why do you hate Heinrich Schliemann??
it’s 1868, and you’re a horrible businessman who thinks he’s an archaeologist. and for some reason, people in 2022 call you the ‘father of archaeology’
heinrich schliemann is FASCINATED by Greek mythology and the works of homer, and fancies himself enough of an expert to go gallivanting around the greek islands and to turkey in search of troy. frank calvert, local expert and archaeologist, shares with him that he believes hisarlik to be the most likely site for the historical troy. by 1870, Schliemann has excavated the site at hisarlik and claimed SOLE credit for the discovery, despite only digging there after being heavily persuaded by calvert.
by 1869, he’s been awarded a phd by the university of Rostock for his topographical analysis of Ithaca - the vast majority of which were simply translations of another authors work. we’re beginning to see a pattern here.
more taken by the homeric stories of treasures buried at troy than any historical investigation, Schliemann immediately sets to finding such prizes. he confidently misidentifies several riches with the self-assurance only a rich man in an unfamiliar field can muster, naming them the mask of agamemnon and Helen’s jewels. he writes that his wife sofia carried several of the treasures out of the dig site in her shawl, which was bullshit. he smuggled them out of turkey instead of handing them over to turkish officials, which he was later sued for. what fun.
(the inconsistency of his documentation of his findings are also a common theme, which in archaeology is a Big Fucking Deal. none of the items he claimed were king priams treasure were noted in his documentation. big red flag)
additionally, his lifelong obsession with the Iliad led to him attempting to identify the layer of the city itself. in this, he was about 1000 years too early, as his contemporaries easily identified. which would be fine, if we weren’t taking into account the actual troy that was a few layers above his misidentified one. so how did he go about his excavating?
HE BLEW UP TROY. WITH FUCKING DYNAMITE.
so in his highly subjective desire to uncover evidence of a homeric troy, not only did he steal priceless artefacts from a historical site, document his findings extremely sketchily and take the credit for another man’s groundbreaking discovery, he blew up what was most likely the actual, historical troy. in naming his discoveries as helen’s jewels and prisms treasure, he put his own spin on anything he found just to make it link into his theories about the Iliad. also, for the purpose of showboating when showing off to the public.
father of archaeology my ass.
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