Vases found at Santorin.With these vases were found some troughs for holding crushed grain, and lava discs very much like those still in use among the weavers of the Archipelago to stretch the woof of their tissues; skilfully graduated lava weights, the correlation of which is very evident, as they weigh 8, 24, and 96 ounces; a flint arrow-head and a saw of the same material with regular teeth; together with a great variety of other objects, including many obsidian arrows and knives, reminding us in their shape of those characteristic of the Stone age in North Europe.Two rings of gold beaten very thin, and a little copper saw with no trace of any alloy, are, so far, the only metal objects found in the excavations. The origin of the former, moreover, is very uncertain, and there has been much discussion as to where the rings came from. In spite, however, of all the gaps in the evidence about them, there remains no doubt that the inhabitants of Santorin were farther advanced in civilization than the Lake dwellers of Switzerland, the builders of theterremareof Italy, or the Iberians of the south of Spain, who were very probably their contemporaries; and we cannot refrain from expressing our admiration of the wonderful progress made by the inhabitants of the little group of volcanic islands under notice.Before the catastrophe which overwhelmed them, Santorin was covered with comfortable and solidly built houses. Men knew how to till the ground, and gathered in crops of cereals, among which barley was the most abundant, then millet, lentils, peas, coriander, and anise; they had learned to domesticate animals, as is proved beyond a doubt by the number of bones of sheep and goats; they kept dogs to guard their flocks, and horses to aid in agricultural work; they knew how to weave stuffs, to grind grain, to extract the oil from olives, and even to make cheese, if we may give that name to the pasty white stuff found at the bottom of a vase by Dr. Nomicos. They were acquainted with the arch, and they used durable and brilliant colors. The copper saw is an example of the first efforts of the natives at metallurgy; the gold and obsidian which were foreign to the island bear witness to commercial relations with people at a distance. They loved art, as proved by the shape of their vases and the ornamentation on many of them, which is really often worthy of the best days of Greece. All around we see signs appearing as it were suddenly of a civilization, the origin and tendencies of which are alike still unknown.But one human skeleton has so far been found in Santorin, and that is of an inhabitant who had evidently been overtaken in his flight and crushed beneath the burning scoriæ from the volcano. This man was of medium height, and is supposed to have been between forty and forty-eight years old. The bones of the pelvis are firmly consolidated, and the teeth are worn with mastication.Let us endeavor to guess at the period when the people of Santorin lived. De Longpérier tells us that vases similar to those left by them are represented on the tomb of Rekmara amongst the presents offered to Thothmes III., who lived in the eighth century B.C., but if so the people of Santorin appear to have borrowed nothing in their intercourse with Egypt. The first invasion of Greece by the Phœnicians is supposed to have been in the fifteenth century B.C., but the buildings, the pottery, and the various implements of Therasia and Acrotiri differ essentially from those of the Phœnicians, who, moreover, from the earliest times, used metals. Must we not therefore conclude that the catastrophe which overwhelmed Santorin took place before the fifteenth century B.C.? Conjectures as to the date of the fatal eruption, however plausible, are of no use in anything relating to the origin of the people, or the time of their first occupation of the island. On these points all is still hopeless confusion, and we must wait for further discoveries before we can hope to come to any conclusions in the matter.We have gone back to the very earliest days of man upon the earth; we have shown that he was the contemporary of the mammoth and the rhinoceros, of the cave-lion and the cave-bear; we have seen him crouching in the deep recesses of his cave and fighting the battle of life with no weapon but a few scarcely sharpened flints, leading an existence infinitely more wretched than the animals about him. Not without emotion have we watched our remote ancestors in their ceaseless struggle for existence; not without emotion have we seen them gradually growing in intelligence and energy, and attaining by slow degrees to a certain amount of civilization. Santorin is a striking and brilliant proof of their progress, and we shall appreciate this progress yet more when we have examined the ruins piled up on the hill of Hissarlik. There we shall close this portion of our work, for from the time when the buildings of which these remains were the relics met their doom, the use of metals, copper, bronze, gold, silver, and iron became general. History began to be written, and it is her task to tell us of the migrations of races, the early efforts of historic, races, the foundation of empires. In a word, the prehistoric age was over; that of self-conscious portraiture was now to begin.A few years ago I was on the ancient Hellespont and my fellow-travellers, grouped about the deck of our vessel, were trying to make out on the receding coast of Asia the sites of Troy and of the tumuli which were then still supposed to have been the tombs of Achilles, Patrokles, and Hector, but which are now, thanks to the able researches of Dr. Schliemann, known to belong to a comparatively modern epoch. The streams, bearing the ever memorable names of Simoïs and Scamander, were also eagerly pointed out by the watchers, recalling the words of Lamartine:Le nautonnier voguant sur les flots du BosphoreDes yeux cherchait encoreLe palais de Priam et les tours d’Ilium.Great indeed is the privilege of genius, immortalizing all that it touches; for it must be pointed out that Troy was never an important town, and the war in which it disappeared was in reality but one of the incessant struggles between the petty princes of Greece and Asia.When I visited the East, scholars were not at all agreed as to the site of the town which was so long besieged by the Greeks; and certain sceptical spirits even went so far as to deny that there ever was such a person as Homer at all, or that if there were, he wrote the epic poem which has borne his name so long. Tradition, however, was pretty constant in pointing to the hill of Hissarlik as the site on which Troy was built. Strabo was quite an exception in relegating the town to the lower end of the bay; where the miserable little village of Akshi-koi now stands. In 1788 a new idea was started; Lechevalier in his account of his journey in Troas claims to have recognized the site of Troy at Bunarbashi. At that time erudition was not very profound, and Lechevalier’s site was accepted; indeed it was long maintained, and quite recently it has been defended by Perrot. But the nineteenth century is more exacting; the most plausible hypotheses are not enough without facts to support them, and excavations at Akshi-koi and at Bunarbashi show that there never was a town on either of these sites.Excavations on the hill of Hissarlik, begun by Dr. Schliemann in 1871, and carried on under his superintendence for more than ten years, have, on the contrary, yielded most definite, satisfactory, and conclusive results. At a depth of fifty-two feet the diggers came to the virgin soil, a very hard conchiferous limestone. The immense masses ofdébrisof which the embankment is made up date front different epochs; we have before us, if we may use such an expression, a perpendicular Pentapolis or series of five ancient cities one above the other. One town was destroyed by assault and by fire; another rapidly rose from its ruins, built with stones taken front the midst of those very remains. The study of the piled-up rubbish enables us to build up again a picture of the remote past with all its vicissitudes, and Virchow may well say that the hill of Hissarlik will for ever be considered one of the best authenticated witnesses of the progress of civilization.41The first layer of rubbish rests on the rock itself, and may very well have belonged to the town built by Dardanus, of which Tlepolemus relates the destruction by his grandfather Hercules.42According to the Homeric story six generations, and according to generally accepted modern calculations two centuries, separate Dardanus from Priam. If therefore we accept 1200 B.C. as the date of the Trojan war, the town built by Dardanus would date from 1400 B.C., and we should possess data, if not absolutely certain, at least approximately so.43There remain but a few relics of the buildings erected by the first inhabitants of the bill of Hissarlik, which relics consist of great blocks of irregular size, with remains of bearing walls composed of small stones cemented together with clay and faced with a glaze which has withstood the wear and tear of centuries.The second town, which would appear to have been that described in the Iliad, was probably built by a race foreign to those who erected the first. The hill, which was to become the Acropolis of the new town, was surrounded by the new-comers with a wall several feet thick, of which the foundations consisted of unhewn stones; whilst the upper part was made of artificially baked bricks, the baking having been done after they were put in place, by large fires lit in vacant places left at regular intervals; an arrangement recalling what we have said in speaking of vitrified forts.44It is also interesting to note a similar mode of construction at Aztalan in Wisconsin in structures which probably date from the time of the Mound Builders. The walls at Hissarlik were protected by re-entering angles and projecting forts. The interior of theenceintewas reached by three doors, and it is still easy to make out the ruins of the different buildings. A room sixty-five feet long by thirty-two wide is surrounded by very thick walls, and towards the southeast is a square vestibule, opening into the room by a large door.45These, Dr. Schliemann thinks, were thenaosandpronaosof a temple dedicated to the tutelary gods of the town. Quite close to them is another building with similar dispositions; a square vestibule giving access to a large room, which in its turn leads to a smaller apartment. These two buildings, which are reached through apropylæum, are the only ones of which the explorers have been able to make out the measurements with any exactitude.Other ruins are evidently remains of the royal residence. The homes of the people were clustered on the sides and at the foot of the hill. After the destruction of the town by the Greeks, the Acropolis formed one vast mass of ruins, from