Hisarlik is the name of the mound where the proud and ancient city of Troy once stood. Barely distinguishable from the adjacent ridgeline, the mound itself is not that impressive and therefore went mostly unnoticed for many centuries. But from atop the mound it immediately becomes apparent that the site holds a commanding view of the coastal plain below. But our view from atop Hisarlik is very different from that of an early bronze Trojan, as Robert Easton highlights in his description of the physical setting of Troy in the Early Bronze period.

Troy was situated on the sea passage, known as the Dardanelles, which connects the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Another passage, known as the Bosporus, connects the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea. Four large, navigable rivers flow into the Black Sea from Russia and Europe: the Danube, Dneiper, Dniester and Don. All four names are derived from the Indo-European word ‘danu‘ which means “river.” Originating in the Black Forest of southern Germany, the Danube is the longest of the four, and also the largest. A major trade artery passed down the Danube through the Black Sea and into the Aegean via the Bosporus and Dardanelles.

The convergence of the four rivers on the Black Sea produces a current of around seven knots through the Bosporus and five knots through the Dardanelles.²Korfmann 1986, 6 Boats travelling against this current were often forced to wait at the southern end of the Dardanelles for a favorable wind before attempting the passage northward. Since Troy controlled the only sheltered coastline near the point of entry into the Dardanelles, it effectively controlled commerce between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.³Korfmann 1986, 13; Korfmann notes that the even stronger current through the Bosporus prevented boats from from passing from the Sea of Marmara through the Bosporus into the Black Sea until the invention of the Ionic penteconter c. 680 BC. (Korfmann 1986, 6)

Schliemann

The history of excavations at Hisarlik is closely bound up with the life of Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890). Born and raised in a small town in northeastern Germany, Schliemann was the son of a Lutheran pastor. Later in life he would attribute his love of history to the stories his father read to him from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The family came upon hard times after his mother died and his father was accused of embezzling church funds, an accusation which ultimately led to his father’s resignation. Reduced to poverty, Heinrich was forced to drop out of school and take a job as a day labourer in a grocery store. But he was a slight lad, not well suited for heavy work. After injuring his back lifting a heavy barrel, Schliemann quit his job and took a position as a cabin boy on a steamer bound for Venezuela. This also did not work out well for the young Schliemann when his ship capsized in the rough seas off the coast of the Netherlands. Washed up in a foreign city without prospects, he took whatever work he could find in Amsterdam until, at 22 years of age, he landed a job as a clerk with the trading company, B. H. Schroeder and Company. Schliemann rose quickly through the ranks, thanks in part to his facility with languages. Naturally gifted and highly motivated, Schliemann made a point of writing his journal in the language of whichever country he was in. By the end of his life he had mastered more than a dozen languages.

Schliemann decided to extend his stay in California and capitalize on the gold rush. He became a buyer of gold dust from prospectors but was forced to flee the United States after he was accused of embezzling funds by the powerful Rothschild banking establishment. Schliemann returned to St. Petersburg where he multiplied his fortune trading indigo. He also became a supplier of sulphur, saltpetre, and lead—the ingredients for gunpowder—which were in high demand due to the Crimean War. By the time he was forty he had amassed a fortune. By all accounts, it was time to settle down with his wife, the daughter of a wealthy St. Petersburg merchant, and enjoy his success. But Schleimann’s drive and ambition were barely exhausted.

While travelling in Italy, he spent several days digging at Pompeii, the first archaeological excavation of the modern era. He marveled at the ruins of the ancient Roman city, only then being brought to light, and wondered whether the the famous city of Troy, of Homeric fame, may not also lay hidden, waiting to be uncovered. Now in his mid-forties, wealthy and independent, Schliemann dedicated his life to finding and excavating Troy. He began by enrolling at the Sorbonne in Paris where he sought to learn as much as he could about the ancient Greeks. But his wife did not share his interests and did not want to leave her home and family in Russia. Their marriage, never a happy one, ended in divorce.

