This was a really interesting piece about how Heinrich Schliemann found ancient Troy but didn’t know it:
The story that he told about the day he and Sophia found the treasure has long been repeated in introductory archaeology textbooks, although it is unlikely to be true. Schliemann later admitted that he lied about Sophia’s role in his story. She wasn’t even at the dig on the day that he claims to have found the treasure. Some scholars have also suggested that Schliemann didn’t find the treasure all in one place. Instead, they think he gathered the best of his finds from the entire season and announced to a gullible public that he had found them all together as a single treasure. Moreover, since the objects were found in Troy II, they are a thousand years too early to have belonged to Priam.
Schliemann continued to dig at Troy throughout the 1870s and 1880s, though he also was digging at Mycenae at that time, looking for material remains of King Agamemnon. To help him at Troy, he hired Wilhelm Dörpfeld, an architect with some previous archaeological experience, who eventually persuaded Schliemann that he had been wrong and that it was actually the layers called Troy VI or Troy VII at Hissarlik that he should have been investigating all along. Schliemann began to make plans for an additional attack on the mound, focused on these later levels, but on Christmas Day in 1890, he collapsed on a street in Naples and died the next day.
It was left to Dörpfeld to carry on. And so he did, with the financial assistance of Sophia Schliemann, who wanted him to continue her husband’s work at the site. He concentrated on excavating the remains that Schliemann had left untouched, mostly around the edges of the mound. As it turned out, those remains were extremely impressive. He unearthed tall stone walls, each several meters thick, that would have stymied any attackers, and large gateways allowing entrance to the interior, but only after one got past the guards.
One of the reasons I’m fascinated by archaeology is that it’s very easy to get it wrong, and I’ve no doubt that much of what is thought to be settled knowledge really isn’t. From being a reporter, and seeing how five different journalists can come up with five different versions of events, I’m well aware that perspective is everything.
Here’s a fun little exercise. Look at random items around your house, and imagine how the archaeologists of the future would interpret them as artifacts of a long-gone civilization.
I love archaeology, too. I read a book about Schliemann by Irving Stone years ago. It is probably dated a bit by now but I remember it was fascinating. I have also visited Mycenae – so now I’m wondering if the Agamemnon mask story is solid.
I recently saw a documentary that convinced me the Nefertiti bust in Berlin is a fake. That archaeologist, Borchardt, was a little off too.
That’s interesting about the bust of Nefertiti being a fake. What was the short-hand reason the experts gave for that conclusion?
I also understand that the mummies of Nefertiti and her husband, Pharaoh Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) have never been located. Which is very unusual.
I believe that they fled the country and settled in Medina which, at the time, was a minor philosophical center. They were probably buried there.
Archaeologists digging up my room would most likely conclude that whoever lived there worshiped six-stringed (and one twelve-string) instruments…