which bits of walls stood out here and there as mute witnesses of the catastrophe. The thin layer of black earth covering the ruins seems to point to the speedy rebuilding of the town. The houses of the third settlement are very irregularly grouped, and consisted mostly of one story only, containing a number of very small rooms. Some of the walls are of bricks with glazed facings, others of very small stones cemented together with clay. In one house of rather larger size than the others was found some cement made of cinders, mixed with fragments of charcoal, broken bones, and the remains of shells and pottery. On the northwest the new colonists erected walls in place of those which had fallen down, but they were of very inferior masonry, coarse bricks baked on the spot, in the way customary among the Trojans, having formed the material.The destruction of the third town was more complete than that of Troy. The walls of the houses can still be made out rising to a certain height, and it was upon them as foundations that the fourth colony set up their abodes. These dwellings are smaller still, with flat roofs formed of beams on which was laid a coating of rushes and clay. Every generation appears to have been poorer than the last, alike in material wealth and in fertility of resource.The fifth colony spread northwards and eastwards. Their homes were built very much in the same style as those of their predecessors. The resemblance does not end there, and Dr. Schliemann notes that among the ruins of the three towns, which successively rose from the site of Troy, are found similar strange-looking idols, hatchets in jade, porphyry, diorite, and bronze, goblets with two handles, clumsy stone hammers, trachyte grindstones, and fusaïoles or perforated whorls bearing symbolic signs of a similar form. Evidently the men who succeeded each other after the great siege of Troy on the now celebrated hill of Hissarlik belonged to the same race, perhaps even to the same tribe. There are, however, certain notable differences which must not be passed over. The later pottery is not of such fine clay or so well moulded as the earlier specimens, nor are the stone hammers, which appear to have been the chief implements used, of such good workmanship. The piles of shells left to accumulate about the houses of the fourth and fifth towns can only be compared to the kitchen-middings so often referred to, and there is no doubt that those who left such heaps of rubbish about their dwellings could not have been so civilized as were the celebrated Trojans.Beneath the ruins of the Greek town, which strictly speaking belongs to history, Schliemann found a quantity of pottery of curious shapes and very different to anything he had previously discovered. He ascribes them to a Lydian colony which dwelt for a short time upon the hill. This pottery resembles that known as proto-Etruscan, of which so many specimens have been found in Italy. Probably the makers of both were contemporaries.By numerous and careful measurements Dr. Schliemann has been able to determine exactly the thickness of the layers, which correspond with the different periods during which Hissarlik was inhabited. The remains of the Greek and Lydian towns extend to a depth of 7½ feet beneath the actual level of the soil; the fourth layer, from 7½ to 15 feet; the third, from 15 to 22½ feet; Troy itself, from 22½ to 32 feet; and lastly Dardania, from 32 to 52 feet. The last layer carries us back to the golden age of Greek art, where all doubt is finally at an end. The bas-reliefs of remarkable workmanship bear witness to the Ilium, founded in memory of Troy. This is the town visited by Xerxes, Alexander the Great, and Julian the Apostate.46That the town still existed about the middle of the fourth century is proved by medals taken from the ruins, but it evidently fell into decadence soon after that time, for its very .name was forgotten by history, and it was reserved for our own time to resuscitate the ancient city of Priam and its successors from the ruins which lead been piled up by the destructive hand of man and by the lapse of tinge. But this task has been nobly achieved by the enthusiasm, scientific acumen, and we may perhaps add good-fortune of an archæologist who cherished a positive passion for everything relating to Homeric times.The number of objects picked up at different stages of the excavations was very considerable. Dr. Schliemann neglected absolutely nothing that appeared to him at all worthy of his collection, which now belongs to the Royal Museum of Berlin and contains some twenty thousand objects, including weapons and implements, some of stone, others of bronze, and thousands of vases and fusaïoles, gazing upon which we see rise before our eyes a picture of a civilization unknown before but through the Iliad and a few meagre historical allusions.Before we note in detail the most remarkable of the objects in Dr. Schliemann’s collection, we must add that recent researches have also brought to light the remains of a little temple dedicated to Pallas Athene and referred to in history, as well as those of a large Doric temple erected by Lysimachus, and of a magnificent theatre capable of holding six thousand spectators, and which probably dates from the end of the Roman Republic. The human bones picked lip among the ruins of the different towns play be attributed to the practice, already general, of cremation. Virchow has examined the skull of a woman found at Troy, which is of a pronounced brachycephalic type (82.5). The crania from the third town, on the other hand, are dolichocephalic, the mean cranial capacity being sixty-seven. If we could reason with any certainty from cranial capacity, this would appear to point to a different race, but it would not do to come to any positive conclusion with only one Trojan cranium to judge by.Figure 89.Vase ending in the snout of an animal. Found on the hill of Hissarlik at a depth of 45½ feet.But to return to Dr. Schliemann’s fine collection. The pottery from the first town, found at a depth of from thirty-two to fifty-two feet (Fig. 89), is superior alike in color, form, and construction, to the keramic ware of the following periods. The potter’s wheel was unknown, or at least very rarely used,47and pottery was hand made and polished with bone or wood polishers, the marks of which can still be made out. The forms are varied and often graceful, many of them, as do those found in the mounds of North America imitating those of the animals among which the potters lived. The usual color of the keramic ware is black, some times decorated with white lozenge-shaped ornaments. Some vases have also been found colored red, yellow, and brown, and even decked with garlands of flower and fruit, as are some of those of Santorin. We must also mention some apodal vases, and others with three feet, used for funeral purposes, containing human ashes (Fig. 90). The terra-cotta fusaïoles, found in such numbers among the ruins of the towns that rose successively from the hill of Hissarlik, are, on the other hand, rare at Dardania, if we may retain that name.48Figure 90.Funeral vase containing human ashes. Found at a depth of 50 feet.Excavations have brought to light more than six hundred celts or knives, generally of smaller size than those found in Denmark or France. Rock of many kinds, including serpentine, schist, felsite, jadeite, diorite, and nephrite, were used; and saws of flint or chalcedony, some toothed on one side only, others on both, are of frequent occurrence. They were fixed into handles of wood or horn, and kept in place with some agglutinative substance, such as pitch, several of them still retaining traces of this primitive glue. We must also mention awls, pins of bone and ivory, and ossicles or knuckle bones, in every stage of manufacture, confirming the accounts of Greek historians, who tell us of the great antiquity of the game played with them. The Dardanians used wooden and bone implements and weapons almost exclusively. It is impossible to say whether they were acquainted with the use of metals, but we might assert that they were if we could quite certainly attribute to them a certain mould of mica schist, found at a depth of 45½ feet, which bad been used in the process of casting spits and pins, which are supposed to be of more ancient date than the fibulæ.Figure 91.Large terra-cotta vases found at Troy.Figure 92.Earthenware pitcher found at a depth of 19½ feet.Figure 93.Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.The most valuable objects of the collection come from the deposits representing the town of Troy; they are all twisted, broken, and charred, bearing witness to the fierceness of the flames in which the town perished. These discoveries reveal to us the daily life of the people of Troy. Judging from the number of boars’ tusks found, hunting must have been a favorite pastime with them. The bones of oxen, sheep, and goats, of smaller species than those of the present day, have also been found. Horses and dogs were rare, and cats unknown. The domestic poultry of the present day was also wanting, no remains of birds having been found except a few bones of the wild swan and the wild goose. Fish and mollusca, as proved by the immense numbers of bones and shells, formed an important part of the diet of the Trojans. They also fed largely on cereals, which they cultivated with success; and wheat, the grains of which were very small, was known to them. The preservation of these vegetable relics was due to carbonization.Figure 94.Terra-cotta vase found with the treasure of Priam.Figure 95.Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.The pottery discovered is of an infinite variety, and includes jars from 4¾ feet to 7¾ feet high (Fig. 91), of Which Schliemann found more than six hundred, nearly all of them empty. Their size need not surprise us, for Ciampini49speaks of a potterydoliumof such vast size and height that a ladder of ten or twelve rungs was needed to reach the opening.50With these jars were found some large goblets, some long-necked vessels (Fig. 92), some amphoræ, and vases with three feet (Fig. 93). Some of the vases had lids the shape of a bell (Fig. 94), others were provided with flaps or horns by which to lift them (Fig. 95). The potter gave free vent to his imagination, but the decorations representing fish-bones, palm branches, zigzags, circles, and dots, are all of very inferior execution.Figure 96.Earthenware pig found at a depth of 13 feet.Figure 97.Vase surmounted by an owl’s head. Found beneath the ruins of Troy.Two series of terra-cotta objects deserve special mention, one representing animals, generally pigs (Fig. 96), though an example has been found of a hippopotamus; a fact of very great interest, as this animal does not live at the present day anywhere but in the heart of Africa. We know from this terra-cotta representation that it lived in Greece in the days of Troy. Pliny speaks of it in Upper Egypt in his day, and according to Mariette it lived thirty-five centuries before the Christian era in the delta formed by the mouth of the Nile. The second series of objects referred to above as of special interest are vases representing the heads of owls with the busts of women (Fig. 97). It is easy to make out the beak, eyes, and ears of the bird, and the breasts and navel of the woman. In some instances the face, breasts, and sexual organs of a woman are represented by a series of dots forming a triangle with the point downwards.51Other dots represent a necklace, and very similar designs are to be seen on the Chaldean cylinders. Can we then connect them in any way with the relics of Troy, and is it possible that the Trojans and Chaldeans were of common origin? However that may be, the constant repetition of these signs proves that they were of hieratic character. Terra-cotta was also used for a very great number of other purposes, as was the case everywhere before the introduction of metals. Some deep and some flat plates made of very common clay have been found, together with buttons, funnels, bells, children’s toys, and seals on which, some authorities think, Hittite characters can be made out. No lamps, or anything that could serve their purpose, have been found. The Trojans probably used torches of resinous wood or braziers, when they required artificial light.It would be impossible to give a list of the objects of every variety found among the ruins of Troy, with the aid of which we can form a very definite idea of the private life of its people. Some fragments of an ivory lyre, and some pipes pierced with three holes at equal distances, bear witness to their taste for music; a distaff, still full of charred wool, deserted by the spinner when she fled before the conflagration, tells of domestic industry and manual dexterity, while marble and stone phalli prove that the generative forces of nature were worshipped.52Figure 98.Copper vases found at Troy.The weapons and implements found included hæmatite and diorite projectiles used in slings, stone hatchets, and hammers pierced to receive handles, flint saws and obsidian knives. Metallurgy began to play an important part, and stone with its minor resisting power was quickly superseded by bronze. In fact, Virchow was certainly justified in saying that the whole town belonged to the Bronze age. Iron was still unknown, at least so far no trace of it has been found, either among the ruins of Troy or of the towns which succeeded it. Several crucibles and moulds of mica, schist, or clay have been found with one of granite of rectangular shape bearing on each face the hollows in tended to receive the fused metal. The Schliemann museum possesses numerous battle-axes53of bronze, some double-bladed daggers with crooked ends, lances similar to those discovered at Koban,54and thousands of spits, some with spherically shaped heads, others of spiral form. Some of these spits are made of copper, as are some large nails weighing thirty ounces, so that this metal was evidently still often used in a pure state.Figure 99.Vases of gold and electrum, with two ingots, found beneath the ruins of Troy.Figure 100.Gold and silver objects from the treasure of Priam.Figure 101.Gold ear-rings, head-dress, and necklace of golden beads from the treasure of Priam.At the foot of the palace, the ruins of which rise from the Acropolis at a depth of 27½ feet, the pick-axes of the explorers brought to light metal shields, vases (Fig. 98), and dishes mixed together in the greatest confusion, often soldered together by the intense heat to which they had been subjected. They had probably been enclosed in a wooden chest that was destroyed in the conflagration.55We are astonished at the wealth revealed to us. Cups, goblets, and bottles of gold (Figs.99and100) lay side by side with golden necklaces56and ear-rings of electrum.57The ornaments that had belonged to women are especially curious. At one place alone several diadems (Fig. 101) were picked up, with fifty-six ear-rings, six bracelets, and nine thousand minor objects, such as rings, buckles, buttons, dice, pins, beads, and ornaments of a great variety.58All these treasures were piled up in a great silver vase, into which they had doubtless been hastily thrown in the confusion of a precipitate flight. They are all of characteristic forms, quite unlike anything in Assyrian or Egyptian art. Were they made in Troy itself? Dr. Schliemann doubts it; he thinks that the makers of such clumsy pottery are not likely to have been able to produce jewelry of such delicate and remarkable workmanship. I should not like to be so positive, for even amongst the most advanced peoples we find very common objects mixed with others showing artistic skill. Why should it not have been the same at Troy? I think that in future Trojan art must take its place in the history of the progress of humanity. The nineteenth century has brought that art to light, and by a strange caprice of chance the treasures of Priam adorn the museum of Berlin, and we have seen the diadem of fair Helen exhibited in the South Kensington Museum of London.59Treasures nearly as valuable as those we have been describing were found in earthenware vases in several other parts of the ruins. Unfortunately, many of the objects found were stolen and melted down by the workmen, whilst others were taken to the Imperial Palace at Constantinople, whence they are doomed to be dispersed. In 1873, however, Dr. Schliemann was fortunate enough to hit upon a deposit containing twenty gold ear-rings, and four golden ornaments which had formed part of a necklace.60Similar ornaments were found at Mykenæ, near Bologna, in the Caucasus, in the Lake dwellings, and, stranger still, on the banks of the Rio Suarez in Colombia.61I will not add more to what I have already said about the towns which succeeded each other on the ruins of Troy, and of which the successive stages of rubbish on the hill of Hissarlik are the only witnesses left. The flames spared none who settled on that doomed spot, and new arrivals disappeared as rapidly as they came. The Ilium of the Greeks and Romans alone enjoyed any prosperity, but it too was in its turn swept away; and at the present day a few wandering shepherds and their flocks are the sole dwellers upon the hill immortalized by Homer.Before concluding this chapter I must refer once more to a, fact of considerable interest. In that part of the deposits of Hissarlik which represents Troy, Dr. Schliemann picked up the perforated whorls to which the name of fusaïoles has been given (Fig. 102), and of which we spoke in our account of the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland. These fusaïoles are generally of common clay mixed with bits of mica, quartz, or silica, though some few have been found at Mykenæ and Tiryns of steatite. The clay whorls before being baked were plunged into a bath of a very fine clay of gray, yellow, or black color, and then carefully polished. They nearly all bear ornaments of very primitive execution, such as stars, the sun, flowers, or animals, and more rarely representations of the human figure.Figure 102.Terra-cotta fusaïoles.We ourselves think these fusaïoles are amulets which were taken to Troy by the Trojans, and piously preserved by their successors. One important fact tends to confirm this hypothesis. A great number of them bear the sign of theswastika62(Fig. 103), the cross with the four arms, the sacred symbol of the great Aryan race so long supposed to be the source of all the Indo-European races. Theswastikais engraved, not only on the fusaïoles, but also on the diadems of the daughters of Priam, on the idols the Trojans worshipped, and on numerous objects from the Lydian and Greco-Roman towns. We meet with the double cross among the prehistoric races of the basin of the Danube, who colonized the shores of the Troad and the north of Italy, and it was introduced with the products of that antique civilization on the one side to the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Latins, the Gauls, the Germanic races, the Scandinavians, and the Bretons; and on the other to the people of Asia Minor, Persia, India, China, and Japan.63Figure 103.Cover of a vase with the symbol of theswastika. Found at Troy.This sign of theswastikameets us at every turn; we find it on many ancient Persian books, on the temples of India, on Celtic funeral stones, and on a Hittite cylinder. It is seen on vases of elegant form from Athens and Melos; on others from Ceres, Chiusi, and Cumæ, as well as on the clumsy pottery recently discovered at Königswald on the Oder and on the borders of Hungary; on bronze objects from the Caucasus, and the celebrated Albano urn; on a medal from Gaza in Palestine and on an Iberian medal from Asido. We see it on the Gallo-Roman rings of the Museum of Namur, and on the plaques of the belt, dating from the same epoch, which form part of the magnificent collection of M. Moreau. Schliemann tells us of it at Mykenæ and at Tiryns. Chantre found it on the necropoles of the Caucasus. It is engraved on the walls of the catacombs of Rome, on the chair of Saint Ambrose at Milan, on the crumbling walls of Portici, and on the most ancient monuments of Ireland, where it is often associated with inscriptions in the ogham character.64Theswastikaoccurs twice on a large piece of copper found at Corneto, which now belongs to the Museum of Berlin. Cartailhac noticed it in thecitaniaof Portugal, some of which date from Neolithic times.65The English in the Ashantee war noticed it on the bronzes they took at Coomassie on the coast of Guinea, and it has also been found on objects discovered in the English county of Norfolk.Figure 104.Stone hammer from New Jersey bearing an undeciphered inscription.Moreover, if we cross the Atlantic we find the same symbol engraved on the temples of Yucatan, the origin of which is unknown, on a hatchet found at Pemberton, in New Jersey (Fig. 104), on vases from a Peruvian sepulchre near Lima, and on vessels from thepueblosof New Mexico. Dr. Hamy, in his “American Decades,” represents it on a flattened gourd belonging to the Wolpi Indians, and the sacred tambours of the Esquimaux of the present day bear the same symbol, which was probably transmitted to them by their ancestors. The universality of this one sign amongst the Hindoos, Persians, Hittites, Pelasgians, Celts, and Germanic races, the Chinese, Japanese, and the primitive inhabitants of America is infinitely strange, and seems to prove the identity of races so different to each other, alike in appearance and in customs, and is a very important factor in dealing with the great problem of the origin of the human species.We have dwelt much on the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, but we must add that, like all great discoveries, they have been very vigorously