Ancient Troy Bayard Taylor. 



11 



the two forms of tlio Cross, also constantly 

 occur simony the relic i of Troy. 



CURIOUS VASE FROM TilH HOUSE OF PRIAM. 





REMAINS OF THE THIRD, OR PO8T-TROJ.VX PERIOD. 



The foundations of Tro .-, as we have seen, were 

 8oi feet below the present surface of the plateau of 

 Hisso-rlik; but after the destruction of Priam's city 

 tne s>te upon which the next-corners built waa 10 

 feet higher. Who these people were cannot yet be 

 ascertained, but that they were also Aryans seems to 

 be certain, from the recurrence of the same religious 

 symbols, which can hardly have been used for a 

 merely decorative purpose, since the forms of their 

 pottery are quite different from those of the Trojans. 

 They show the same degree of decadence in art, in 

 compari-on with the latter, as these manifest when 

 compared, with their unknown predecessors. Their 

 architecture, moreover, shows a great falling off. 

 The houses were constructed of small stones, loosely 

 held together with a rough plastering of earth : the 

 huge square blocks of " Troy town" appear no longer. 

 One or two walls of the period are made of sun-dried 

 bricks. The debris is of a dark-gray color, mixed 

 with ashes, and contains enormous quantities of 

 shells and fish-bones. Pieces of two lyres were 

 found, a very few copper weapons, and a great many 

 Ptoiio axes and kuives of flint or diorite, of very fine 

 workmanship. 



After rising to the depth of 13 feet from the sur- 

 face there is another change, hardlv determined 

 enough to make a new historical division. The 

 signs of convulsion dumb hieroglyphics of lost his- 



torical events which prevail throughout this third 

 stratum gradually become more marked. The great 

 increase of wood-ashes and the scarcity of walls 

 even of the previous rude walls of earth and dmall 

 stones indicate the existence of a city built OA 

 woo;!. The signs of copper implements wholly 

 cease, and all weapons and utensils are of stone, but 

 of quite inferior workmanship. The vases a:id ves- 

 sels of terra-cotta again show a difWent fashion ; 

 yet, most sin gularly, they are covered with the 

 same ancient symbols. There is more than one evi- 

 dence of a general conflagration. If at that un- 

 known period certainly before 700 B. C. Troy was 

 a wooden city, it must have been I'lvquriitly de- 

 stroyed and rebuilt. It would be very difficult, 

 otherwise, to account for 17 feet of rubbish in four 

 or five centuries, when the 1,050 years of the Greek 

 city only left six feet behind them. Here is a great 

 and deeply interesting field of further research. 



REMAINS OF THE FOURTH, OR GREEK PERIOD. 



The Greek settlement, which Schlicmann con- 

 jectures to have taken place about 700 B. C., has 

 left but few relics anterior to the age of Lysimachua 

 (300 B. C.). But we know (Herodotus, VII., 43) that 

 Xerxes, in 480 B. C., on his way to Greece, came to 

 the Troad ; that he landed at the mouth of the 

 Scamauder, visited the " citadel of Priam," and 

 sacrificed 1,000 beeves to the Trojan Minerva. We 

 also know of the Macedonian |Alexander's nude 

 pranks at the mound of Achilles ; so that the age of 

 the Greek city may be tolerably well ascertained 

 without consulting its ruins. The bas-relief of 

 Apollo, which appears to have etoad between two 

 tri glyphs of a small tample, has been pronounced 

 by Prof. Brunn of Munich, one of the best living 

 authorities, to belong to a period between the mid- 

 dle of the second and the end of the fourth century 

 before the Christian Era. 



Inasmuch as the Greek relics found at Troy belong 

 to the historical age, I shall not describe them 

 further. Two curious coincidences, however, must 

 be mentioned, before I close this Jong, yet all too- 

 brief report. Several of the terra-cotta disks, 

 belonging to the third or post-Trojan period, prove 

 to be precisely identical in shape, size, and em- 

 blematic decoration, with thoso found in the lake- 

 dwellings of Northern Italy. Bath refer directly to 

 India, to the Sanskrit myths of Prani.intka, the far 

 earlier origin of the Greek Prometheus. An ancient 

 vase, with a belt of curious characters around it, 

 which Schliemann at first supposed to be merely 

 ornamental, but afterward imagining they iiiighb 

 have some affinity with Phoanician, sent to M. 

 Burnouf, is probably the first evidence of a connec- 

 tion between the JEgean and China. M. Burnout 

 declares that the characters are early Chinese, per- 

 fectly legible, and constitute the sentence : " For the 

 earth' causes to spring from ten labors ten thousand 

 pieces of stuff." 



There is, of course, a vast deal more in Dr. Schne- 

 mann's narrative volume, and his atlas of 218 photo- 

 graphs, giving us four or five thousand pictures of 

 the exhumed objects, than [ am able to mention 

 here. I have confined my labor to the narration, as 

 clear and intelligible as possible, of las achieve- 

 ments. Inasmuch as his own story is very broken 

 and fragmentary, my task has not been easy ; but I 

 feel sure that the American reader will bo glad to 

 receive as much as 1 have been nble to give. B. T. 



