha, the civil governor at the Dardanelles, to give me as a guard the eleven surest men he could find. By his permission they were picked out for me by his first dragoman and political agent, M. Nicolaos Didymos, from among the strongest and most trustworthy Turks of the Dardanelles. Their wages were £30 10s. monthly. So I had now eleven brave gendarmes of a powerful frame; all of them were well armed with ​rifles, pistols, and daggers; their firearms were not precisely of the latest invention, for they had for the most part only flint-locks; but some of them had Minié rifles, which they boasted of having used in the Crimean war. These shortcomings, however, were made up by the courage of the men, and I trusted them entirely, for I was sure they would have defended us bravely even if our camp had been attacked by a whole band of brigands. They were headed by a corporal (called shaush in Turkish), who superintended the other ten gendarmes and regulated the night and day watches. Three of these gendarmes always accompanied me every morning before sunrise to my sea-bath in the Hellespont, at Karanlik, a distance of four miles; as I always rode at a trot, they had to run as fast as they could to keep up with me. These daily runs being, therefore, very fatiguing to the men, I paid them 7d. every morning as extra wages. I further used the gendarmes to keep close watch on my workmen in the trenches, and never allowed excavations to be made at any point without at least one gendarme being on the look-out. In this way I forced my workmen to be honest, for they knew that if they were taken in the act of stealing they would be thrown into prison. I housed my eleven gendarmes in a large wooden barrack covered with waterproof felt, which I had built for them close to the stone house containing the kitchen and the chamber of my purser, for in this way they were about in the centre of my camp; but as there were constant disputes among them, some of them preferred to sleep in the open air even in the coldest weather, rather than endure the company of their comrades.

As majordomo and purser I had again Nicolaos Zaphyros Giannakes, from the village of Ren Kioi, who had served me in the same capacity in all my archæological campaigns in the Troad since March, 1870. Seeing that he was indispensable to me, he refused to serve me now for less than 15 monthly and his food; but I gladly granted him ​these terms, and also made him, when I left, a present of all my barracks at Hissarlik, for he is perfectly honest, and as purser and majordomo in a large camp in the wilderness, or in exploring expeditions, he can never be excelled. But his wages were the least advantage he had with me, for he derived enormous profits from the shop which was kept on his account by his brother, and in which he sold bread, tobacco, and brandy, on credit to my workmen, whose debts to him he always deducted in paying them on Saturday evening.

I had brought with me from Athens an excellent servant named Oedipus Pyromalles, a native of Xanthe, whose monthly wages were £2 16s., and a female cook, named Jocasté, who got £1 12s. monthly, I kept also a wheelwright, whose wages were £9 monthly, and a carpenter who received £4 a month. I had brought a good riding-horse with me from Athens, which stood well the great fatigue of the five months' campaign, but in the last week he broke down, so that I had to leave him behind. The stables stood on the south side against the store-barrack and the stone kitchen.

My instruments for working consisted of forty iron crowbars, some of them 2.25 m. long and 0.05 m. in diameter;^[16] two jacks; a hundred large iron shovels, and as many pickaxes; fifty large hoes (called here by the Turkish name tchapa), such as are used in the vineyards, and which were exceedingly useful to me in filling the débris into the baskets; a windlass; 100 wheelbarrows, most of which had iron wheels; twenty man-carts, which were drawn by one man and pushed by two from behind, and a number of horse-carts. As I had to provide my workmen with good drinking water, I kept a labourer and a boy exclusively ​for the service of fetching water from the nearest spring,^[17] distant 365 mètres from Hissarlik. The boy's work was to fill the barrels; that of the man to load two of them at a time on a donkey, and to convey them to the trenches or to the barracks; and so great was the consumption of water, that in hot weather he could hardly fetch water enough, though ten barrels were in constant use.