contested.66Boetticher, for instance, considers the ruins of Hissarlik to be nothing more than the remains of a necropolis where cremation was practised according to the Assyrio-Babylonian custom.67A distinguished and very honest savant, S. Reinach, constituted himself the champion of this theory at the meeting of the Congress in Paris in 1889. Schliemann replied very forcibly, and the meeting appeared to be with him in the matter, as were also a number of men of science who visited Hissarlik in 1888, and we think that in the end history will adopt the opinion of the great Danish antiquarian.We have now passed in review the chief of the works left behind him by man from the earliest (lays of his existence to the dawn of historic times. We must still show prehistoric man in the presence of death, the universal destroyer, and learn from the evidence of the tombs of the remote past how our ancestors met the common doom.1On this point an admirable book should be consulted, by De la Noë: “Enceintes Préhistoriques,”Mat., 1888, p. 324, in which the author says that positions protected by escarpments bordering the greater party of the circumference of theenceintewere at all times chosen for the erection of fortifications. The absence of water, however, often makes him hesitate in coming to a decision, and leads him to think that the remains where it is absent must have been temples for the worship of deities.2Congrès Préhistoriques, Brussels, 1872, p. 318.3“De Bello Gallico,” book vii., chap. xxiii.4Dupont: “Les Temps Préhistoriques en Belgique,” p. 235.5H. Bauduin:Bul. Soc. Belge de Géographie, 1879.6Recueil des Travaux de la Société de l’Eure, Évreux, 1879.7Rev. d’Anth., 1880, p. 469.8“Notice sur Quelques Monuments Trouvés sur le Sommet des Vosges” (Soc. des Monuments Historiques de l’Alsace, vol. i.).9Rev. d’Anth., 1880, p. 295.10We may also mention the Pen Richard in Charente Inférieure, so well described by Cartailhac in his “France Préhistorique,” p. 131.11Arcelin: “L’Âge de Pierre et la Classification Préhistorique,” Paris, 1873. Flouest: “Notice sur le Camp de Chassey.” Perrault: “Un Foyer de l’Âge de la Pierre Polie au Camp de Chassey” (Mat., 1870). Coynart: “Fouilles au Camp de Chassey” (Rev. Arch., 1866 and 1867).12Ponthieux, “Le Camp de Catenoy” (Oise).13“Hist. Francorum,” book i., chap. xxxii.14De Rosemont: “Étude sur les Antiquités antérieures aux Romains.” Desjardins: “Les Camps Retranchés des Environs de Nice.” Rivière:Ass. Française, Rheims, 1880, p. 628.15Pigorini: “Terramara dell’Eta del Bronzo Situata in Castione de’ Marchesi.”16Nature, 1887, second week, p. 62.17Memoranda read to the Royal Society of Antiquaries in London (Archæologia, vol. xlii., pp. 27–76). Lane Fox:British Association, Bristol, 1875. Evans: “Stone Age.”18“Solent et subterraneos specus aperire, eosque multo insuper fimo onerant, suffugium hiemi et receptaculum frugibus” (“De Moribus Germanorum,” chap. xvi.).19American Journal of Archæology.20Zeitschrift für Anthropologie, 1874, p. 115; 1875, p. 127.21Zaborowski: “Monuments Préhistoriques de la Basse Vistule.”22Ribeiro: “Notice sur Quelques Monuments Préhistoriques du Portugal,” Lisbon, 1878.23“Noticia de Algunas Estarves e Monumentos Prehistoricos.”24H. and L. Siret: “Les Premiers Âges du Métal dans le Sud-est de l’Espagne.”25Congrès Préhistorique de Copenhague, p. 118.26Putnam: “Report Peabody Museum,” vol. iii., p. 348.27“Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.”28See Dr. Hibbert in theTransactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. iv., Appendix, p. 181.29Zeitschrift für Ethnographie, 1870, p. 270.30Pomerol: “Murailles Vitrifiées de Châteauneuf,”Ass. Franç., Blois, 1884.31Congrès Soc. Sav., Sorbonne, 1882.32J. Marion:Bul. des Soc. Savantes, 4th series, vol. iv. Daubrée:Rev. Arch., July, 1881.33Sir J. Lubbock compares the ruins of Aztalan, in America, with the vitrified forts of Scotland; but we think this is a mistake, for the walls of Aztalan consisted of irregularly shaped masses of hard, reddish clay, full of hollows, retaining the impression of the straw or dried grass with which the clay was mixed before it was subjected to the action of heat, whether the application of that heat was intentional or accidental. There is nothing about this at all resembling the melted granite of the vitrified forts.34De Cassac: “Notes sur les Forts Vitrifiés de la Creuse.” Thuot: “La Forteresse Vitrifiée du Pay de Gaudy,” p. 102.35We take most of these details from a note by M. A. de Montaiglon published in theBulletin des Sociétés Savantes.36Mat., 1881, p. 371.37Bul. Soc. Anth., 1884, p. 816, etc.38Fouqué,Nature, 1876, second week, p. 65.39Book vi., chap. xvi. and xx.—Pliny the Elder, uncle and father by adoption of Pliny the Younger, lost his life in this catastrophe, which took place in 79 A. D.40Cigalla:Acad. des Sciences, November 12, 1866. Fouqué:Acad. des Sciences, March 25, 1867. “Un Pompéi Préhistorique,”Revue des Deux-Mondes, October 15, 1869.41Schliemann: “Troy and its Remains,” translated by Philip Smith, London, Murray, 1875; “Ilios Ville et Pays des Troyens,” translated by Mme. E. Egger, Paris, Hachette, 1885; E. Burnouf:Revue des Deux-Mondes, January 1, 1874; Virchow: “Alt Trojanische Gräber and Schädel.”42Iliad, canto v., v., 692.43Egyptologists tell us that in the fourth year of the reign of Ramses II., or about 1406 B.C., the Hittites placed themselves at the head of a coalition against the Egyptian Pharaoh. With these Hittites, or Khittas, whose descendants still dwell in the north of Syria, were the Mysians, the Lycians, the Dardanians, and other tribes.44“Amérique Préhistorique” (Masson), translated by Nancy Bell (N. D’Anvers), and published by Murray, London; Putnam, New York.45“Troy and its Remains,” plate ix. See also excellent essay on the same subject by S. Reinach, which appeared in theRevue Archéologiquein 1885. Later investigations by Dr. Schliemann also brought to light a remarkable resemblance between the buildings at Hissarlik and those of Tiryns.46The British Museum contains a manuscript of the fourteenth century, in which is a letter from Julian, written when he was emperor, between 361 and 363 A.D., and relating to his visit to Ilium.47The potter’s wheel was, however, in use at a very remote antiquity. In China its invention is attributed to the legendary Emperor Hwang-Ti, who is supposed to have lived about 2697 B.C. The wheel was also known from the very earliest times in Egypt, and Homer (Iliad, c. xviii., v. 599) compares the light motions of the dancers represented on the shield of Achilles to the rapid rotation of the potter’s wheel.48Rivett-Carnac: “Memorandum on Clay Discs Called Spindle Whorls and Votive Seals Found at Sankisa” (Behar),Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xlix., p. 1.49“De Sacris Ædificiis,” ch. ix., p. 128.50It is interesting to note the discovery of urns closely resembling those of Troy, and containing human remains, in Persia (Sir W. Ouseley: “Travels in Persia”), and at Travancore, in the south of Malabar, where, according to tradition, they were intended to receive the remains of young virgins sacrificed in honor of the gods.—“Some Vestiges of Girl Sacrifices,”Journ. Anth. Inst., May, 1882.51The vulva was sometimes represented by a large triangle. The same peculiarity occurs on some black marble statuettes, found in the tombs of the Cyclades and Attica. Three such statuettes from the island of Paros are in the Louvre, and the British Museum owns a rich collection. Dr. Schliemann also mentions a female idol made in lead of very coarse workmanship, in which the sexual organs are represented by a double cross.52Thephalluswas, as we have already stated, the symbol of generative force. Its worship extended throughout India and Syria; a gigantic Phallus adorned the temple of the mother of the gods at Hierapolis, and it was carried in triumph in processions through Egypt and Greece. It is still worshipped in some places at the present day. Near Niombo, in Africa, there is a temple containing several phallic statues; at Stanley-Pool the fête of thephallusis celebrated with obscene rites. The Kroomen observe similar ceremonies at the time of the new moon, and in Japan on certain fête clays young girls flourish giganticphalliat the end of long poles. Thephallusis also often represented on the monuments of Central America—on the stones of the temples of Izamal and the island of Zapatero, for instance. Possibly the worship of the productive and generative forces of nature was the earliest religion of many primitive peoples, but all that is said on the subject must be sifted with considerable care.53Similar hatchets of pure copper (Fig. 2) have been found in Hungary, and Butler (“Prehistoric Wisconsin”) speaks of them also as being found in North America.54The tin used is making bronze probably came from Spain or Cornwall, perhaps also from the Caucasus, where small quantities of it are still found. It was doubtless imported by the Phœnicians, the great navigators of antiquity. See Rudolf Virchow’s “Das Grüberfeld Von Koban im Laude der Osseten,” Berlin, 1883.55This idea gains probability from the fact that the remains of a key were picked up near the treasure, which we have reason to suppose belonged to Priam.56The gold may have come from the mines of Astyra, not far from Troy.57Electrum was the ancient name for amber, but was also given to an alloy of gold and silver, the yellow color of which resembles that of amber.58Dr. Schliemann gives a very careful description of all these objects. See “Troy and its Remains,” Figs. 174 to 497, pp. 260 to 353.59The χρήδεμνον or diadem of the wife of Menelaus is a narrow fillet from which hang several little chains formed of links alternating with small leaves, and ending in rather larger leaves, these leaves all representing the woman with the owl’s head, so characteristic of Trojan art. The golden objects are all soldered with the same metals, which modern goldsmiths seem unable to do. At Tiryns, which we believe to have been contemporary with Troy, the art of soldering was unknown, and ornaments were merely screwed together.60Bastian,Zeitschrift der Berliner Gesellschaft für Erdkünde, vol. xiii., plates 1 and 2.61If we accept 1200 B.C. as the date of the Trojan war and the eighth century as that of the foundation of Ilium, the towns that succeeded each other on the hill of Hissarlik only lasted four centuries altogether.62In the Vedas the wordswastiis often used in the sense of happiness or good-fortune.63Comte Goblet d’Auriella,Bul. Acad. Royale de Belgique, 1889.64G. Atkinson,Congrès Préhistorique, Lisbon, 1880, p. 466.65“Ages Préhistoriques en Espagne et Portugal,” figs 410, 411, 412, p. 286.66Aussland, 1883.Zeitschrift für Museologie and Antequaten Kunde, 1884. Musœon, 1888 and 1889.67Virchow, who visited the remains at Hissarlik, treats this idea asfurchtbaren Unsinn(ridiculous nonsense).
Vases found at Santorin.
