About This Book
This biography traces the life of Heinrich Schliemann, a man who loved Homer's epic poems and
came to discover the ancient city of Troy.
Heinrich Schliemann (German: [ˈʃliːman]; 6 January 1822 – 26 December 1890) was a German
businessman and a pioneer of field archaeology. He was an advocate of the historical reality of
places mentioned in the works of Homer. Schliemann was an archaeological excavator of
Hissarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and
Tiryns. His work lent weight to the idea that Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid reflect actual
historical events. Schliemann's excavation of nine levels of archaeological remains with
dynamite has been criticized as destructive of significant historical artifacts, including the level
that is believed to be the historical Troy.[1]
Along with Arthur Evans, Schliemann was a pioneer in the study of Aegean civilization in the
Bronze Age. The two men knew of each other, Evans having visited Schliemann's sites.
Schliemann had planned to excavate at Knossos, but died before fulfilling that dream. Evans
bought the site and stepped in to take charge of the project, which was then still in its infancy.
Childhood and youth
Schliemann was born in Neubukow, Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1822. His father, Ernst
Schliemann, was a Protestant minister. The family moved to Ankershagen in 1823 (today in their
house is the museum of Heinrich Schliemann).[2] Heinrich's mother, Luise Therese Sophie, died
in 1831, when Heinrich was nine years old. After his mother's death, his father sent Heinrich to
live with his uncle. When he was eleven years old, his father paid for him to enroll in the
Gymnasium (grammar school) at Neustrelitz. Heinrich's later interest in history was initially
encouraged by his father, who had schooled him in the tales of the Iliad and the Odyssey and had
given him a copy of Ludwig Jerrer's Illustrated History of the World for Christmas in 1829.
Schliemann later claimed that at the age of 8, he had declared he would one day excavate the city
of Troy.
However, Heinrich had to transfer to the Realschule (vocational school) after his father was
accused of embezzling church funds[3] and had to leave that institution in 1836 when his father
was no longer able to pay for it. His family's poverty made a university education impossible, so
it was Schliemann's early academic experiences that influenced the course of his education as an
adult. In his archaeological career, however, there was often a division between Schliemann and
the educated professionals.
At age 14, after leaving Realschule, Heinrich became an apprentice at Herr Holtz's grocery in
Fürstenberg. One story has it that his passion for Homer was born when he heard a drunkard
reciting it at the grocer's.[4] He laboured for five years, until he was forced to leave because he
burst a blood vessel lifting a heavy barrel.[5] In 1841, Schliemann moved to Hamburg and
became a cabin boy on the Dorothea, a steamer bound for Venezuela. After twelve days at sea,
the ship foundered in a gale. The survivors washed up on the shores of the Netherlands.[6]
Schliemann became a messenger, office attendant, and later, a bookkeeper in Amsterdam.
Career and family
Schliemann as a young man
On March 1, 1844, 22-year old Schliemann took a position with B. H. Schröder & Co., an
import/export firm. In 1846 the firm sent him as a General Agent to St. Petersburg. In time,
Schliemann represented a number of companies. He learned Russian and Greek, employing a
system that he used his entire life to learn languages—Schliemann claimed that it took him six
weeks to learn a language[7] and wrote his diary in the language of whatever country he happened
to be in.
By the end of his life, he could converse in English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese,
Swedish, Polish, Italian, Greek, Latin, Russian, Arabic, and Turkish as well as German.
Schliemann's ability with languages was an important part of his career as a businessman in the
importing trade. In 1850, Heinrich learned of the death of his brother, Ludwig, who had become
wealthy as a speculator in the California gold fields. Schliemann went to California in early 1851
and started a bank in Sacramento buying and reselling over a million dollars of gold dust in just
six months. When the local Rothschild agent complained about short-weight consignments he
left California, pretending it was because of illness.[8] While he was there, California became the
31st state in September 1850 and Schliemann acquired United States citizenship.
According to his memoirs, before arriving in California he dined in Washington with President
Millard Fillmore and his family,[9] but Eric Cline says that he didn't attend but simply read about
it in the papers. He also published what he said was an eyewitness account of the San Francisco
fire of 1851 which he said was in June although it took place in May. At the time he was actually
in Sacramento and used the report of the fire in the Sacramento Daily Journal to write his report.
On April 7, 1852, he sold his business and returned to Russia. There he attempted to live the life
of a gentleman, which brought him into contact with Ekaterina Lyschin, the niece of one of his
wealthy friends. Schliemann had previously learned his childhood sweetheart, Minna, had
married.
Heinrich and Ekaterina married on October 12, 1852. The marriage was troubled from the start.