Thus equipped and installed, I recommenced the excavations on the 1st of March with 150 workmen, which remained the average number of my labourers during the five months of the Trojan campaign of 1882. I employed, besides, a large number of ox-teams and horse-carts. The daily wages of my labourers, which were at first 9 piastres, or 1s. 7d., gradually increased with the season, and were in the hot summer months 11 and 12 piastres, equal to from 25. to 2s. 1d. The horse- and ox-carts were paid 1 piastre, equal to 2⁠1/10⁠d., for each load. Work was commenced regularly at sunrise and continued till sunset. Until the 12th of April no rest was allowed, except one hour for dinner; but as the days became longer, I allowed, after the Easter holidays, another half-hour at 8.30 A.M. for breakfast; this latter break was, from the 1st of June, increased to one hour.

As the work with the pickaxe is the heaviest, I always selected for it the strongest workmen; the rest were employed for the wheelbarrows, for filling the débris into the baskets, for loading the carts, and for drawing or pushing the man-carts and shooting the débris.

The workmen were for the most part Greeks from the neighbouring villages of Kalifatli, Yeni Shehr, and Ren Kioi; a few of them were from the islands of Imbros or Tenedos, or from the Thracian Chersonese. Of Turkish workmen I had on an average only twenty-five; I would gladly have increased their number had it been possible, for ​they work much better than the Asiatic Greeks, are more honest, and I had in them the great advantage that they worked on Sundays and on the numerous saints' days, when no Greek would have worked at any price. Besides, as I could always be sure that they would work on with unremitting zeal, and never need to be urged, I could let them sink all the shafts and assign to them other work, in which no superintendence on my part was possible. For all these reasons I always allotted to the Turkish workmen proportionally higher wages than to the Greeks. I had also now and then some Jewish labourers, who likewise worked much better than the Greeks.

I may take this occasion to mention that all the Jews of the Levant are descendants of the Spanish Jews who, to the ruin of Spain, were expelled from that country in March, 1492, under Ferdinand and Isabella. Strange to say, in spite of their long wanderings and the vicissitudes of their fortunes, they have not forgotten the Spanish language, in which they still converse among themselves, and which even the Jewish labourer speaks more fluently than Turkish. If one of these Jews now returned to Spain, his vocabulary would of course excite much amusement, for it abounds with antiquated Spanish words, such as we find in Don Quixote, and it also contains many Turkish words. But still it is a wonder that the Spanish language could have been so well preserved here in the East for four centuries, in the mouths of a people who do not write it with Latin, but solely with Hebrew characters, whenever they have to correspond among themselves. Thus, to all the Spanish letters I addressed to the Jew S. B. Gormezano at the Dardanelles, who happened to be for a time my agent, I got the answers always in Italian, and was assured that the writer did not know how to write Spanish with Latin characters, as from his childhood he had been accustomed to use the Hebrew alphabet in writing Spanish.

I had two Turkish delegates, one of whom, called Mo​harrem Effendi, was supplied to me by the local authorities; I had to provide him with lodgings and to pay him £7 10s. monthly. The other delegate, Beder Eddin Effendi, was sent to me by the Minister of Public Instruction at Constantinople, by whom he was paid; I had merely to provide him with a bedchamber. I have carried on archæological excavations in Turkey for a number of years, but it had never yet been my ill-fortune to have such a monster of a delegate as Beder Eddin, whose arrogance and self-conceit were only equalled by his complete ignorance, and who considered it his sole office to throw all possible obstacles in my way. As he was in the employ of government, he had the telegraph to the Dardanelles at his disposal, and he used it in the most shameless way to denounce me and my architects to the local authorities. At first the civil governor listened to him, and sent trustworthy men to investigate the charges; but having repeatedly convinced himself that the man had basely calumniated us, he took no further notice of him.

A Turk will always hate a Christian, however well he may be paid by him, and thus it was not difficult for Beder Eddin Effendi to bring all my eleven gendarmes over to his side, and to make so many spies of them. The man became particularly obnoxious and insupportable to us when my architect, Dr. Dörpfeld, having in April imported a surveying instrument for taking measurements and making the plans of Ilium, the circumstance was reported to the military governor of the Dardanelles, Djemal Pasha, who at once communicated it to Said Pasha, the Grand Master of the Artillery at Constantinople, hinting to him his suspicions that we were merely using the excavations at Troy as a pretext for taking plans of the fortress of Koum Kaleh. Said Pasha, who took the same view of the case, at once telegraphed to him to prohibit, not only our use of the surveying instrument, but even our making any plans at all.