With these vases were found some troughs for holding crushed grain, and lava discs very much like those still in use among the weavers of the Archipelago to stretch the woof of their tissues; skilfully graduated lava weights, the correlation of which is very evident, as they weigh 8, 24, and 96 ounces; a flint arrow-head and a saw of the same material with regular teeth; together with a great variety of other objects, including many obsidian arrows and knives, reminding us in their shape of those characteristic of the Stone age in North Europe.
Two rings of gold beaten very thin, and a little copper saw with no trace of any alloy, are, so far, the only metal objects found in the excavations. The origin of the former, moreover, is very uncertain, and there has been much discussion as to where the rings came from. In spite, however, of all the gaps in the evidence about them, there remains no doubt that the inhabitants of Santorin were farther advanced in civilization than the Lake dwellers of Switzerland, the builders of theterremareof Italy, or the Iberians of the south of Spain, who were very probably their contemporaries; and we cannot refrain from expressing our admiration of the wonderful progress made by the inhabitants of the little group of volcanic islands under notice.
Before the catastrophe which overwhelmed them, Santorin was covered with comfortable and solidly built houses. Men knew how to till the ground, and gathered in crops of cereals, among which barley was the most abundant, then millet, lentils, peas, coriander, and anise; they had learned to domesticate animals, as is proved beyond a doubt by the number of bones of sheep and goats; they kept dogs to guard their flocks, and horses to aid in agricultural work; they knew how to weave stuffs, to grind grain, to extract the oil from olives, and even to make cheese, if we may give that name to the pasty white stuff found at the bottom of a vase by Dr. Nomicos. They were acquainted with the arch, and they used durable and brilliant colors. The copper saw is an example of the first efforts of the natives at metallurgy; the gold and obsidian which were foreign to the island bear witness to commercial relations with people at a distance. They loved art, as proved by the shape of their vases and the ornamentation on many of them, which is really often worthy of the best days of Greece. All around we see signs appearing as it were suddenly of a civilization, the origin and tendencies of which are alike still unknown.
But one human skeleton has so far been found in Santorin, and that is of an inhabitant who had evidently been overtaken in his flight and crushed beneath the burning scoriæ from the volcano. This man was of medium height, and is supposed to have been between forty and forty-eight years old. The bones of the pelvis are firmly consolidated, and the teeth are worn with mastication.
Let us endeavor to guess at the period when the people of Santorin lived. De Longpérier tells us that vases similar to those left by them are represented on the tomb of Rekmara amongst the presents offered to Thothmes III., who lived in the eighth century B.C., but if so the people of Santorin appear to have borrowed nothing in their intercourse with Egypt. The first invasion of Greece by the Phœnicians is supposed to have been in the fifteenth century B.C., but the buildings, the pottery, and the various implements of Therasia and Acrotiri differ essentially from those of the Phœnicians, who, moreover, from the earliest times, used metals. Must we not therefore conclude that the catastrophe which overwhelmed Santorin took place before the fifteenth century B.C.? Conjectures as to the date of the fatal eruption, however plausible, are of no use in anything relating to the origin of the people, or the time of their first occupation of the island. On these points all is still hopeless confusion, and we must wait for further discoveries before we can hope to come to any conclusions in the matter.
We have gone back to the very earliest days of man upon the earth; we have shown that he was the contemporary of the mammoth and the rhinoceros, of the cave-lion and the cave-bear; we have seen him crouching in the deep recesses of his cave and fighting the battle of life with no weapon but a few scarcely sharpened flints, leading an existence infinitely more wretched than the animals about him. Not without emotion have we watched our remote ancestors in their ceaseless struggle for existence; not without emotion have we seen them gradually growing in intelligence and energy, and attaining by slow degrees to a certain amount of civilization. Santorin is a striking and brilliant proof of their progress, and we shall appreciate this progress yet more when we have examined the ruins piled up on the hill of Hissarlik. There we shall close this portion of our work, for from the time when the buildings of which these remains were the relics met their doom, the use of metals, copper, bronze, gold, silver, and iron became general. History began to be written, and it is her task to tell us of the migrations of races, the early efforts of historic, races, the foundation of empires. In a word, the prehistoric age was over; that of self-conscious portraiture was now to begin.
A few years ago I was on the ancient Hellespont and my fellow-travellers, grouped about the deck of our vessel, were trying to make out on the receding coast of Asia the sites of Troy and of the tumuli which were then still supposed to have been the tombs of Achilles, Patrokles, and Hector, but which are now, thanks to the able researches of Dr. Schliemann, known to belong to a comparatively modern epoch. The streams, bearing the ever memorable names of Simoïs and Scamander, were also eagerly pointed out by the watchers, recalling the words of Lamartine:
Le nautonnier voguant sur les flots du BosphoreDes yeux cherchait encoreLe palais de Priam et les tours d’Ilium.
Great indeed is the privilege of genius, immortalizing all that it touches; for it must be pointed out that Troy was never an important town, and the war in which it disappeared was in reality but one of the incessant struggles between the petty princes of Greece and Asia.
When I visited the East, scholars were not at all agreed as to the site of the town which was so long besieged by the Greeks; and certain sceptical spirits even went so far as to deny that there ever was such a person as Homer at all, or that if there were, he wrote the epic poem which has borne his name so long. Tradition, however, was pretty constant in pointing to the hill of Hissarlik as the site on which Troy was built. Strabo was quite an exception in relegating the town to the lower end of the bay; where the miserable little village of Akshi-koi now stands. In 1788 a new idea was started; Lechevalier in his account of his journey in Troas claims to have recognized the site of Troy at Bunarbashi. At that time erudition was not very profound, and Lechevalier’s site was accepted; indeed it was long maintained, and quite recently it has been defended by Perrot. But the nineteenth century is more exacting; the most plausible hypotheses are not enough without facts to support them, and excavations at Akshi-koi and at Bunarbashi show that there never was a town on either of these sites.
Excavations on the hill of Hissarlik, begun by Dr. Schliemann in 1871, and carried on under his superintendence for more than ten years, have, on the contrary, yielded most definite, satisfactory, and conclusive results. At a depth of fifty-two feet the diggers came to the virgin soil, a very hard conchiferous limestone. The immense masses ofdébrisof which the embankment is made up date front different epochs; we have before us, if we may use such an expression, a perpendicular Pentapolis or series of five ancient cities one above the other. One town was destroyed by assault and by fire; another rapidly rose from its ruins, built with stones taken front the midst of those very remains. The study of the piled-up rubbish enables us to build up again a picture of the remote past with all its vicissitudes, and Virchow may well say that the hill of Hissarlik will for ever be considered one of the best authenticated witnesses of the progress of civilization.41
The first layer of rubbish rests on the rock itself, and may very well have belonged to the town built by Dardanus, of which Tlepolemus relates the destruction by his grandfather Hercules.42According to the Homeric story six generations, and according to generally accepted modern calculations two centuries, separate Dardanus from Priam. If therefore we accept 1200 B.C. as the date of the Trojan war, the town built by Dardanus would date from 1400 B.C., and we should possess data, if not absolutely certain, at least approximately so.43
There remain but a few relics of the buildings erected by the first inhabitants of the bill of Hissarlik, which relics consist of great blocks of irregular size, with remains of bearing walls composed of small stones cemented together with clay and faced with a glaze which has withstood the wear and tear of centuries.
The second town, which would appear to have been that described in the Iliad, was probably built by a race foreign to those who erected the first. The hill, which was to become the Acropolis of the new town, was surrounded by the new-comers with a wall several feet thick, of which the foundations consisted of unhewn stones; whilst the upper part was made of artificially baked bricks, the baking having been done after they were put in place, by large fires lit in vacant places left at regular intervals; an arrangement recalling what we have said in speaking of vitrified forts.44It is also interesting to note a similar mode of construction at Aztalan in Wisconsin in structures which probably date from the time of the Mound Builders. The walls at Hissarlik were protected by re-entering angles and projecting forts. The interior of theenceintewas reached by three doors, and it is still easy to make out the ruins of the different buildings. A room sixty-five feet long by thirty-two wide is surrounded by very thick walls, and towards the southeast is a square vestibule, opening into the room by a large door.45These, Dr. Schliemann thinks, were thenaosandpronaosof a temple dedicated to the tutelary gods of the town. Quite close to them is another building with similar dispositions; a square vestibule giving access to a large room, which in its turn leads to a smaller apartment. These two buildings, which are reached through apropylæum, are the only ones of which the explorers have been able to make out the measurements with any exactitude.
Other ruins are evidently remains of the royal residence. The homes of the people were clustered on the sides and at the foot of the hill. After the destruction of the town by the Greeks, the Acropolis formed one vast mass of ruins, from which bits of walls stood out here and there as mute witnesses of the catastrophe. The thin layer of black earth covering the ruins seems to point to the speedy rebuilding of the town. The houses of the third settlement are very irregularly grouped, and consisted mostly of one story only, containing a number of very small rooms. Some of the walls are of bricks with glazed facings, others of very small stones cemented together with clay. In one house of rather larger size than the others was found some cement made of cinders, mixed with fragments of charcoal, broken bones, and the remains of shells and pottery. On the northwest the new colonists erected walls in place of those which had fallen down, but they were of very inferior masonry, coarse bricks baked on the spot, in the way customary among the Trojans, having formed the material.