The Lost City

Schliemann began looking for Troy in the northwestern region of Turkey, known as the Troad after its most famous city. But the location of Troy had long since been forgotten. Many scholars placed it at a site in the Troad named Bunarbashi but after briefly exploring the site, Schliemann decided that ancient Troy had to be located somewhere else. During his travels, Schliemann encountered another Troy enthusiast, Frank Calvert, who came from a family of British diplomats and traders. The Calvert family had a large estate in the Troad which encompassed a portion of a hill named Hisarlik. Calvert had conducted several small-scale excavations on the hill which had convinced him that Hisarlik must be the site of Troy. Having learned about Hisarlik from Calvert, Schliemann made it his life’s ambition to excavate the mound. Finally, in 1870, after several years of dogged persistence, he was finally granted permission to dig there. By this time, Schliemann had remarried a much younger Greek woman name Sophia.

Schliemann expected to find the ruins of a walled and impregnable city, destroyed by fire, since this is how Troy is described in Homer’s Iliad. All he needed to do was hire enough workmen to remove the rubble that covered the city and its ruins would be laid bare just as they had been at Pompeii. With this happy thought Schliemann put a force of 120 men to work. But Schliemann hadn’t anticipated all the difficulties involved with digging a mound such as Hisarlik. What began as a clearing operation became a giant trench cut into the side of the mound. What he found were not the ruins of a city waiting to be discovered, like at Pompeii, but layer upon layer of debris which formed at least eight distinct strata, 65 feet deep. It was a tell; and Schliemann was the first to excavate one. He was a man with a machete preparing to perform a surgery without any knowledge of anatomy. The surgery, if that is what you want to call it, did not go perfectly.

Nothing Schliemann found at Hisarlik matched Homer’s Troy. Instead of bronze weapons and gold cups, he found strange looking owl vases and stone phallic emblems which Schliemann thought must be related to some ancient Vedic religion. Puzzled by his discoveries, he wrote to James Calvert, the brother of Frank Calvert, asking for advice. James replied that he should not expect to find Greek painted pottery in the lower levels of Troy since this pottery did not predate the 6th century BC. Calvert concluded his letter with the following admonishment: “you must not be discouraged by the supposition that you are working in a barbarous period… Go Ahead!”⁴Payne 1959, 151

ARC / Pergamon Museum

Schliemann did go ahead, but did not find any major architectural features which could be identified with a large and prosperous city until he reached the second lowest stratum of the tell (Troy II). (The numbering system at Troy is the opposite of Megiddo; the deeper the level, the lower the number.) In Troy II he finally found a city with strong fortifications! Although the city was not as large as he expected, it clearly had been destroyed by an intense conflagration, just as Homer described. Thus Schliemann identified Troy II with the city destroyed by the Greeks. His supposition was bolstered by the discovery of treasure in its walls, which we will look at in a separate entry.

Today archaeologists generally date Troy II to the later half of the Early Bronze Period (c. 2500 – 2000 BC) which is much too early to be Homer’s great walled city. But Schliemann had no way of discerning what time period he was in. The formal division of time into metallic ages had not even been adopted yet. He only had a vague notion of an archaic period which predated the classical Greeks. Subsequent excavations at Troy, conducted after Schliemann was gone, would reveal a much larger city higher up in the tell, in Troy VI. It dates to the Late Bronze Age and is, therefore, a much better candidate for the city of Homeric fame. Schliemann had unknowingly dug right through it.

The German archaeologist, Wilhelm Dorpfeld, began working with Schliemann towards the end of Schliemann’s excavations at Troy and continued for several more years after Schliemann’s death. It was due to an unhappy coincidence, wrote Dorpfeld, that Schliemann missed the great fortification walls of Troy VI. The wall had already been robbed of stone in ancient times at the place where Schliemann’s deep trench intersected it. In other places where Schliemann dug, he did not go deep enough to find it. Thus Schliemann was mostly unaware of this wall. The one place where he did manage to uncover a section of the Troy VI wall, he attributed it to the Hellenistic ruler, Lysimachus. Referring to this wall, Schliemann writes in is journal,

This wall actually belonged to Troy VI and thus to the Late Bronze period. Despite the mistaken identification, Schliemann decided not dismantle the wall, but leave it standing for posterity. Sadly, the wall was pillaged by locals for building materials during the summer months while he was gone, much to Schliemann’s dismay.⁶Dorpfeld 1902