The Hero Schliemann

by Laura Amy Schlitz

  On the sea voyage from Japan to California, he wrote his first book, China and Japan in Present Times. Once back in Europe, he passed through London and visited the Crystal Palace Park at Sydenham. There he saw copies of Egyptian temples, stone tools from a cave in France, and life-size models of dinosaurs. The next day he prowled the halls of the British Museum, looking at antiquities from Egypt and Mesopotamia.

  His growing curiosity about the ancient world was not unusual for a man of his time. Heinrich was living in an age when the general public was becoming more knowledgeable about the distant past. “Prehistory” — the study of human beings before the invention of writing — was a new science. All over fashionable Europe, the ancient world had become the latest craze.

  Heinrich was attracted by this new science, though he had not yet decided to become an archaeologist. He felt torn between the worlds of business and scholarship. He enrolled in the French university, the Sorbonne, but took time away from his classes to mount guard over his fortune. When he heard about economic opportunities in the United States, he headed for America. The year was 1867, and the slaves had been freed for four years.

  Once in the United States, Heinrich found himself deeply moved by the ambition and intelligence of the former slaves. He wrote that any statements about the laziness of Negro freedmen were “downright falsehoods. . . . They are as willing and eager to work . . . as any workmen I have yet seen and . . . both morally and intellectually, they stand much higher than their former tyrants.” He sympathized with the former slaves’ struggle to create a new and a better life. He had never forgotten what it was to be an underdog.

  Heinrich celebrated his forty-sixth birthday alone, in New York City. Though he did not yet realize it, he was about to set off on a heroic quest: a lifelong search for the lost city of Troy.

  Most modern scholars think that it was not until the age of forty-six that Heinrich Schliemann made up his mind to look for Troy, the lost city of Homer’s Iliad. Before 1868, there is nothing about finding Troy in the thousands of letters and papers written by Heinrich Schliemann. If — as Heinrich maintained later in life — he had dreamed of finding the lost city since he was seven years old, it was a dream he had never shared. It was a dream he had buried as deep as Troy itself.

  And it was a peculiar dream. Most of the scholars of Schliemann’s day doubted whether Troy was a real place. Homer’s war poem The Iliad was considered the greatest epic of all time, but it was considered to be fictional, an invented tale. Troy was a place in a story, like Oz or Narnia or Neverland.

  Heinrich, of course, wanted the story to be true. He wanted to believe that the Trojan War was a real war that happened just the way Homer said it did. If current scholarship held that Troy was a myth, the scholars were wrong. Heinrich preferred the historians of ancient Greece.

  The ancient Greek writers believed that there had once been a great war between the Greeks and the Trojans. Greek historians like Thucydides (c. 460–400 BCE) and Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE) considered the Trojan War part of their ancient history, and although they couldn’t be sure exactly when it occurred, they agreed that it took place roughly eight hundred years before their time, around 1250 BCE. Greek historians came up with these dates by keeping track of family histories and stories: “Let’s see, my grandfather said his grandfather said his grandfather said . . .” This is not the most accurate way to keep track of historic events, but the Trojan War took place before the Greeks adopted an alphabet from the Phoenicians and began to write.

  The ancient Greek historians also agreed that Homer lived four to six hundred years after the Trojan War. It is most likely that Homer’s two great works, The Iliad and The Odyssey, were composed orally and sung by bards. During the seventh century, the Greeks became fully literate, and different versions of the poems were tacked together and written down.

  Homer was the greatest poet of the ancient world. According to tradition, he lived nearly three thousand years ago. He was said to have been blind: in ancient Greece, blind men often became storytellers. When we speak of those two astonishing poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, we say they are “by Homer.”

  Homer is a mysterious figure. Everyone agrees on his genius — but no one is sure whether or not he ever lived. Some scholars think that the poems were composed by many men, over hundreds of years. Heinrich Schliemann believed in a single “Homer” — the blind poet of legend.

  According to many scholars, Homer never wrote a line of poetry. During his lifetime, the Greeks had no alphabet. The great poems were created, learned by heart, and chanted aloud. This must have been a staggering feat of memorization — both The Iliad and The Odyssey are so long, it would take several days to recite them.

