which lies well beyond the citadel. Schliemann was certain the scholars were wrong, and had been laughed at for saying so in print in the book he wrote after his 1868 trip. He insisted that Pausanias meant the great Cyclopean defences of the citadel, and that the heroes of Troy lay inside the Lion Gate itself. Preposterous said the scholars – where was there room for a cemetery within this small citadel on its steep hill, and in any case, they argued, since when did the ancients bury their dead within their cities? Determined to prove his point, in early September 1876, with a permit from the Greek government, Schliemann started digging a trench just inside the Lion Gate, cutting through several feet of wreckage that had fallen or been washed down the hillside. The end of Schliemann’s trench can still be seen gouged into the side of the hill at the foot of the stairs which face the visitor immediately inside the gate. This trench he drove westwards across a small flat terraced area inside the Cyclopean walls; there he immediately struck the remains of a series of upright stone markers which formed a circle nearly 90 feet in diameter. The ground had clearly been carefully levelled in antiquity, and within this space Schliemann found a carved upright stone resembling a grave monument; his excitement grew as others soon followed, bearing the clearly distinguishable images of warriors in chariots. The sensational discoveries which ensued are now part of archaeological legend,but the fresh breath of discovery can still be read in Schliemann’s letters to The Times (reprinted in English in Briefwechsel II) and in his great book Mycenae .
By now the November rains were turning Schliemann’s trenches to mud. When he reached the bedrock he found the top of a shaft cut down into the rock. It was the first of five rectangular grave shafts in which he uncovered the remains of nineteen men and women and two infants: they were literally covered in gold. The men’s faces were covered with magnificent gold masks so distinctively modelled as to suggest portraits; on their breasts were extraordinary decorated ‘sunbursts’ of thick gold leaf impressed with rosettes; two women wore gold frontlets and one of them a diadem; around the bodies lay bronze swords and daggers, with elaborate gold hilts and gold and silver inlay on the hilts and blades – in two cases wonderfully vivid scenes of hunting and fighting were inlaid in gold, silver and lapis lazuli on the ridges of the dagger blades. There were gold and silver drinking cups, gold boxes, ivory containers and plaques, and hundreds of gold discs decorated with rosettes, spirals, animals and fish: these had perhaps been sewn on to the clothes and the shrouds. The artistic accomplishment was simply dazzling – exemplified best, perhaps, in some of the least significant articles, such as a decorated ostrich egg or (to choose an item from a later excavation) an exquisite little bowl of rock crystal adorned with a bird’s head and neck: a thing of fragile, translucent beauty to set beside the grim, golden, bearded warlords and their arsenal of weapons.
For Schliemann, of course, there was no doubt: this was the world of Homer and the Iliad , and these were the graves of Agamemnon and his companions. Pausanias had mentioned five graves and Schliemann had dug five; tradition even insisted that Cassandra had two infant twins who were killed with her – and there were two infant burials in one of the shafts! The climax of his search came in the fifth and, for him, last tomb, where, as with the ‘Jewels of Helen’, Schliemann found exactly what he had wished so passionately to find. There were three male bodies, richly adorned with inlaid war accoutrements, gold coverings ontheir breasts, and gold face masks. The first two skulls were in such a state of decomposition that they could not be saved, but the third
had been wonderfully preserved under its ponderous golden mask … both eyes
By now the November rains were turning Schliemann’s trenches to mud. When he reached the bedrock he found the top of a shaft cut down into the rock. It was the first of five rectangular grave shafts in which he uncovered the remains of nineteen men and women and two infants: they were literally covered in gold. The men’s faces were covered with magnificent gold masks so distinctively modelled as to suggest portraits; on their breasts were extraordinary decorated ‘sunbursts’ of thick gold leaf impressed with rosettes; two women wore gold frontlets and one of them a diadem; around the bodies lay bronze swords and daggers, with elaborate gold hilts and gold and silver inlay on the hilts and blades – in two cases wonderfully vivid scenes of hunting and fighting were inlaid in gold, silver and lapis lazuli on the ridges of the dagger blades. There were gold and silver drinking cups, gold boxes, ivory containers and plaques, and hundreds of gold discs decorated with rosettes, spirals, animals and fish: these had perhaps been sewn on to the clothes and the shrouds. The artistic accomplishment was simply dazzling – exemplified best, perhaps, in some of the least significant articles, such as a decorated ostrich egg or (to choose an item from a later excavation) an exquisite little bowl of rock crystal adorned with a bird’s head and neck: a thing of fragile, translucent beauty to set beside the grim, golden, bearded warlords and their arsenal of weapons.
For Schliemann, of course, there was no doubt: this was the world of Homer and the Iliad , and these were the graves of Agamemnon and his companions. Pausanias had mentioned five graves and Schliemann had dug five; tradition even insisted that Cassandra had two infant twins who were killed with her – and there were two infant burials in one of the shafts! The climax of his search came in the fifth and, for him, last tomb, where, as with the ‘Jewels of Helen’, Schliemann found exactly what he had wished so passionately to find. There were three male bodies, richly adorned with inlaid war accoutrements, gold coverings ontheir breasts, and gold face masks. The first two skulls were in such a state of decomposition that they could not be saved, but the third
had been wonderfully preserved under its ponderous golden mask … both eyes
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