​Beder Eddin Effendi no sooner heard of this, than he began to denounce us repeatedly to the military governor, alleging that, in spite of the prohibition, we measured and took plans clandestinely; and he succeeded in irritating that officer against us so much, that he prohibited us from taking any measurements at all within the excavations. Having obtained this, Beder Eddin Effendi declared that he and the watchmen, whom he had placed over us, could not distinguish whether we were measuring, or merely taking notes, or making drawings; he therefore interdicted us from taking notes or making drawings within the excavations, and continually threatened to arrest my architects and send them in chains to Constantinople in case of their disobedience.

I applied for redress to the German Embassy, explaining that the miserable fortress of Koum Kaleh was at a distance of five miles from Hissarlik, and altogether invisible from here; that I merely intended to make new plans of the Acropolis and of the lower city, instead of the old plans (I. and II. in Ilios), which, in consequence of my excavations of this year, were no longer quite correct. The chargé d'affaires of the German Empire at Constantinople, Baron von Hirschfeld, took the matter at once in hand, but neither he nor his excellent first dragoman, Baron von Testa, could effect anything against the obstinacy of the Grand Master of the Artillery, who did not even attend to the orders of the Grand Vizier.

It is true that, in spite of Beder Eddin Effendi's vigilance, we succeeded in taking all the notes we wanted, but to take measurements came to be out of the question. In this manner the five months' Trojan campaign went on, and finished at the end of July, with continual vain efforts on the part of the German Embassy at Constantinople to obtain for us permission to make the plans, and amidst the daily and hourly vexations caused us by our insufferable delegate, Beder Eddin Effendi: in short, a ​wretch like him is an unmitigated plague in archæological pursuits.

In August I made a direct application to the Chancellor of the German Empire, Prince Otto von Bismarck, who kindly took the matter in hand, at once gave new instructions to his Embassy at Constantinople, and obtained for me, in September, permission to take new plans, provided these were limited to my works below the level of the ground and no measurements were made above ground. The permission thus limited was of course useless. Further long delays and disappointments would probably have been in store for me, had it not been for the lucky circumstance that, in the beginning of November, my honoured friend Herr von Radowitz was appointed ambassador of the German Empire at Constantinople, who is one of the most excellent diplomatists Germany has ever had; he is besides animated by the holy fire of science, and has unbounded energy. Having addressed himself on my behalf direct to H. M. the Sultan, he at once obtained an iradé which permitted me to make the plans. I now fulfil a most agreeable duty in thanking His Excellency publicly and most cordially for the immense service he has rendered me, without which I could probably never have brought my work to a close.

I therefore again dispatched Dr. Dörpfeld to Troy on the 18th of November; but, being pressed for time, he only made the Plan VII. of the Acropolis of the Second City. It was not till April 1883 that I was able to send to Troy the surveyor, Mr. J. Ritter Wolff, who made the Plan VIII. of the whole city of Ilium.

To return to the order of our proceedings. We had a south wind for only the first three days in March; afterwards until the end of April, and therefore for fifty-eight days uninterruptedly, we had a strong north wind,^[18] in​creasing at least four times a-week to a severe storm, which blew the blinding dust into our eyes, and interfered seriously with the excavations. Only a few of my labourers had dust-spectacles; those who had none were obliged to cover up their faces with shawls, and thus the host of my veiled workmen looked very like the muffled attendants at Italian funerals. At the same time the weather was very cold, the thermometer often falling at night below freezing-point (0° Celsius = 32° F.),^[19] and sometimes, even in April, the water froze to solid ice in our barracks; nay, the thermometer often did not mark above 3° C. = 37° 4 F. at noon. Mount Saoce, on Samothrace, remained covered with snow till about the end of March. The chain of Ida was entirely covered with snow till about the 20th of March. Afterwards only the higher peaks remained snow-clad; but the snow gradually diminished, and by the end of May snow could only be seen on and near their summits. For particulars regarding the weather from the 22nd of April to the 21st of July, I refer the reader to the meteorological tables at the end of the volume. Unfortunately these observations were not made for the first fifty-three days; and I was prevented by my malaria-fever from continuing to write them up after the 21st of July.