Schliemann next cornered the market in indigo (an important dye) and then went into the indigo
business itself, turning a good profit. Ekaterina and Heinrich had a son, Sergey, and two
daughters born in 1855, 1858 and 1861 respectively.[10] Schliemann made yet another quick
fortune as a military contractor in the Crimean War, 1854-1856. He cornered the market in
saltpeter, sulfur, and lead, constituents of ammunition, which he resold to the Russian
government.
By 1858, Schliemann was wealthy enough to retire. In his memoirs, he claimed that he wished to
dedicate himself to the pursuit of Troy.
As a consequence of his many travels, Schliemann was often separated from his wife and small
children. He spent a month studying at the Sorbonne in 1866, while moving his assets from St.
Petersburg to Paris to invest in real estate. He asked his wife to join him, but she refused.[10]
Schliemann threatened to divorce Ekaterina twice before actually doing so. He claimed to have
utilised the divorce laws of Indiana in 1869 although he obtained the divorce by lying about his
residency.[10]
Life as an archaeologist
Schliemann's first interest of a classical nature seems to have been the location of Troy.
At the time Schliemann began excavating in Turkey, the site commonly believed to be Troy was
at Pınarbaşı, a hilltop at the south end of the Trojan Plain.[11] The site had been previously
excavated by archaeologist and local expert, Frank Calvert. Schliemann performed soundings at
Pınarbaşı, but was disappointed by his findings.[11] It was Calvert who identified Hissarlik as
Troy and suggested Schliemann dig there on land owned by Calvert's family.[12] In 1868,
Schliemann visited sites in the Greek world, published Ithaka, der Peloponnesus und Troja in
which he asserted that Hissarlik was the site of Troy, and submitted a dissertation in Ancient
Greek proposing the same thesis to the University of Rostock. In 1869, he was awarded a PhD in
absentia[13] from the university of Rostock for that submission.[10] David Traill wrote that the
examiners gave him his PhD on the basis of his topographical analysis of Ithaca, which were in
part simply translations of another author's work or drawn from poetic descriptions by the same
author.[14]
Schliemann was at first skeptical about the identification of Hissarlik with Troy but was
persuaded by Calvert[15] and took over Calvert's excavations on the eastern half of the Hissarlik
site. The Turkish government owned the western half. Calvert became Schliemann's collaborator
and partner.
The 'Mask of Agamemnon', discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876 at Mycenae now exhibited at the
National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Schliemann needed an assistant who was knowledgeable in matters pertaining to Greek culture.
As he had divorced Ekaterina in 1869, he advertised for a wife in a newspaper in Athens. A
friend, the Archbishop of Athens, suggested a relative of his, seventeen-year-old Sophia
Engastromenos (1852–1932). Schliemann, age 47, married her in October 1869, despite the 30
year difference in age. They later had two children, Andromache and Agamemnon Schliemann;
he reluctantly allowed them to be baptized, but solemnized the ceremony in his own way by
placing a copy of the Iliad on the children's heads and reciting one hundred hexameters.
Schliemann began work on Troy in 1871. His excavations began before archaeology had
developed as a professional field. Thinking that Homeric Troy must be in the lowest level,
Schliemann and his workers dug hastily through the upper levels, reaching fortifications that he
took to be his target. In 1872, he and Calvert fell out over this method. Schliemann was angry
when Calvert published an article stating that the Trojan War period was missing from the site's
archaeological record.
Priam's Treasure
Sophia Schliemann (née Engastromenos) wearing treasures recovered at Hisarlik.
A cache of gold and other objects appeared in May 1873; Schliemann named it "Priam's
Treasure". He later wrote that he had seen the gold glinting in the dirt and dismissed the
workmen so that he and Sophia could excavate it themselves, removing it in her shawl. However,
Schliemann's oft-repeated story of the treasure being carried by Sophia in her shawl was untrue.
Schliemann later admitted fabricating it; at the time of the discovery Sophia was in fact with her
family in Athens, following the death of her father.[16] Sophia later wore "the Jewels of Helen"
for the public. Those jewels, taken from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin by the Soviet Army
(Red Army) in 1945, are now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
Schliemann published his findings in 1874, in Trojanische Altertümer ("Trojan Antiquities").
This publicity backfired when the Turkish government revoked Schliemann's permission to dig
and sued him for a share of the gold. Collaborating with Calvert, Schliemann smuggled the
treasure out of Turkey. He defended his "smuggling" in Turkey as an attempt to protect the items
from corrupt local officials. Priam's Treasure today remains a subject of international dispute.