  Homer’s two masterpieces are very different. The Iliad is the tale of the warriors who fought in the Trojan War, particularly the doomed and defiant Achilles and his enemy, the noble Hector. The Odyssey, which takes place after the invasion of Troy, is an adventure story. It follows Odysseus, the craftiest of the Greek warriors, on his journey home to Ithaca.

  By the time Heinrich Schliemann was born, European historians had come to question the entire existence of a poet named Homer. They even wondered whether there had been a Trojan War. Above all, they wondered how much truth could be left in a story after it had been told and retold for hundreds of years. Scholars reasoned that if there had ever been any historic truth to The Iliad, it had long ago been lost.

  Heinrich, of course, did not reason that way. In matters that touched on Homer, Heinrich did not reason: he was ruled by his imagination and his heart. He worshiped Homer and adored The Iliad, and he believed that if Homer’s poem sang of a city of Troy near the Dardanelles, it was a real city. If Heinrich followed the clues in Homer’s poems very carefully, he might be able to find the ruins of that city and bring it to light.

  Heinrich’s visit to “the fatherland of my darling Homer” began in 1868, with a visit to Corfu, the Greek island where the shipwrecked Odysseus met the princess Nausikaa. In The Odyssey, Odysseus meets the princess by the River Cressida, where she is washing clothes with her maids. Because Odysseus is naked, he holds a branch in front of his loins. Heinrich followed the same path, and suffered the same embarrassment as Homer’s hero. In order to cross the river, he took off his trousers. A number of women in a nearby field stopped work long enough to have a good giggle at the German businessman in his underwear. It seems likely that Heinrich was, in a private, middle-aged way, playing Odysseus — and it was a good role for him. Odysseus was a crafty man, quick to invent a tale, a traveler who had been shipwrecked and stranded.

  After Corfu, Heinrich followed Odysseus back to his homeland — Ithaca. Unlike Troy, Ithaca was a name that could be found on any map. Whether Odysseus ever lived was a matter of opinion, but there was no question as to where he lived: Odysseus was king of Ithaca. There were even guidebooks that gave locations for “Odysseus’s palace” and other Homeric sites. Heinrich was exactly the kind of tourist for whom these books were written. He walked in his hero’s footsteps and shed tears at the sites where Odysseus once wept.

  He also did his first digging. He dug in the ground where folk memory placed the palace of Odysseus. Here he found five or six vases filled with ashes. Since the Greeks in Homer’s poem cremated their dead and buried the ashes in vases, Heinrich’s fancy took a giant leap. “It is very possible that I have in my five little vases the bodies of Odysseus and Penelope.” It was his first excavation, and one that was to prove characteristic. He followed the story, delved into the earth, and leaped to ecstatic conclusions about whatever he found.

  After this heady discovery, Heinrich proceeded to Mycenae, the stronghold of Agamemnon. It was said that the warrior-king of The Iliad lay buried there, though his tomb had never been found. Heinrich admired the famous lion-carved gates of the Mycenean kings and braved the bats in Agamemnon’s treasury. He spent the next week exploring the Greek islands, before proceeding to Bunarbashi, a Turkish village near
the Dardanelles.

  Heinrich was not the only man in Europe who believed in a real Trojan War and a real Troy. Though he was in the minority, he was not alone. Other scholars who had considered the matter had concluded that Homer’s Troy might lie beneath the village of Bunarbashi. Heinrich decided to see for himself.

  From the first, Heinrich was disappointed by Bunarbashi. For one thing, it was dirty, which offended his tidy soul. For another, it was ten miles from the sea. Heinrich, who knew much of The Iliad by heart, remembered that the Greek warriors went back and forth from their ships to the city several times a day. If the distance between the two points was ten miles, this would be impossible. He also recalled the famous scene in The Iliad in which the Greek hero Achilles chased the Trojan prince Hector around the walled city. Heinrich tried to act out the chase and failed. The hill was so steep that he could get around it only by crawling on all fours. Heinrich was perplexed: Homer could not have been mistaken about the chase. Since Homer could not be wrong, Troy must lie on some other hill. After a cursory dig, Heinrich abandoned Bunarbashi for the plain of Hissarlik.