The winter of 1881–1882 had been extraordinarily dry, and later on rain was still extremely rare. We had in all March and April only five or six very slight showers of rain, and all the time, up to the end of July, there was no rain except during two thunderstorms. From this cause, the ​water of the Simois, which was only a few inches deep in the beginning of March, was entirely exhausted by the end of April, and the river bed became perfectly dry in the beginning of May. The same occurred in the Thymbrius by the middle of May, and (a thing unheard of) even the course of the Scamander in the plain of Troy had no running water in the beginning of July, and thenceforward consisted only of a series of pools of stagnant water, the number of which diminished in proportion as the season advanced.^[20] As stated in Ilios,^[21] it happens on an average once every three years, in August or September, that the Scamander has no running water; it also happens, perhaps as often, that the Simois and the Thymbrius dry up completely in August or September; but the oldest inhabitants of the Troad do not remember that this phenomenon ever occurred in any one of the three rivers so early as it did this year.

While speaking of the Scamander, I may here add that, on the 14th of March, I investigated the junction of the Bounarbashi Su with the Scamander, which does not occur in two places, as P. W. Forchhammer^[22] states, but only in one place, about a mile to the south of the bridge of Koum Kaleh.^[23] The rivulet of the Bounarbashi Su was, at the junction, 2 mètres broad and o 30 m. deep. In examining the soil in the neighbourhood, I was struck by the conical shape of the hillock on which one of the two windmills stands, which are immediately to the east and south-east of Yeni Shehr,^[24] and, having investigated it most ​carefully, I found it to be an artificial tumulus, a so-called heroic tomb; indeed, the fragments of ancient pottery, which peep out from it here and there, can leave no doubt on the point. This tumulus had never yet come under the notice of any modern traveller, but it was evidently known to Strabo,^[25] who mentions here three tombs, namely, those of Achilles, Patroclus, and Antilochus; whilst until now we knew only of the two tombs attributed to the two former heroes. I shall revert to the newly discovered tumulus in the subsequent pages.

The Plain of Troy used to be covered in April and May with red and yellow flowers, as well as with deep grass; but this year, for want of moisture, there were no flowers and barely any grass at all, so that the poor people had hardly anything for their flocks to feed upon. We had not, therefore, to complain this year of being annoyed, as in former years, by the monotonous croaking of millions of frogs, for the swamps being dried up in the lower Simois valley, there were no frogs at all, except a few in the bed of the Kalifatli Asmak. The locusts appeared this year later than usual, namely, towards the end of June, when nearly all the grain had been harvested; they therefore did not do much damage.

The first flocks of cranes passed over the Plain of Troy on the 14th of March; the first storks arrived on the 17th of March. The cranes do not make their nests here; they merely stop a few hours for food, and fly on to more northerly regions.

A slight shock of earthquake occurred on the 1st of April, at 5 h. 15½ minutes P.M.

One of my first works was to bring to light all the foundations of the Hellenic or Roman edifices in the part of Hissarlik still unexcavated, and to collect the sculptured ​blocks belonging to them, as well as to other buildings, of which the foundations could no longer be traced. I also continued on the north side, at the place marked V—NO,^[26] at a depth of 12 mètres below the surface, the excavation commenced there in the summer of 1872. But finding that the soil consisted solely of prehistoric débris, which had been thrown down there to enlarge and level the hill, I soon gave it up again.

As I expected to find more metopes on the northern slope, at the place (see the upper V on Plan I. in Ilios) where in 1872 I had found the beautiful metope of Apollo and the quadriga of the sun, I stationed twenty-five labourers there, who worked for nearly two months, first in removing the enormous mass of débris which I had thrown out on the slope in 1872 and 1873, and afterwards digging away from the latter a slice 3 mètres deep from front to back. The layer of débris to be removed being on an average 6 mètres deep, 28 mètres high, and 20 mètres broad, the excavation had to be made in terraces, for in this way the work became much easier and the distance the débris had to be carried was reduced to a minimum. We worked here with pickaxes, shovels, and wheelbarrows, which are always more advantageous than carts, so long as the distance is less than 30 mètres. But no second metope was found there, nor any other sculpture of great interest, and only a marble female head of the Macedonian period, which I represent in the chapter on Ilium. I struck in this excavation a very remarkable wall-corner of the Macedonian time, which I describe in the following pages. I also explored the gigantic theatre, immediately to the east of the Acropolis,^[27] of which I give a detailed account in the chapter on Ilium. In this, as well as in the excavations on Hissarlik, we found a vast number of venomous ​serpents, but my labourers were not afraid of their bite, for they declared they had drunk, before coming to work with me, an antidote which they called "sorbet," and which made the bite even of the most poisonous snakes harmless. But I was never able to obtain this antidote from them, though I promised a large reward for it.

