Starting My Treasure Hunting In England - Chapter 989

c989 Schliemann

As for why Liang En chose this place to excavate, Professor Liu from the Chinese Archaeological Team did not ask any questions, because there are many reasons for excavation at such designated locations in archaeological work, and it was meaningless to ask.

For example, many times it is just a feeling to designate a certain place for excavation. This does not sound scientific, but it is indeed a common practice in archaeological work.

After all, even advanced ground-penetrating radar is incapable of detecting ruins beyond a certain depth, so it should be considered a common practice to turn to luck sometimes.

For Professor Liu, at least the current excavation site is considered the core area of ​​Troy, and they are satisfied with being able to obtain first-hand information about the archeology of this ruins.

This is not because he is an easily contented person, but for China as a whole, archeology abroad has just begun, so many times they can only do unimportant work in excavation of ruins.

To give the simplest example, they once conducted an official joint archaeological work with Egypt to excavate a temple. As a result, only Egyptians and Americans could enter the main building of the temple, and they could only dig the gate and square.

Only during the last joint excavation with Sudan did they obtain permission to excavate the core area, but the remains of that time were only the remains of an ancient Egyptian village and were not of great value.

It wasn’t until Liang began excavations and they collaborated that they had truly meaningful joint excavations that allowed them to dig deep into the heart of many important historical sites.

For example, this is the case with the current excavations in Troy. Although they have not excavated any ruins for the time being, from an archaeological perspective, they have indeed dug through the entire Troy ruins and obtained a large amount of first-hand information.

But that’s not all Liang En wanted. Because he had a great time cooperating with the Chinese people before, he called them here so that they could share the glory of releasing the core treasure.

After all, Liang En did not have a core archaeological team of his own, and facing the treasures hidden under more than ten meters of soil and rubble, Liang En and Jeanne alone could not dig out those things.

Considering that this place is in full public view, Liang En cannot use extraordinary power to carry out excavation work, so the only way is to find someone.

So in this case, instead of looking for those unfamiliar teams, it is better to find this group of Chinese archaeological teams that have cooperated well before, and accumulate some favors by the way.

And what Liang En wants to dig this time is the treasures called the Priam Treasures in another world. These treasures in another world are the core reason why the Troy ruins were certified.

In Liang Enlai’s world, in 1870, in order to search for the city of Troy, the archaeologist Schliemann took his newlywed wife all the way to the Dardanian Strait and came to the Troy Plain on the coast of the Near East.

After on-the-spot investigation, he finally selected a hillock named Hisalik as the excavation site, and received an excavation permit from Turkish officials in April 1870.

He then hired a hundred workers and continued the work intermittently for three years starting in April 1870, digging for two months in 1871 and another four and a half months the next year. In mid-March 1873, they began digging again.

During these three years of excavation, Schliemann unearthed layers upon layers of ancient city ruins here, but he unscrupulously tore down the upper layers of city ruins, causing serious archaeological damage.

This is mainly because early archeology itself had many flaws due to the accumulation of technology, and Schliemann was only half-assed and his overall level was not good.

The most famous thing is that he dug a 70-meter-long and 18-meter-wide ditch in the core area of ​​the ruins, completely destroying the entire central area of ​​the ruins and seriously affecting the subsequent exploration work of archaeologists.

However, because of such a large-scale war, he successfully discovered the penultimate level of the ancient city, which had thick walls and towering gates. There was a very impressive house in the city in the past, and there were also traces of fire burning on the city walls.

All this led Schliemann to conclude that this was the city of Troy he was longing for, and that house was the palace of Priam. The treasure trove of Priam mentioned in the epic poem “The Iliad” is about to be revealed to the world.

But contrary to expectations, he hollowed out almost half of the ancient city, but never found a piece of gold. Schliemann was exhausted physically and mentally and was ready to stop the excavation work at Hisalik, but at this time a turning point occurred.

According to Schliemann, on June 14, 1873, he and his employees went to the construction site to make a last effort. When he stood 18 feet deep near the circular wall of Priam’s palace, he was suddenly attracted by a very special-shaped object in the waste layer.

Because there seemed to be a dazzling light shining behind that thing. Schliemann realized it must be gold. He tried his best to suppress his inner excitement and asked his wife to tell the workers: Today is his birthday, so work will end early.

When the workers dispersed, Angas Dominos turned back and stood beside her husband. After Schliemann squatted under the wall in the strong sunlight and pushed away the ashes with his hands, the soil showed the luster of ivory and the sparkle of gold.

His wife took off her red shawl, and Schliemann took out the gold and silver treasures one by one and wrapped them in the shawl. This is how the treasure was discovered.

The large number of cultural relics and gold objects discovered by Schliemann in the ruins of Troy were collectively called the Priam Treasures. He named the gold jewelry among them “Helen’s Jewelry” and asked his wife Sophia to wear it as a model.

Once the photos of Greek beauties wearing “Helen’s Jewelry” were released, they caused a sensation throughout Europe, and Schliemann became a household name. That photo also became a representative photo of Troy archeology.

But this seemingly legendary story is full of fallacies and lies. First of all, there are no palaces or temples in the lowest layer, that is, the first layer excavated by Schliemann in the Hishalik Dunes.

This is evidenced by his letter to a friend, where he wrote: “Imagine my horror, yesterday I came to the Stone Age.” So he decided to dig out a second layer from a later period.

He was excited to discover traces of attacks and fires as well as ancient pottery warehouses buried underground. Then he discovered the stack of rocks and immediately concluded that this was a stone tower from which to watch the heroes of Asia.

Later he felt that it was not like a tower, but the walls of two buildings belonging to different periods. There are other “identifications” like this. Obviously, such archeology lacks a scientific attitude.

The artifacts Schliemann found actually had nothing to do with Priam or Helen. They are located in the second layer of the Troy ruins, and Priam’s era should be in the sixth or seventh phase of the Troy ruins. There is a distance of nearly a thousand years between the two.

Secondly, subsequent inspection of the treasures unearthed by Schliemann revealed that some of the artifacts were not from the Homeric era. It is obvious that he regards the cultural relics excavated in different periods and locations as a whole.

For example, the golden cup that Liang En and the others found on the fifth floor when sampling was also mixed with the Priam treasure in the previous life. This is obviously wrong. And this mixing also brought huge trouble to subsequent researchers.

And the most legendary part of this process, that is, how he and his wife dug together, and how he hid the treasure under his wife’s shawl and transported it to the cabin, were all made up by him.

According to the “Schliemann Diary” published after his death, we can know that his wife was not in Turkey at that time, but in Greece.

But no matter what, the existence of the treasure is real, and this is why Liang En pulled the Chinese archaeological team to dig in this area, because he felt that only by finding these treasures can the confirmation of the Troy ruins be guaranteed.