  Heinrich was by no means the first to consider Hissarlik as a possible site for Troy. For the last hundred years, there had been scholars who suspected that Troy was at Hissarlik rather than Bunarbashi. One of these men was an archaeologist named Frank Calvert. It was Frank Calvert who first discovered that what looked like a large hill on the Turkish plain was actually a mound made by human beings. Frank Calvert believed that inside that mound lay the lost city of Troy. He bought some of the land and started digging. When Heinrich met Frank Calvert in 1868, he adopted Calvert’s beliefs: “I completely shared Frank Calvert’s conviction that the plateau of Hissarlik marks the site of ancient Troy.”

  Throughout this book, dates are given in terms of the Common Era. The “Common Era” is a new way of talking about historic dates. American and European historians have traditionally used a calendar based on Christianity. Events of ancient history — like the Trojan War — were given a “BC” after the number, meaning, “before Christ.” Things that happened after the birth of Christ were labeled “AD” for “anno Domine” — Latin words for — in the year of Our Lord.”

  Common Era dating uses the same numbers, but different initials after the dates. What used to be called 5 BC (five years before Christ) is now called 5 BCE (five years before the Common Era.) Historians use Common Era dates as a way of being courteous to people of all religions. Common Era dates are also more accurate, since it is not certain exactly when Jesus Christ lived.

  Heinrich gave Hissarlik the same “tests” he had administered at Bunarbashi. He concluded that Hector and Achilles could easily have run the nine miles around this mound. He was delighted to discover a ruined temple, a nearby swamp, and a mountain range in the distance — all of which reminded him of landscapes in The Illiad. “The beautiful hill of Hissarlik grips one with astonishment,” he wrote later. “That hill seems to be destined by nature to carry a great city.” All of the clues in The Iliad seemed now to point to Hissarlik as the site of ancient Troy. Heinrich was so excited that he ordered a chicken dinner to celebrate. Unfortunately, the chicken who was to be the main course objected to the whole idea and ran for its life, squawking in panic. Heinrich, who had a soft spot for animals, paid the owner to set the chicken free and sat down to a poultry-free supper in high good humor.

  Heinrich Schliemann is famous for “finding Troy.” Many people give him credit for being the first to look for Troy in the right place — but by right, that honor belongs to Frank Calvert. If Heinrich Schliemann had not met Frank Calvert on his journey, he might never have excavated at Hissarlik. The admission “I . . . shared Frank Calvert’s opinion” changed gradually to “Frank Calvert, the famous archaeologist . . . shares my opinion. . . .” Eventually Heinrich, who admitted that he was “a braggart and a bluffer,” made the discovery sound as if it were his alone.

  Frank Calvert, however, was a remarkably generous man. He must have realized that Heinrich had the energy, as well as the money, to organize a large-scale excavation. He gave Heinrich the benefit of his archaeological knowledge and explained how to get permission to dig from the Turkish government. Heinrich promised to return to Hissarlik the following year, permission in hand.

  The years 1868 and 1869 were remarkable ones in Heinrich’s life. He retired from business, appointed himself Homer’s champion, and divorced his wife.

  He began to dream of a Greek bride: dark-haired, interested in Homer, and — if possible — beautiful. He had no desire for a rich bride. He knew he was not handsome, and he hoped to make up for it with a well-padded wallet and a knowledge of foreign languages. He told his Greek tutor, Theokletos Vimpos, that he wanted his future wife to love learning “because otherwise she cannot love and respect me.” Above all, he wished for “a good and loving heart.”

  As it happened, Theokletos had an unmarried niece: dark-haired, bookish, and poor. Sophia Engastromenos was only sixteen years old when her photograph was sent to the forty-seven-year-old millionaire. Her youth frightened Heinrich. He was afraid that so young a girl would have her heart set on romance. But Sophia’s photograph enchanted him, and at last he declared that he had fallen in love.