I proceeded to empty the Hellenic well in the Acropolis,^[28] the mouth of which I had brought to light in the autumn of 1871, about 2 mètres below the surface. At the depth of 18 mètres I found in it many rude prehistoric stone hammers of diorite and a polishing-stone of jasper, and below these implements large masses of Greek and Roman tiles of various forms, which seem to prove that the stone implements had been thrown into the well at a later time, together with other débris. On reaching the depth of 22 mètres I had to stop this work on account of the water, which rose faster than I could draw it up. The last objects taken out of the well were six sheeps'-skulls.

I also sunk in the eastern part of the Acropolis a shaft 3 mètres square, in which I struck the rock at the depth of 14 mètres.^[29]

One of my greater works was a trench (marked SS on Plan VII.), 80 mètres long and 7 mètres broad, which I dug in March and April, from the point K to the point L,^[30] across the eastern part of the Acropolis, which was then still unexcavated, in order to ascertain how far the citadel of the earliest prehistoric cities extended in this direction. This work was exceedingly difficult, on account of the immense masses of small stones and huge boulders which we had to remove, as well as on account of the depth (no less than 12 mètres) to which we had to dig to reach the rock. The trench was excavated simultaneously ​throughout its whole length, the débris being carried off by wheelbarrows as well as by man-carts and horse-carts; but the deeper we penetrated the more difficult and fatiguing did the labour become, for we were obliged to carry up the debris in baskets on narrow zigzag paths, which became steeper and steeper with the increasing depth. When we had reached a depth of from 10 to 12 mètres, the side paths had to be cut away, and all the débris had to be removed by man-carts, and shot out on the slope at the point K. But this fatiguing work has been rewarded by interesting results for the topography of the ancient Acropolis; since it has enabled us to ascertain that this whole eastern part of the citadel-hill originated after the destruction of the fourth city, and that it was heaped up to extend the original Pergamos; because we brought to light in the trench the exterior or eastern side of the brick wall of the citadel of the second city (marked N N on Plan VII.), whence the layers of débris fell off abruptly. Further investigation has proved to us with certainty, that from the foot of the citadel-wall the ground fell off originally with a steep inclination to the east, and that, during the time of the first four cities, a deep valley here separated the Pergamos on the east side from the mountainous ridge, of which it formed the spur. The citadel-hill must consequently have increased on the east side full 70 mètres since the catastrophe of the second city.

In excavating the trench we struck gigantic foundations, composed of well-wrought blocks of limestone: some of these foundations certainly belong to the Roman time; their construction, as well as the stonecutters' marks which they bore, can leave no doubt of this. After having taken note of their exact position, we had to break through these foundations in order to dig the trench deeper; but, not being able to move the stones on account of their ponderous weight, we had to crush them with enormous hammers, a work which only two or three of ​all my labourers were able to do, and which was always rewarded by additional pay in the evening. We reserved only those blocks which had a peculiar interest in an architectural point of view. It was impossible for us to ascertain to what edifices these foundations had belonged, for they had been already partly demolished in the Middle Ages, and had been in modern times a welcome quarry for building-stones. Among these foundations, those on the north-east side are particularly distinguished by their gigantic proportions and their good construction.

