Schliemann, the Discoverer & Destroyer of Troy

In the annals of archaeology one man stands out as a particularly egregious villain. Like various contemporary “visionary” businessmen today, Heinrich Schliemann used his abundant cash to do whatever he wanted and ignored the scientific, expert advice of his day. As a result, he uncovered the famed palace of Priam described in Homer’s Iliad and then promptly ripped through it and cast it on the debris pile. He presumed that the period of Homer’s poem was the beginning of everything and therefore would be found on the lowest level. (The photo at the top shows Sophia, his wife, bedecked in “Priam’s treasure,” which he absconded with from Turkey.)

Actually, the mound on which Troy stood has more than six layers below the Late Bronze Age city that might have been the residence of the legendary Priam. (That’s not counting subdivisions within layers.) Here is a thoughtful article in Smithsonian Magazine about Schliemann, “The Many Myths of the Man Who ‘Discovered’—and Nearly Destroyed—Troy.”

Schliemann’s Bad Assumptions

None of the upper layers had value to Schliemann. He suffered from a cultural tunnel vision. Even if he hadn’t been profoundly mistaken as to where he might find “Homer,” discarding whole strata of a dig is obviously foolish. Every layer reveals a culture and era of historical value.

Giving up a Divided World View

Schliemann wasn’t alone, of course, with his euro-centric view that the Greeks were the foundation of all Western Civilization. I loved studying the ancient Greeks in college and gained a lot, but it’s a good thing that we can shelve the term “Western Civilization” in favor of a more nuanced understanding of where our beliefs and knowledge came from. Read Hittite or Mesopotamian myths, for example, and you’ll notice familiar elements that Greek mythology borrowed from them. The ancient world didn’t see some imaginary line between East and West, but as an undergraduate, such an understanding was implicit in the approaches and material presented to me.

Neglected Hittites

That generally euro-centric approach also explains to some extent why no one paid much attention to the few visible remains of the Hittites until the twentieth century. Too many people followed their prejudices and figured nothing of interest could come from Turkey. Ironically, there may be more active archaeological digs in Turkey today than most other “traditional” locations. Turkey’s fascinating layers of human habitation keep coming to light, with contributions from both the east and west.

Here for a post “Did the Trojan War Really Happen?”

Here for a post “Profile of Troy: Hittite-Trojan Connection”