Status Updates From Schliemann of Troy Treasure...

Chapters 16 & 17 - Right to the end, he lies and smuggles antiquities out of Turkey. He donated the bone shards from his ears which the doctor removed and donated them to his friend Virchow--it almost makes one wonder whether they were actually his bones and if he was smuggling them past customs.

Chapters 14 & 15 - What really strikes one over and over again is just how manipulative and controlling Schliemann is in his relationships, both personal and professional.

Chapters 12-13 -- Schliemann continues his shifty ways... arranging for reviews of his books which could not possibly be objective, smuggling antiquities out of Turkey, and engaging in heated debates with his detractors.

Chapters 10 & 11 - Is it merely coincidence that all of Schliemann's major finds come almost at the end of the campaign seasons? This suggests to Traill that he was gathering stuff up and then planting them. At the very least, there are some serious questions about the artifacts found in the shaft graves--they don't seem to go together and nothing like it has been found elsewhere. Hmm...

Chapters 8 & 9 - Schliemann's dig at Mycenae found better and more important stuff than at Troy, but just reading about it makes me angry! He was paying the workmen per cubic meter excavated! Also of interest were some contemporary opinions of people who visited his sites and recognized him as the shifty wheeler-dealer he was.

Chapter 7 - Priam's Treasure 1873 - Caught in his lies! He keeps changing his version of where he found 'Priam's Treasure', what it included, and who was actually there (hint: not his wife!). The photos cinch it - pictures of objects from Priam's Treasure, found a year or two earlier.

Schliemann lied, or made falsified claims, to get his American citizenship, and then to procur his divorce. He also secured a doctoral degree which he later misled people about. Finally, he started digging at Hisarlik without the permission of its owners and without a firman from the government. To describe him as 'a little sketchy' (which Traill does not do) would be a vast understatement.

It was only his meeting with Ernst Ziller in Athens in 1868 that seems to have converted Schliemann to becoming an archaeologist. He exhibited almost no interest in it up until that point, despite his later assertions that it was a childhood dream of his.

Schliemann "noticed that most of the ...homes in the village of Negada incorporated a...dovecot housing 500 to 1000 pigeons. These were kept...for the pigeon dung they produced which fetched high prices...Reckoning the pigeon population of the village to be 700,000, Schliemann wondered whether the crop losses from the adjoining fields...did not outweigh the profits from selling the dung."
On holiday in Egypt 1886

"'When I am writing, I often feel a great need for a nap and at night, about once a week, I have a complete erection, so that I can satisfy my wife, but since I have not produced a drop of semen for the past 5 months, I have absolutely no joy in the act'. Virchow suggested Bavarian beer and cold showers, both in moderation'
Schliemann-Virchow correspondence 1880

"I hurried up and reproached the workmen for removing [the door sill] when it was forbidden to do so. Mr Schliemann, who happened to be there, began to insult me coarsely. Unable to control my temper, I replied with similar insults. later his wife came up and began to abuse me in front of the workers, saying I was illiterate and fit only to conduct animals and not archaeological excavations."
Mycenae, 1876