Having broken through them, we struck at the northeast end of the trench a large fortress-wall of rudely-wrought stones, which my architects ascribe with the very greatest probability to the fifth prehistoric city, and of which the woodcut No. 99, p. 189, gives a good view. We brought it to light to a depth of 6 mètres, and were obliged to cut it through in order to make a road for the man-carts which worked in the trench. It is distinguished by its masonry from the substruction-walls of the more ancient prehistoric cities, for it consists of long plate-like slabs of stone, joined in the most solid way without cement or lime, which have enormous dimensions, particularly in the lower part, whilst the lower part of the walls of the second prehistoric city consists of smaller stones of rather a cubical shape. This peculiar construction gave us the clue to find on the opposite side of the Acropolis the continuation of this wall of plate-like slabs, and it thus enabled us to indicate the course of the wall of the fifth prehistoric settlement, at least in general.

The exterior side of this wall is slightly curved; its upper breadth is 2.50 m., its lower breadth being 5 m., owing to an enlargement in the middle of its height. On a level with this prehistoric citadel-wall many house-walls were brought to light, consisting partly of quarry-stones, partly of unbaked clay-bricks. It is very remarkable that below the Hellenic layer of ruins we found, from the point K to about half the ​distance to the point L, only Lydian terra-cottas, such as are described in Chapter X. of Ilios, and pottery of the fifth and fourth settlements, but none at all of the three lowest cities. In the other half of the trench we found, beneath the débris of the fourth settlement, deep layers of débris of bricks falling off from the brick wall of the second citadel (N N on Plan VII.) to the east, which must have originated at a time when the second and the fourth cities had been destroyed. Of this brick wall, which here forms a tower (G M on Plan VII.), I give a detailed account in the description of the second city. Below the slanting layers of débris of bricks I found a layer of natural soil, o 50 m. deep, which had evidently been dug away from another place and had been shot here. We found this layer of natural soil on the whole south and east sides of the Acropolis: it was most likely dug up and shot here by the second settlers when they levelled the ground for the foundations of this brick wall, which, as we shall see in the following pages, belongs to the second period in the history of their town. This is the more probable, as below this natural soil we found a layer of débris of baked bricks, which seems to have been derived from the destruction of the citadel-wall of the first period, which was more to the west. Still deeper, down to the rock, we found pottery of the first and second cities.

Another of my larger works was to excavate, as far down as the house-ruins of the second city, the whole part of the earthblock D (on Plan I. in Ilios), which extends between the south-western extremity of the trench W and L (see Plan I. in Ilios). Here, too, the enormous foundations of the Hellenic or Roman edifices gave us most trouble; below them we brought to light, in regular succession, the foundations, with part of the house-walls, of the fifth, fourth, and third settlements, all of which we had unfortunately to remove. The masonry of these three cities did not differ much from each other, consisting of crude ​bricks or of small calcareous stones joined with clay. In a house-wall of the fifth city were some courses of crude bricks between the courses of stone-masonry. As a strange phenomenon I may mention that, in this excavation, we picked up in several places corn-bruisers and rude hammers of stone immediately below the stratum of the Acolic Ilium. As in the case of their presence in the Hellenic well, they were, no doubt, thrown here together with other débris.

The Greek and Latin inscriptions, of which many were found here and elsewhere, are given in the subsequent pages.

Another of our great labours was to cut away nearly the whole of the great block of débris marked B on Plan I. in Ilios, and to remove in the excavated parts all the walls and the remaining débris of the third settlement, so as to bring to light all the foundations of the second city, and what else remained of its house-walls. I only left in situ the largest house of the third city (marked HS on Plan I. in Ilios and on Plan VII. in this work), which I formerly attributed to the town chief. I also excavated the trench (Z'—O on Plan I. in Ilios and N Z on Plan VII.) much deeper, carefully cleared the great western wall, and excavated the whole space A—O (Plan I. in Ilios), so as to bring to light the south-western gate (R C and F M on Plan VII.) with the adjacent part of the great wall down to below their foundations. I further removed the débris which rested on the south-western gate-road,^[31] cleared out the débris from between the two great walls of the second city,^[32] c and b on Plan VII., and brought to light their prolongation in an easterly direction. In doing so, I was led by certain indications to suspect the existence of a second gateway, leading up from the south side to the Acropolis of the second city, at the points marked G, G' (on Plan I. in Ilios). I therefore excavated there, and ​in fact discovered a second large gate (marked N F on Plan VII.), which I shall discuss in the subsequent pages. As I had to cut away a large part of the blocks of débris G, G' and a considerable part of the earthblock JE (Plan I. in Ilios), and had to dig down to an enormous depth, this excavation was one of the most troublesome and fatiguing, the more so as we had no other outlet than the great northern trench (X—Z on Plan VII.) into which the débris were shot, and had to be removed thence by horse or oxcarts, to be thrown out on the northern slope.