The destruction of the third town was more complete than that of Troy. The walls of the houses can still be made out rising to a certain height, and it was upon them as foundations that the fourth colony set up their abodes. These dwellings are smaller still, with flat roofs formed of beams on which was laid a coating of rushes and clay. Every generation appears to have been poorer than the last, alike in material wealth and in fertility of resource.
The fifth colony spread northwards and eastwards. Their homes were built very much in the same style as those of their predecessors. The resemblance does not end there, and Dr. Schliemann notes that among the ruins of the three towns, which successively rose from the site of Troy, are found similar strange-looking idols, hatchets in jade, porphyry, diorite, and bronze, goblets with two handles, clumsy stone hammers, trachyte grindstones, and fusaïoles or perforated whorls bearing symbolic signs of a similar form. Evidently the men who succeeded each other after the great siege of Troy on the now celebrated hill of Hissarlik belonged to the same race, perhaps even to the same tribe. There are, however, certain notable differences which must not be passed over. The later pottery is not of such fine clay or so well moulded as the earlier specimens, nor are the stone hammers, which appear to have been the chief implements used, of such good workmanship. The piles of shells left to accumulate about the houses of the fourth and fifth towns can only be compared to the kitchen-middings so often referred to, and there is no doubt that those who left such heaps of rubbish about their dwellings could not have been so civilized as were the celebrated Trojans.
Beneath the ruins of the Greek town, which strictly speaking belongs to history, Schliemann found a quantity of pottery of curious shapes and very different to anything he had previously discovered. He ascribes them to a Lydian colony which dwelt for a short time upon the hill. This pottery resembles that known as proto-Etruscan, of which so many specimens have been found in Italy. Probably the makers of both were contemporaries.
By numerous and careful measurements Dr. Schliemann has been able to determine exactly the thickness of the layers, which correspond with the different periods during which Hissarlik was inhabited. The remains of the Greek and Lydian towns extend to a depth of 7½ feet beneath the actual level of the soil; the fourth layer, from 7½ to 15 feet; the third, from 15 to 22½ feet; Troy itself, from 22½ to 32 feet; and lastly Dardania, from 32 to 52 feet. The last layer carries us back to the golden age of Greek art, where all doubt is finally at an end. The bas-reliefs of remarkable workmanship bear witness to the Ilium, founded in memory of Troy. This is the town visited by Xerxes, Alexander the Great, and Julian the Apostate.46That the town still existed about the middle of the fourth century is proved by medals taken from the ruins, but it evidently fell into decadence soon after that time, for its very .name was forgotten by history, and it was reserved for our own time to resuscitate the ancient city of Priam and its successors from the ruins which lead been piled up by the destructive hand of man and by the lapse of tinge. But this task has been nobly achieved by the enthusiasm, scientific acumen, and we may perhaps add good-fortune of an archæologist who cherished a positive passion for everything relating to Homeric times.
The number of objects picked up at different stages of the excavations was very considerable. Dr. Schliemann neglected absolutely nothing that appeared to him at all worthy of his collection, which now belongs to the Royal Museum of Berlin and contains some twenty thousand objects, including weapons and implements, some of stone, others of bronze, and thousands of vases and fusaïoles, gazing upon which we see rise before our eyes a picture of a civilization unknown before but through the Iliad and a few meagre historical allusions.
Before we note in detail the most remarkable of the objects in Dr. Schliemann’s collection, we must add that recent researches have also brought to light the remains of a little temple dedicated to Pallas Athene and referred to in history, as well as those of a large Doric temple erected by Lysimachus, and of a magnificent theatre capable of holding six thousand spectators, and which probably dates from the end of the Roman Republic. The human bones picked lip among the ruins of the different towns play be attributed to the practice, already general, of cremation. Virchow has examined the skull of a woman found at Troy, which is of a pronounced brachycephalic type (82.5). The crania from the third town, on the other hand, are dolichocephalic, the mean cranial capacity being sixty-seven. If we could reason with any certainty from cranial capacity, this would appear to point to a different race, but it would not do to come to any positive conclusion with only one Trojan cranium to judge by.
Vase ending in the snout of an animal. Found on the hill of Hissarlik at a depth of 45½ feet.
But to return to Dr. Schliemann’s fine collection. The pottery from the first town, found at a depth of from thirty-two to fifty-two feet (Fig. 89), is superior alike in color, form, and construction, to the keramic ware of the following periods. The potter’s wheel was unknown, or at least very rarely used,47and pottery was hand made and polished with bone or wood polishers, the marks of which can still be made out. The forms are varied and often graceful, many of them, as do those found in the mounds of North America imitating those of the animals among which the potters lived. The usual color of the keramic ware is black, some times decorated with white lozenge-shaped ornaments. Some vases have also been found colored red, yellow, and brown, and even decked with garlands of flower and fruit, as are some of those of Santorin. We must also mention some apodal vases, and others with three feet, used for funeral purposes, containing human ashes (Fig. 90). The terra-cotta fusaïoles, found in such numbers among the ruins of the towns that rose successively from the hill of Hissarlik, are, on the other hand, rare at Dardania, if we may retain that name.48
Funeral vase containing human ashes. Found at a depth of 50 feet.
Excavations have brought to light more than six hundred celts or knives, generally of smaller size than those found in Denmark or France. Rock of many kinds, including serpentine, schist, felsite, jadeite, diorite, and nephrite, were used; and saws of flint or chalcedony, some toothed on one side only, others on both, are of frequent occurrence. They were fixed into handles of wood or horn, and kept in place with some agglutinative substance, such as pitch, several of them still retaining traces of this primitive glue. We must also mention awls, pins of bone and ivory, and ossicles or knuckle bones, in every stage of manufacture, confirming the accounts of Greek historians, who tell us of the great antiquity of the game played with them. The Dardanians used wooden and bone implements and weapons almost exclusively. It is impossible to say whether they were acquainted with the use of metals, but we might assert that they were if we could quite certainly attribute to them a certain mould of mica schist, found at a depth of 45½ feet, which bad been used in the process of casting spits and pins, which are supposed to be of more ancient date than the fibulæ.
Large terra-cotta vases found at Troy.
Earthenware pitcher found at a depth of 19½ feet.
Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.
The most valuable objects of the collection come from the deposits representing the town of Troy; they are all twisted, broken, and charred, bearing witness to the fierceness of the flames in which the town perished. These discoveries reveal to us the daily life of the people of Troy. Judging from the number of boars’ tusks found, hunting must have been a favorite pastime with them. The bones of oxen, sheep, and goats, of smaller species than those of the present day, have also been found. Horses and dogs were rare, and cats unknown. The domestic poultry of the present day was also wanting, no remains of birds having been found except a few bones of the wild swan and the wild goose. Fish and mollusca, as proved by the immense numbers of bones and shells, formed an important part of the diet of the Trojans. They also fed largely on cereals, which they cultivated with success; and wheat, the grains of which were very small, was known to them. The preservation of these vegetable relics was due to carbonization.
Terra-cotta vase found with the treasure of Priam.
Vase found beneath the ruins of Troy.
The pottery discovered is of an infinite variety, and includes jars from 4¾ feet to 7¾ feet high (Fig. 91), of Which Schliemann found more than six hundred, nearly all of them empty. Their size need not surprise us, for Ciampini49speaks of a potterydoliumof such vast size and height that a ladder of ten or twelve rungs was needed to reach the opening.50With these jars were found some large goblets, some long-necked vessels (Fig. 92), some amphoræ, and vases with three feet (Fig. 93). Some of the vases had lids the shape of a bell (Fig. 94), others were provided with flaps or horns by which to lift them (Fig. 95). The potter gave free vent to his imagination, but the decorations representing fish-bones, palm branches, zigzags, circles, and dots, are all of very inferior execution.
Earthenware pig found at a depth of 13 feet.
Vase surmounted by an owl’s head. Found beneath the ruins of Troy.
Two series of terra-cotta objects deserve special mention, one representing animals, generally pigs (Fig. 96), though an example has been found of a hippopotamus; a fact of very great interest, as this animal does not live at the present day anywhere but in the heart of Africa. We know from this terra-cotta representation that it lived in Greece in the days of Troy. Pliny speaks of it in Upper Egypt in his day, and according to Mariette it lived thirty-five centuries before the Christian era in the delta formed by the mouth of the Nile. The second series of objects referred to above as of special interest are vases representing the heads of owls with the busts of women (Fig. 97). It is easy to make out the beak, eyes, and ears of the bird, and the breasts and navel of the woman. In some instances the face, breasts, and sexual organs of a woman are represented by a series of dots forming a triangle with the point downwards.51Other dots represent a necklace, and very similar designs are to be seen on the Chaldean cylinders. Can we then connect them in any way with the relics of Troy, and is it possible that the Trojans and Chaldeans were of common origin? However that may be, the constant repetition of these signs proves that they were of hieratic character. Terra-cotta was also used for a very great number of other purposes, as was the case everywhere before the introduction of metals. Some deep and some flat plates made of very common clay have been found, together with buttons, funnels, bells, children’s toys, and seals on which, some authorities think, Hittite characters can be made out. No lamps, or anything that could serve their purpose, have been found. The Trojans probably used torches of resinous wood or braziers, when they required artificial light.
It would be impossible to give a list of the objects of every variety found among the ruins of Troy, with the aid of which we can form a very definite idea of the private life of its people. Some fragments of an ivory lyre, and some pipes pierced with three holes at equal distances, bear witness to their taste for music; a distaff, still full of charred wool, deserted by the spinner when she fled before the conflagration, tells of domestic industry and manual dexterity, while marble and stone phalli prove that the generative forces of nature were worshipped.52
Copper vases found at Troy.