Schliemann published Troja und seine Ruinen (Troy and Its Ruins) in 1875 and excavated the
Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenus. In 1876, he began digging at Mycenae. Upon discovering
the Shaft Graves, with their skeletons and more regal gold (including the Mask of Agamemnon),
Schliemann cabled the king of Greece. The results were published in Mykenai in 1878.
Although he had received permission in 1876 to continue excavation, Schliemann did not reopen
the dig site at Troy until 1878–1879, after another excavation in Ithaca designed to locate an
actual site mentioned in the Odyssey. This was his second excavation at Troy. Emile Burnouf
and Rudolf Virchow joined him there in 1879. Schliemann made a third excavation at Troy in
1882–1883, an excavation of Tiryns with Wilhelm Dörpfeld in 1884, a fourth excavation at
Troy, also with Dörpfeld (who emphasized the importance of strata), in 1888–1890.
Death
Schliemann's grave in the First Cemetery of Athens.
The Schliemann mansion in Athens, ca. 1910
On August 1, 1890, Schliemann returned reluctantly to Athens, and in November traveled to
Halle, where his chronic ear infection was operated upon on November 13. The doctors deemed
the operation a success, but his inner ear became painfully inflamed. Ignoring his doctors' advice,
he left the hospital and traveled to Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris. From the latter, he planned to
return to Athens in time for Christmas, but his ear condition became even worse. Too sick to
make the boat ride from Naples to Greece, Schliemann remained in Naples, but managed to
make a journey to the ruins of Pompeii. On Christmas Day he collapsed into a coma and died in
a Naples hotel room on December 26, 1890. The cause of death was cholesteatoma. His corpse
was then transported by friends to the First Cemetery in Athens. It was interred in a mausoleum
shaped like a temple erected in ancient Greek style designed by Ernst Ziller in the form of a
pedimental sculpture. The frieze circling the outside of the mausoleum shows Schliemann
conducting the excavations at Mycenae and other sites. His magnificent residence in the city
centre of Athens, houses today the Numismatic Museum of Athens.
Criticisms
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(October 2009)
Further excavation of the Troy site by others indicated that the level he named the Troy of the
Iliad was inaccurate, although they retain the names given by Schliemann. His excavations were
condemned by later archaeologists as having destroyed the main layers of the real Troy.
In an article for The Classical World, D. F. Easton writes that Schliemann "was not very good at
separating fact from interpretation." [17] He goes on to claim that "Even in 1872 Frank Calvert
could see from the pottery that Troy II had to be hundreds of years too early to be the Troy of the
Trojan War, a point finally proved by the discovery of Mycenaean pottery in Troy VI in 1890."
[17]
Kenneth W. Harl in the Teaching Company's Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor lecture
series sarcastically claims that Schliemann's excavations were carried out with such rough
methods that he did to Troy what the Greeks couldn't do in their times, destroying and levelling
down the entire city walls to the ground.[18]
"King Priam's Treasure" was found in the Troy II level, that of the Early Bronze Age, long
before Priam's city of Troy VI or Troy VIIa in the prosperous and elaborate Mycenaean Age.
Moreover, the finds were unique. The elaborate gold artifacts do not appear to belong to the
Early Bronze Age.
In 1972, Professor William Calder of the University of Colorado, speaking at a commemoration
of Schliemann's birthday, claimed that he had uncovered several possible problems in
Schliemann's work. Other investigators followed, such as Professor David Traill of the
University of California.
An article published by the National Geographic Society called into question Schliemann's
qualifications, his motives, and his methods:
In northwestern Turkey, Heinrich Schliemann excavated the site believed to be Troy in 1870.
Schliemann was a German adventurer and con man who took sole credit for the discovery, even
though he was digging at the site, called Hisarlik, at the behest of British archaeologist Frank
Calvert. ... Eager to find the legendary treasures of Troy, Schliemann blasted his way down to the
second city, where he found what he believed were the jewels that once belonged to Helen. As it
turns out, the jewels were a thousand years older than the time described in Homer's epic.[1]
Another article presented similar criticisms when reporting on a speech by University of
Pennsylvania scholar C. Brian Rose:
German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was the first to explore the Mound of Troy in the
1870s. Unfortunately, he had had no formal education in archaeology, and dug an enormous
trench “which we still call the Schliemann Trench,” according to Rose, because in the process
Schliemann “destroyed a phenomenal amount of material.” ... Only much later in his career
would he accept the fact that the treasure had been found at a layer one thousand years
removed from the battle between the Greeks and Trojans, and thus that it could not have been
the treasure of King Priam. Schliemann may not have discovered the truth, but the publicity stunt
worked, making Schliemann and the site famous and igniting the field of Homeric studies in the
late 19th century.[19]