Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1883-02-14
sCHIdEDrANN's LATEST FINDS.
His Excavations ON tile spot Where
Hum stood for Thousand Years.

His Excavations ON tile spot Where
Hum stood for Thousand Years.
Prof. Schliemann thus writes from
Athens 10 the London Times under date
Of january 20: In letter headed ''The
Archaeological Discoveries in the Levant,''
dated Athens, 18th ult., and published in
the Times of the 10th inst, il is stated
that ''the resumption of my excavations
at Hissarlik has failed TO develop any
thing cOnfirmatOry of my Ilian hypothesis,
and that the famous qualification of civ
ilizatiOn which was supposed to TESTIFY to
the extreme antiquity of the city Is
shown TO be untenable.' The anonymous
writer is evidently no arch9ologist;
moreover. he does not speak OF my eN-
cavati0ns from personal inspection, nor
does he seem to have the slightest knOwl-
edge of what has been written on the
subject since August last
I eNcavated in 1852 for i've months
namely, from March LIST till August lst,
emnloving all the time enc hundred and
fifty laborers. and aided by two of the
most eminent architects Of EurOpe-Mr.
j. Hotter. of Vienna. and Dr. William
D0rpfeld. of Berlin, the latter of whom SUI
perintended for four years the technical
part of the excavations OF the German
Emnire at OLYMPIA. Not only have these
excavations been no failure, but, ON the
contrary. they have yielded far more inn
r0rtant results than all my previous eN-
-avatious at Hissarlik since 1870. The
succession of five prehistoric and two
later settlements, as gwen by me IN
.'IliOS." is confirmed by my archl-
tects see DR.. Dorpfeld's letter in the
laISbUFgcF AUeIcAJetRe Let6Ng OF sep
teEiber -. 1852, and an extract of 1t IN the
4cGtIcHsu of October IA. who have, how
ever. proved to me that the enormous
masses of calcined debris, which had at
tributed to the third city. really belong to
a. IL.
fearful catastrophe. and which RAD ON the
hill of Hissarlik only its Pergamus, with
i've or six edifices of very large dimen-
siOns, while its lower city extended east,
south and west on the plateau.
We have eXcaVated most carefully all
the buildings OF the Acropolls, among
which two, of very large proportions and
with walls respectively 1 metre - and
metre - thick, seem TO us, for many
reasons. to be temples. Nothing could
better prove the great antiquity of these
buildings than the fact that they We're
built Of unbaked bricks, and that the
walls had been baked ia stu by huge
masses of wood piled up ON both sides OF
each wall and kindled simultaneously.
Each of these buildings has a vast Vesti-
hulum. and each of the front faces of the
lateral walls is also provided with
six vertical quadrangular beams,
which stood on we'll polished bases,
the AOMCI llUAt VI WHICH " d.
preserved. though. of course, in calcined
state. We, therefore, see that in those
ancient Trojan temples the dRt0s or pQrIS-
taIeS. which in later Hellenic temples full
filled only a technical purpose, served
here as an important element of con-
structiOn. for they We're intended to pro-
tect the wall ends and To render them
capable of supporting the pOnderOus
weight of the superintendent croSSbeanlS
and the terrace. We found similar primi-
rive ante in two other edifioes. at the
lateral walls of the northwestern gate.
We also found mat the great wall of the
ancient AcrOpOlis had been built Of I'M
baked bricks. and had been baked like the
temple walls IN stu. / lay stress on the
fact that a similar process Of baking en-
tire walls has never vet been discovered,
and that the dRt0s in the Hellenic temples
are nothing else than "reminiscences of the
wooden GRtF of old, which were of impOr-
tant constructive use We discovered in
the AcrOpOlis of the second city three
large gates. all of which led down to the
lower city. Homer knew Of only one gate
at Troy (the Sc9an; sometimes also
called the Dardanian gate), but
this gate was on the west
side of the lower city; the gates of the
PergamuS are never mentioned III the
poems. The three prehistoric settlements
which succeeded each other in the cal
cned ruins of the AcrOpOliS were poor
and insignificant. and none of them eX-
tended beyond the hill of Hissarlik. The
ruins of the lower city, therefore, remained
deserted for ages, the bricks crumbled
away. and the stones or the walls served
the new settlers on Hissarlik for building
their houses, or, as the legend ran see
StrabO. NIL, 500, they were used for
building the walls of Sigeum.
The site was in later times occupied by
the -EOlic llium, which stood for more
than one thousand years. but, neverthe-
less, the traces of the ancient burnt city
have not been ObliteTated; the huge masses
Of prehistoric pottery, perfectly identical
with that of the second city on the Perga-
mus, which were found in the extensive
excavations made by me on the lower
plateau, testify to its existence on the
spoi. us EXISTENT seems further u be
proved by the vertical wall Represented
IN "llios,' p. u, y. b, as we'll as by
the three gates, and, above all. by
the ground plan and the number of loose
edihces in the Pergamus. / have now eX-
caYated the latter entirely, and for this
reason alone the excavation at Troy must
be considered as terminated forever. l /
have also eXcavated seven more of the I
cOnical tumuli, called heroic tOmbs, and /
have thoroughly explored the ancient city /
If the heights of Bunarbashi, as well as I
the sites Of four other ancient towns.
\ full account of this, my last Trojan /
campaign, with excellent plans and about /
200 engraYingS of the most curious finds, /
viii he published by Mr.. John Murray.