The weapons and implements found included hæmatite and diorite projectiles used in slings, stone hatchets, and hammers pierced to receive handles, flint saws and obsidian knives. Metallurgy began to play an important part, and stone with its minor resisting power was quickly superseded by bronze. In fact, Virchow was certainly justified in saying that the whole town belonged to the Bronze age. Iron was still unknown, at least so far no trace of it has been found, either among the ruins of Troy or of the towns which succeeded it. Several crucibles and moulds of mica, schist, or clay have been found with one of granite of rectangular shape bearing on each face the hollows in tended to receive the fused metal. The Schliemann museum possesses numerous battle-axes53of bronze, some double-bladed daggers with crooked ends, lances similar to those discovered at Koban,54and thousands of spits, some with spherically shaped heads, others of spiral form. Some of these spits are made of copper, as are some large nails weighing thirty ounces, so that this metal was evidently still often used in a pure state.
Vases of gold and electrum, with two ingots, found beneath the ruins of Troy.
Gold and silver objects from the treasure of Priam.
Gold ear-rings, head-dress, and necklace of golden beads from the treasure of Priam.
At the foot of the palace, the ruins of which rise from the Acropolis at a depth of 27½ feet, the pick-axes of the explorers brought to light metal shields, vases (Fig. 98), and dishes mixed together in the greatest confusion, often soldered together by the intense heat to which they had been subjected. They had probably been enclosed in a wooden chest that was destroyed in the conflagration.55We are astonished at the wealth revealed to us. Cups, goblets, and bottles of gold (Figs.99and100) lay side by side with golden necklaces56and ear-rings of electrum.57The ornaments that had belonged to women are especially curious. At one place alone several diadems (Fig. 101) were picked up, with fifty-six ear-rings, six bracelets, and nine thousand minor objects, such as rings, buckles, buttons, dice, pins, beads, and ornaments of a great variety.58All these treasures were piled up in a great silver vase, into which they had doubtless been hastily thrown in the confusion of a precipitate flight. They are all of characteristic forms, quite unlike anything in Assyrian or Egyptian art. Were they made in Troy itself? Dr. Schliemann doubts it; he thinks that the makers of such clumsy pottery are not likely to have been able to produce jewelry of such delicate and remarkable workmanship. I should not like to be so positive, for even amongst the most advanced peoples we find very common objects mixed with others showing artistic skill. Why should it not have been the same at Troy? I think that in future Trojan art must take its place in the history of the progress of humanity. The nineteenth century has brought that art to light, and by a strange caprice of chance the treasures of Priam adorn the museum of Berlin, and we have seen the diadem of fair Helen exhibited in the South Kensington Museum of London.59
Treasures nearly as valuable as those we have been describing were found in earthenware vases in several other parts of the ruins. Unfortunately, many of the objects found were stolen and melted down by the workmen, whilst others were taken to the Imperial Palace at Constantinople, whence they are doomed to be dispersed. In 1873, however, Dr. Schliemann was fortunate enough to hit upon a deposit containing twenty gold ear-rings, and four golden ornaments which had formed part of a necklace.60Similar ornaments were found at Mykenæ, near Bologna, in the Caucasus, in the Lake dwellings, and, stranger still, on the banks of the Rio Suarez in Colombia.61
I will not add more to what I have already said about the towns which succeeded each other on the ruins of Troy, and of which the successive stages of rubbish on the hill of Hissarlik are the only witnesses left. The flames spared none who settled on that doomed spot, and new arrivals disappeared as rapidly as they came. The Ilium of the Greeks and Romans alone enjoyed any prosperity, but it too was in its turn swept away; and at the present day a few wandering shepherds and their flocks are the sole dwellers upon the hill immortalized by Homer.
Before concluding this chapter I must refer once more to a, fact of considerable interest. In that part of the deposits of Hissarlik which represents Troy, Dr. Schliemann picked up the perforated whorls to which the name of fusaïoles has been given (Fig. 102), and of which we spoke in our account of the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland. These fusaïoles are generally of common clay mixed with bits of mica, quartz, or silica, though some few have been found at Mykenæ and Tiryns of steatite. The clay whorls before being baked were plunged into a bath of a very fine clay of gray, yellow, or black color, and then carefully polished. They nearly all bear ornaments of very primitive execution, such as stars, the sun, flowers, or animals, and more rarely representations of the human figure.
Terra-cotta fusaïoles.
We ourselves think these fusaïoles are amulets which were taken to Troy by the Trojans, and piously preserved by their successors. One important fact tends to confirm this hypothesis. A great number of them bear the sign of theswastika62(Fig. 103), the cross with the four arms, the sacred symbol of the great Aryan race so long supposed to be the source of all the Indo-European races. Theswastikais engraved, not only on the fusaïoles, but also on the diadems of the daughters of Priam, on the idols the Trojans worshipped, and on numerous objects from the Lydian and Greco-Roman towns. We meet with the double cross among the prehistoric races of the basin of the Danube, who colonized the shores of the Troad and the north of Italy, and it was introduced with the products of that antique civilization on the one side to the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Latins, the Gauls, the Germanic races, the Scandinavians, and the Bretons; and on the other to the people of Asia Minor, Persia, India, China, and Japan.63
Cover of a vase with the symbol of theswastika. Found at Troy.
This sign of theswastikameets us at every turn; we find it on many ancient Persian books, on the temples of India, on Celtic funeral stones, and on a Hittite cylinder. It is seen on vases of elegant form from Athens and Melos; on others from Ceres, Chiusi, and Cumæ, as well as on the clumsy pottery recently discovered at Königswald on the Oder and on the borders of Hungary; on bronze objects from the Caucasus, and the celebrated Albano urn; on a medal from Gaza in Palestine and on an Iberian medal from Asido. We see it on the Gallo-Roman rings of the Museum of Namur, and on the plaques of the belt, dating from the same epoch, which form part of the magnificent collection of M. Moreau. Schliemann tells us of it at Mykenæ and at Tiryns. Chantre found it on the necropoles of the Caucasus. It is engraved on the walls of the catacombs of Rome, on the chair of Saint Ambrose at Milan, on the crumbling walls of Portici, and on the most ancient monuments of Ireland, where it is often associated with inscriptions in the ogham character.64
Theswastikaoccurs twice on a large piece of copper found at Corneto, which now belongs to the Museum of Berlin. Cartailhac noticed it in thecitaniaof Portugal, some of which date from Neolithic times.65The English in the Ashantee war noticed it on the bronzes they took at Coomassie on the coast of Guinea, and it has also been found on objects discovered in the English county of Norfolk.
Stone hammer from New Jersey bearing an undeciphered inscription.
Moreover, if we cross the Atlantic we find the same symbol engraved on the temples of Yucatan, the origin of which is unknown, on a hatchet found at Pemberton, in New Jersey (Fig. 104), on vases from a Peruvian sepulchre near Lima, and on vessels from thepueblosof New Mexico. Dr. Hamy, in his “American Decades,” represents it on a flattened gourd belonging to the Wolpi Indians, and the sacred tambours of the Esquimaux of the present day bear the same symbol, which was probably transmitted to them by their ancestors. The universality of this one sign amongst the Hindoos, Persians, Hittites, Pelasgians, Celts, and Germanic races, the Chinese, Japanese, and the primitive inhabitants of America is infinitely strange, and seems to prove the identity of races so different to each other, alike in appearance and in customs, and is a very important factor in dealing with the great problem of the origin of the human species.
We have dwelt much on the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, but we must add that, like all great discoveries, they have been very vigorously contested.66Boetticher, for instance, considers the ruins of Hissarlik to be nothing more than the remains of a necropolis where cremation was practised according to the Assyrio-Babylonian custom.67A distinguished and very honest savant, S. Reinach, constituted himself the champion of this theory at the meeting of the Congress in Paris in 1889. Schliemann replied very forcibly, and the meeting appeared to be with him in the matter, as were also a number of men of science who visited Hissarlik in 1888, and we think that in the end history will adopt the opinion of the great Danish antiquarian.
We have now passed in review the chief of the works left behind him by man from the earliest (lays of his existence to the dawn of historic times. We must still show prehistoric man in the presence of death, the universal destroyer, and learn from the evidence of the tombs of the remote past how our ancestors met the common doom.
1On this point an admirable book should be consulted, by De la Noë: “Enceintes Préhistoriques,”Mat., 1888, p. 324, in which the author says that positions protected by escarpments bordering the greater party of the circumference of theenceintewere at all times chosen for the erection of fortifications. The absence of water, however, often makes him hesitate in coming to a decision, and leads him to think that the remains where it is absent must have been temples for the worship of deities.
2Congrès Préhistoriques, Brussels, 1872, p. 318.
3“De Bello Gallico,” book vii., chap. xxiii.
4Dupont: “Les Temps Préhistoriques en Belgique,” p. 235.
5H. Bauduin:Bul. Soc. Belge de Géographie, 1879.
6Recueil des Travaux de la Société de l’Eure, Évreux, 1879.
7Rev. d’Anth., 1880, p. 469.
8“Notice sur Quelques Monuments Trouvés sur le Sommet des Vosges” (Soc. des Monuments Historiques de l’Alsace, vol. i.).