I also excavated to the north-west of L (see Plan I. in Ilios) at the place where, in 1873, I had discovered the altar represented in Ilios, p. 31, No. 6; and brought to light there a second gate of the third city, and, at 1.50 m. beneath it, a third large gate of the second city (marked OX on Plan VII.) both these gates will be discussed in the subsequent pages. I further cleared the southern part of the building L and L' (see Plan I. in Ilios), in which we now recognized a large gate of the Roman age of Ilium. In order to bring to light more of the first city, I enlarged and excavated down to the rock the great northern trench (X on Plan I. in Ilios, and X—Z on Plan VII. in this volume), as far as was possible without demolishing any of the foundations of the second city. In doing so I discovered many interesting walls of the first city (marked f and f a, f b, f c, on Plan VII.), which I shall discuss in the following pages.

My researches in the spring of 1873, on the plateau to the east, south, and west of the Acropolis, had been but very superficial. As may be seen from Plan II. in Ilios, they had been limited to twenty shafts sunk at random over the vast extent of the lower city of Ilium, and in five instances in places where the rock was only covered with a layer of débris a few feet deep. Besides, in three of the deeper shafts (see D, O, R, and the vignette on Plan II. in Ilios), I struck tombs cut into or built upon the rock. In three other ​shafts (see E, F, I, and in the vignette on Plan II.) I struck large walls; in four more I struck house-walls, in building all of which walls the rock must necessarily have been cleared of the ancient débris with which it had been covered. Therefore, fifteen out of twenty shafts had given no result at all.

I now therefore wished to explore the plateau systematically and thoroughly, and I began this work by digging on the south-western slope of Hissarlik, close to the shafts marked K, I, G on Plan II. in Ilios, at right angles to the axis of the south-western gate (FM—TU on Plan VII.) a trench 60 mètres long by 3 mètres broad (see Plan VIII. in this volume). Besides investigating the soil, I hoped to bring to light the prolongation of the south-western gateway, and to find tombs on both sides of it. As the slope rises here at an angle of 15°, I thought that the accumulation of débris would be rather insignificant, and I hoped, therefore, to obtain great results from this excavation. But I was greatly disappointed, for I only struck the rock at 12 mètres below the surface, and whoever has seen excavations will know that to search for tombs at such a depth is altogether out of the question, the difficulties of removing the débris from narrow trenches being too enormous. As I found there no trace of the southwestern gate-road, we must suppose that this road—just as I found to be the case with the southern gate-road (N F on Plan VII.)—lay upon the bare rock. I found in this trench very large quantities of fragments of Hellenic pottery, and in the lowest layers masses of fragments of those kinds of very ancient pottery which are peculiar to the two most ancient cities of Hissarlik; namely the thick lustrous black pottery peculiar to the first city, with an incised ornamentation filled with chalk, having long horizontal tubes in the rim, or two vertical tubular holes for suspension in the body; and the dark-red, brown, or yellow tripod vases, and fragments of thick, perfectly flat, lustrous red terra-​cotta trays or plates, which are peculiar to the second city.

I further dug a trench 40 mètres long close to the Acropolis on the north-west side (see Plan VIII. in this volume), where I hoped to find the prolongation of the great wall of the second city. In fact, I found there, at the exact place where it must be supposed to have existed, the rock artificially levelled, so that there can be no doubt that the wall once stood here; but not a stone of it remained in situ.

