Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1877-02-07
The Tomb of AgamemnOn.
DIR. sCHLIEMANN ON HIS RECENT DIsCov
ERIES

h.. " VI
; Dr. sCliLlEMANN ON HIS RECENT DIsCoV-
ERIEs.
Dr. Henry Scbliemonn writes n the
; London Times. under date of NIynenm De-.
cember 9TH. as follows.
"The Trojan war has for "A lono time
past. by MANY eminent scholars been ra-
,, oarled as myth of which hownvor
they vainlv endeavored TO find the orioin
in the Rigveda. But in all antionilv The
siege and conquest of Ilium bv the Greek
army under Agamemnon has been consiJ-
cred as an undonhted histor;c,l fact and
as such it is also accented bv the orent an.
thoritv of Thucvdides. II" S-10I Tho
tradition has even retained the memory of
many details of that war which have been
omitted by Homer.
For my own part, have ALWAYS firm.
ly believed in the Trojan war. NV firm
faith in Homer and in the tradition has
never been shaken by modern criticism,
and to this nv faith am indebted for tbe
discovery of Troy and its treasure, How
ever, the want of ornamentation on the
Trojan Jewels, the handmade. uncoored
pottery, with impressed or engraved orna.
menlation, and finally, the want of iron
and glass, convince me that the ruins of
Troy belong to such remote antiquity ms
to precetle bv ages the ruins of Mycenm.
the date of which thought could fix by
the result Of the thirtv-f6ur shafts which I
sank in the Acropolis in February. 1874
| therefore believed that Homer had only
known by an ancient Tradition. commem-
GRATED by preceding poets, the siege and
destruction of Troy, and that for fayors re-
ccived he put in his contemporaries us ac-
tors in his great tragedy.
But never doubled that a King of NV
cenm. by name Agamemnon, his charioteer
Eurymedon. n Princess Cassandra and
their followers had been treacherously
murdered either at dinner by Egisthus. ms
Homer odyssey w., $50, and xI. 400.
411) says or in the bath by Clytemnestra,
us the latter tragic poets (Esch., Aga.
memnon, ,43S, Euripid., Crest, 16) pre-
tend, and | firmly believed in the state
ment of Pausanias (I., 147) that the MUIR
dered persons had been Inferred in the
AcropoIis, differing in this respect from
W. M. Leake, Travels in the Mores, G1 ,
page 365); w. Muro, journal of Tour
in Greece Edward Dodwell, Tour in
Greece (II., page 236) Otfried Muillier
Dorier; Ernest Curtis, : Pelpponnes,' (II
| All, 4l3); w. Cell, 'ArgOlis: Pro
kesch,' Denkwiirdigkeiten und Erinner
ungcn,' (u., 276) who all had misunder
stood the statement of Pausanias. and
thought that he meant the murdered per-
sons had been buried in the lower town.
my firm faith in the traditions made
me undertake my late excavations in the
Acropglis, and led to the discovery of the
five tombs with their immense treasures.
Although | found in these tombs. in
technical point of view a very hiph
civilization, vet as in Illium, found there
only handmade pottery and no trace of
glass or of iron. Further, writing was
known in Troy, for found there Il number
of short Greek inscriptions in very ancient
Cypriote characters (see my Troy and its
Remains ID. 963-372); where rs we have
the certainty now that the alphabet was
unknown in Mycene. Had it been known
the Mycenman goldsmiths, who were al |
ways endeavorinp to invent some new mr..
namentation, would ioyfully have availed
themselves of the novelty to interweave
Strange characters |
Beside, in that remote antiquity 10 which
the Homeric rhapsodies and the tradition
of the Mycennan tombs refer. there was
as vet no commercial intercourse. Nobody
travelled except on warlike or piraticnl ex.
peditions. Thus, there may have been y
very high civilization ut Mycenm. while.
at tie very same time the arts were only
in their first dawn in Troy, and writing
with Cypriote characters may have been
in use in Troy more than one Thousand
years before any alphabet was known in
Greece.
II have not the slightest objection TO
admit that the tradition which assigns the
tombs in the Acropolis to Aramemnon and
his companions, who, on their return from
Illium, were treacberously murdered Inv
Clvtemnestra or her paramour. Eois-
thus, NAV be perfectly correct and faithTnl
am bound to admit this so much the
more as we have the certainty that. 10 saw
the least, all the bodies of each tomb had
been burned simultaneously. The rolcin.
ed pebbles below each of them, the marks
of The fire to the right and left on the walls
of the tomb, the undisturbed state of the
ashes and the charred wood on and around
the bodies give us the most unmistakablc
proofs in this respect. OWING to the enor.
nous depth of these sepulchres, and thc
close proximities OF the bodies 70 each
other, it is quite impossible that tbreo or
even five funeral pies could have been
dressed at different intervals in the same
tomb. The identity of the mod. of hnrioI
the perfect similarity of all the tombs
their very close proximity, the imnossihil.
ity of admitting that three or five royal
pcrsonares of immeasurable wealth. who
had died natural death AT long intervals |
of time, should have been buddIed togelh. |
er in the same tomb; and finally the
great resemblance of nll the ornaments
which show exactly the same stylc of ar
and the same cpoch-all these Mct. nre 90
many proofs that all the twelve men and
three women had bpen mnrdnrod ,irnrI,a
thcr to be confirmed by the deep yenera.
tion which the MycenHans, and, in fact,
the inhabitants of the whole Argolid, have
always shown for these fine mnusoleums.
The funeral pvres were not vet extin-
guished when they were covered with
LAYER of CLAW and then with a layer ofI