9Rev. d’Anth., 1880, p. 295.
10We may also mention the Pen Richard in Charente Inférieure, so well described by Cartailhac in his “France Préhistorique,” p. 131.
11Arcelin: “L’Âge de Pierre et la Classification Préhistorique,” Paris, 1873. Flouest: “Notice sur le Camp de Chassey.” Perrault: “Un Foyer de l’Âge de la Pierre Polie au Camp de Chassey” (Mat., 1870). Coynart: “Fouilles au Camp de Chassey” (Rev. Arch., 1866 and 1867).
12Ponthieux, “Le Camp de Catenoy” (Oise).
13“Hist. Francorum,” book i., chap. xxxii.
14De Rosemont: “Étude sur les Antiquités antérieures aux Romains.” Desjardins: “Les Camps Retranchés des Environs de Nice.” Rivière:Ass. Française, Rheims, 1880, p. 628.
15Pigorini: “Terramara dell’Eta del Bronzo Situata in Castione de’ Marchesi.”
16Nature, 1887, second week, p. 62.
17Memoranda read to the Royal Society of Antiquaries in London (Archæologia, vol. xlii., pp. 27–76). Lane Fox:British Association, Bristol, 1875. Evans: “Stone Age.”
18“Solent et subterraneos specus aperire, eosque multo insuper fimo onerant, suffugium hiemi et receptaculum frugibus” (“De Moribus Germanorum,” chap. xvi.).
19American Journal of Archæology.
20Zeitschrift für Anthropologie, 1874, p. 115; 1875, p. 127.
21Zaborowski: “Monuments Préhistoriques de la Basse Vistule.”
22Ribeiro: “Notice sur Quelques Monuments Préhistoriques du Portugal,” Lisbon, 1878.
23“Noticia de Algunas Estarves e Monumentos Prehistoricos.”
24H. and L. Siret: “Les Premiers Âges du Métal dans le Sud-est de l’Espagne.”
25Congrès Préhistorique de Copenhague, p. 118.
26Putnam: “Report Peabody Museum,” vol. iii., p. 348.
27“Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.”
28See Dr. Hibbert in theTransactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. iv., Appendix, p. 181.
29Zeitschrift für Ethnographie, 1870, p. 270.
30Pomerol: “Murailles Vitrifiées de Châteauneuf,”Ass. Franç., Blois, 1884.
31Congrès Soc. Sav., Sorbonne, 1882.
32J. Marion:Bul. des Soc. Savantes, 4th series, vol. iv. Daubrée:Rev. Arch., July, 1881.
33Sir J. Lubbock compares the ruins of Aztalan, in America, with the vitrified forts of Scotland; but we think this is a mistake, for the walls of Aztalan consisted of irregularly shaped masses of hard, reddish clay, full of hollows, retaining the impression of the straw or dried grass with which the clay was mixed before it was subjected to the action of heat, whether the application of that heat was intentional or accidental. There is nothing about this at all resembling the melted granite of the vitrified forts.
34De Cassac: “Notes sur les Forts Vitrifiés de la Creuse.” Thuot: “La Forteresse Vitrifiée du Pay de Gaudy,” p. 102.
35We take most of these details from a note by M. A. de Montaiglon published in theBulletin des Sociétés Savantes.
36Mat., 1881, p. 371.
37Bul. Soc. Anth., 1884, p. 816, etc.
38Fouqué,Nature, 1876, second week, p. 65.
39Book vi., chap. xvi. and xx.—Pliny the Elder, uncle and father by adoption of Pliny the Younger, lost his life in this catastrophe, which took place in 79 A. D.
40Cigalla:Acad. des Sciences, November 12, 1866. Fouqué:Acad. des Sciences, March 25, 1867. “Un Pompéi Préhistorique,”Revue des Deux-Mondes, October 15, 1869.
41Schliemann: “Troy and its Remains,” translated by Philip Smith, London, Murray, 1875; “Ilios Ville et Pays des Troyens,” translated by Mme. E. Egger, Paris, Hachette, 1885; E. Burnouf:Revue des Deux-Mondes, January 1, 1874; Virchow: “Alt Trojanische Gräber and Schädel.”
42Iliad, canto v., v., 692.
43Egyptologists tell us that in the fourth year of the reign of Ramses II., or about 1406 B.C., the Hittites placed themselves at the head of a coalition against the Egyptian Pharaoh. With these Hittites, or Khittas, whose descendants still dwell in the north of Syria, were the Mysians, the Lycians, the Dardanians, and other tribes.
44“Amérique Préhistorique” (Masson), translated by Nancy Bell (N. D’Anvers), and published by Murray, London; Putnam, New York.
45“Troy and its Remains,” plate ix. See also excellent essay on the same subject by S. Reinach, which appeared in theRevue Archéologiquein 1885. Later investigations by Dr. Schliemann also brought to light a remarkable resemblance between the buildings at Hissarlik and those of Tiryns.
46The British Museum contains a manuscript of the fourteenth century, in which is a letter from Julian, written when he was emperor, between 361 and 363 A.D., and relating to his visit to Ilium.
47The potter’s wheel was, however, in use at a very remote antiquity. In China its invention is attributed to the legendary Emperor Hwang-Ti, who is supposed to have lived about 2697 B.C. The wheel was also known from the very earliest times in Egypt, and Homer (Iliad, c. xviii., v. 599) compares the light motions of the dancers represented on the shield of Achilles to the rapid rotation of the potter’s wheel.
48Rivett-Carnac: “Memorandum on Clay Discs Called Spindle Whorls and Votive Seals Found at Sankisa” (Behar),Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xlix., p. 1.
49“De Sacris Ædificiis,” ch. ix., p. 128.
50It is interesting to note the discovery of urns closely resembling those of Troy, and containing human remains, in Persia (Sir W. Ouseley: “Travels in Persia”), and at Travancore, in the south of Malabar, where, according to tradition, they were intended to receive the remains of young virgins sacrificed in honor of the gods.—“Some Vestiges of Girl Sacrifices,”Journ. Anth. Inst., May, 1882.
51The vulva was sometimes represented by a large triangle. The same peculiarity occurs on some black marble statuettes, found in the tombs of the Cyclades and Attica. Three such statuettes from the island of Paros are in the Louvre, and the British Museum owns a rich collection. Dr. Schliemann also mentions a female idol made in lead of very coarse workmanship, in which the sexual organs are represented by a double cross.
52Thephalluswas, as we have already stated, the symbol of generative force. Its worship extended throughout India and Syria; a gigantic Phallus adorned the temple of the mother of the gods at Hierapolis, and it was carried in triumph in processions through Egypt and Greece. It is still worshipped in some places at the present day. Near Niombo, in Africa, there is a temple containing several phallic statues; at Stanley-Pool the fête of thephallusis celebrated with obscene rites. The Kroomen observe similar ceremonies at the time of the new moon, and in Japan on certain fête clays young girls flourish giganticphalliat the end of long poles. Thephallusis also often represented on the monuments of Central America—on the stones of the temples of Izamal and the island of Zapatero, for instance. Possibly the worship of the productive and generative forces of nature was the earliest religion of many primitive peoples, but all that is said on the subject must be sifted with considerable care.
53Similar hatchets of pure copper (Fig. 2) have been found in Hungary, and Butler (“Prehistoric Wisconsin”) speaks of them also as being found in North America.
54The tin used is making bronze probably came from Spain or Cornwall, perhaps also from the Caucasus, where small quantities of it are still found. It was doubtless imported by the Phœnicians, the great navigators of antiquity. See Rudolf Virchow’s “Das Grüberfeld Von Koban im Laude der Osseten,” Berlin, 1883.
55This idea gains probability from the fact that the remains of a key were picked up near the treasure, which we have reason to suppose belonged to Priam.
56The gold may have come from the mines of Astyra, not far from Troy.
57Electrum was the ancient name for amber, but was also given to an alloy of gold and silver, the yellow color of which resembles that of amber.
58Dr. Schliemann gives a very careful description of all these objects. See “Troy and its Remains,” Figs. 174 to 497, pp. 260 to 353.
59The χρήδεμνον or diadem of the wife of Menelaus is a narrow fillet from which hang several little chains formed of links alternating with small leaves, and ending in rather larger leaves, these leaves all representing the woman with the owl’s head, so characteristic of Trojan art. The golden objects are all soldered with the same metals, which modern goldsmiths seem unable to do. At Tiryns, which we believe to have been contemporary with Troy, the art of soldering was unknown, and ornaments were merely screwed together.
60Bastian,Zeitschrift der Berliner Gesellschaft für Erdkünde, vol. xiii., plates 1 and 2.
61If we accept 1200 B.C. as the date of the Trojan war and the eighth century as that of the foundation of Ilium, the towns that succeeded each other on the hill of Hissarlik only lasted four centuries altogether.
62In the Vedas the wordswastiis often used in the sense of happiness or good-fortune.
63Comte Goblet d’Auriella,Bul. Acad. Royale de Belgique, 1889.
64G. Atkinson,Congrès Préhistorique, Lisbon, 1880, p. 466.
65“Ages Préhistoriques en Espagne et Portugal,” figs 410, 411, 412, p. 286.
66Aussland, 1883.Zeitschrift für Museologie and Antequaten Kunde, 1884. Musœon, 1888 and 1889.
67Virchow, who visited the remains at Hissarlik, treats this idea asfurchtbaren Unsinn(ridiculous nonsense).