I also dug a trench, 110 mètres long, 3 mètres broad, on the plateau of the lower city of Ilium, on the south side of Hissarlik (see Plan VIII.). Here the excavation was much easier, the depth of the débris being 6 mètres close to the citadel-hill, and only 2 mètres at the end of my trench. I struck here a portico of syenite columns with Corinthian capitals of white marble. It is paved with large well-wrought blocks of calcareous stone, and has evidently been destroyed at a late period, for the columns had only fallen when the pavement was already covered up with débris 0.30 m. deep; and, as all the columns which are visible lie in a north-westerly direction, it is probable that the edifice was destroyed by an earthquake.^[33] In this trench we also struck many Hellenic house-walls, and found masses of Hellenic pottery, but in the lowest layers of débris again a very large quantity of prehistoric terra-cottas of the first two cities of Hissarlik. Visitors can easily convince themselves of the existence of this pottery, if they will only take the trouble to pick with a knife in the sides of the trench from the rock to o 30 m. or 0.40 m. above it. I also sunk a large number of shafts on the plateau, south and east of the citadel-hill, as well as on the ​slope west of it, all of which are indicated on Plan VIII.; in all of them I obtained the same results.

I also excavated the tumuli at the foot of Cape Sigeum attributed to Achilles and Patroclus, the tomb of Protesilaus^[34] on the opposite shore of the Thracian Chersonesus, as well as the three tumuli on the high headland above In Tepeh. I excavated on the site of the small city, which I believe to be Gergis, on Mount Bali Dagh above Bounarbashi; in the ancient city called Eski Hissarlik opposite those heights, on the eastern bank of the Scamander, and further north-east in the ancient ruins on the Fulu Dagh or Mount Dedeh. I further excavated in the ancient cities on Mount Kurshunlu Tepeh^[35] near Beiramich, at the foot of the range of Ida. I went thither on the 1st of July, accompanied by four mounted gendarmes, the Turkish delegate Moharrem Effendi, two workmen, who carried the baggage and the implements for excavating on pack-horses, and two servants, one of whom was Nicolaos.

We went by way of Chiblak, through the plain of Troy, to Bounarbashi. About a mile south of Chiblak, we passed four solitary columns of grey granite, which by their position form a regular quadrangle, about 100 m. long by 40 m. broad. These columns have often been mistaken by travellers for the remains of a large ancient temple, whilst in reality they mark the site of a comparatively recent Turkish sheep-fold or stable for sheep, to which they served as corners; they must have been brought hither from the lower city of Ilium, where similar granite columns abound. On a small hill close to Bounarbashi, and on the north-east side of it, we saw a number of similar granite columns, of which four also form a regular quadrangle; these columns have often been mistaken by ​modern travellers for remnants of ancient Troy, whereas in reality they have likewise been brought hither from Ilium, and have been used to ornament the "konak (mansion) of a Turkish Aga, which still existed here a century ago, and of which we find a fine engraving in Count Choiseul-Gouffier's Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce. The road leads from Bounarbashi over the heights of which the Bali Dagh is the north-eastern spur, and close to a still unexplored "heroic tomb" (see the large Map of the Troad). It turns gradually to the east, and descends to the winding bed of the Scamander, which we had to pass not less than six times in one hour; leading afterwards, across long tracts of uncultivated land thickly overgrown with dwarf oaks, juniper, etc., to Iné, where I was kindly received by the Caïmacam (mayor) Chevket Abdoullah, who has some education and speaks French fluently. He gave me two additional gendarmes, the country being very unsafe. It was in the height of summer; my thermometer marked 34° C. = 93° 4 F. in the coolest room of the mayor's house. I arrived in the evening at Beiramich, and the next morning early on Mount Kurshunlu Tepeh (see the small Map of the Troad, No. 140, p. 303). The temperature was already at 8 A.M. 36° C. = 96° 8 F.; it increased by 10 A.M. to 38° C. = 100° 4 F.

I had taken ten workmen with me from Beiramich, each of whom had to receive to gros = 1s. 9d. a day. Pickaxes, shovels, and baskets, I had brought with me from Hissarlik. I shall give in the subsequent pages the result of my researches on Kurshunlu Tepeh, as well as of those I made immediately afterwards on Mount Chali Dagh, the site of the ancient city of Cebrené.

I terminated the excavations at Hissarlik by the end of July, but a week before I had caught the malaria fever. I got rid of it by means of quinine and black coffee, but it soon returned, and continued to torment me for nearly four months afterwards.