Page:Mycenaean Troy.djvu/37

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE TROAD
33

other cold—which the adherents of the Bunarbashi theory think they find on this spot.[1]

If this were Troy, the steep upon which stands the city would suit Bunarbashi far better than Hissarlik. But Nikolaïdes fails to consider that the vase is probably older than the period of the Trojan war.[2]

5. Schliemann's Troy. II Stratum.The view of many scholars, as we have seen, had placed the Homeric citadel on the Balidagh summit near Bunarbashi. Others had followed the tradition which had extended from ancient times, that the Græco-Roman Ilion occupied the site of ancient Troy. In 1868 Heinrich Schliemann first visited the Troad, and he too examined the heights overlooking plain and sea, above Bunarbashi; but the remains here disclosed, both during the excavations of Hahn in 1864 as well as during those of Schliemann, were scanty and insignificant. Convinced that Priam's city was not on this mountain fortress, Schliemann turned his attention to the low, oval-shaped plateau of Hissarlik, and published his belief[3] that here was the site of the Homeric Troy. In 1870 he began his work of excavation, which he continued with repeated interruptions for twenty years (1870, 1871, 1872, 1873, 1878, 1879, 1882, 1890). At first he found on the hill of Hissarlik seven distinct layers of superimposed settlements.[4] The first, an insignificant settlement, lay on


  1. Lechevalier, Voyage de la Troade, 1803. Cf. Heinrich, Troja bei Homer und in dcr Wirklichkeit.
  2. Frazer, Pausanias, III, 117.
  3. Ithaka, der Peloponnes und Troja, 1809.
  4. Schliemann, Ilios; Schuchhardt-Sellers, Schliemann's Excavations, 1891; Perrot et Chipiez, Hist. de l’Art dans l’Antiquité, 6, 179 (English edition, 1894).