  Having fallen in love with Sophia, it only remained to meet her. The Engastromenos family was excited by the prospect of having a millionaire in the family, and Sophia was bundled into her sister’s best dress. When Heinrich spoke to her alone, he asked her point-blank, “Why do you wish to marry me?” Sophia replied, “Because my parents have told me that you are a rich man!”

  Heinrich flew into a temper and marched back to his hotel room to sulk. The Engastromenos family huddled around Sophia, begging her to send a letter of apology. Sophia wrote that she had not meant to offend her suitor; she had answered honestly because she believed that he wanted the truth.

  Heinrich forgave her. By this time, he was head over heels in love. For the second time in his life, he married a woman he had barely met, a woman whose family was in need of money. This time, his wife was thirty years younger than himself — Sophia was so young that she smuggled her dolls along on her honeymoon.

  Poor Sophia! During the first months of married life, Heinrich dragged her to museums all over Europe. She preferred the circus. He lavished expensive gifts upon her, supervised her diet, and drew up a gymnastics program that he thought would keep her healthy. He pestered her to learn foreign languages. She suffered from headaches, stomachaches, and homesickness.

  And yet the marriage was not a disaster. Sophia Schliemann was loving and wise beyond her years. She relieved Heinrich’s deep loneliness. She made up her mind that “Henry” was a genius and that geniuses were not quite like other people. She even awakened a streak of playfulness in his nature — on their honeymoon in Venice, he dived headfirst out of a gondola in order to make her laugh. She called him her “friend for life” and “dearest husband.”

  As for “Henry,” his love and respect for Sophia increased as he came to know her better. To him, she was his “adored wife and everlasting friend.” He admired her mind as well as her beauty and concluded, “I knew I loved and needed a woman of her grandeur.”

  In 1871, Sophia gave birth to a baby girl who was christened Andromache, after the Trojan princess in The Iliad. Shortly after Andromache’s birth, Heinrich received the firman, or permission, he had been seeking from the Turkish government. The terms of the agreement were simple: Heinrich was responsible for all expenses. If artifacts were found, half of them were to be given to the new museum in Constantinople. A supervisor was appointed to keep a watchful eye on the amateur archaeologist. Heinrich disliked the man and grumbled over having to pay his salary.

  When Heinrich began digging at Hissarlik, he had very little idea what he was doing. He knew that he wanted to dig into the mound and find a city of the Bronze Age, but he didn’t know what a Bronze Age city would look like. His guide was Homer — he was looking for artifacts and architecture
that matched the descriptions in Homer’s poetry. This was not a scientific approach.

  The thrust of his plan was to dig — deep. At the top of the mound, he expected to find a Roman city, then a Greek city underneath, then a Greek city from the time of Homer, and, just below that, the walled city of The Iliad. Instead of carefully sifting through the mound, layer by layer, he decided to dig out vast trenches — rather as if he were removing slices from a cake. Since Homer’s Troy was ancient, Heinrich expected to find it near the bottom.

  And so he dug, violently and impatiently. Frank Calvert advised him to proceed with care, to sift through what he was throwing away, but Heinrich was not a cautious man. He whacked away at the mound as if it were a piñata.

  Modern archaeologists do not dig like this. They remove the earth gently and keep detailed records of what they find. If they find an artifact that isn’t what they’re hoping to find, they don’t discard the artifact: they change their ideas. Instead of looking for something, they examine whatever comes to light. Heinrich, of course, was looking for Homer’s Troy. “Troy . . . was sacked twice,” modern archaeologists remark, “once by the Greeks and once by Heinrich Schliemann.” It is generally agreed that Schliemann did more damage than the Greeks.

  His early finds were not very interesting. He discovered the remains of a wall. He found coins, a few bones, the clay whorls that women used in spinning thread. Later there were little objects made of clay, which he thought were “owl-headed” vases, sacred to Athena. He was looking for weapons like the “pitiless bronze” spears described by Homer — but the weapons he found were made of stone. Heinrich was bewildered. He was seeking the remains of a great city. Where was the bronze armor, the palaces and jewels?