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inspired archaeologist. Using these gifts, he turned the myth of Troy into fact and his own
life into myth.
Through a series of business ventures (dealings in gunpowder and indigo in Russia,
gold dust during the California gold rush), Schliemann retired at age thirty-six from busi-
ness and set out to find Troy. Self-taught, he read, wrote, and spoke twelve languages, in-
cluding ancient Greek and Turkish (then written in Arabic script). As he related, he was
now ready to fulfill a boyhood dream: to find Troy. Some biographers suggest that the boy-
hood dream is a later-life invention and that all Schliemann sought was an enterprise that
might bring him fame, a fame that would rest on Europe's fascination with ancient Greece.
Schliemann advertised for a Greek wife to share his adventures: young, not afraid of hard
work, and willing to learn three languages in two years.
Enter the comely Sophia. She was seventeen, he forty-seven. They would have two
children, Andromache and Agamemnon. Popular belief then held that the site of Troy lay
on the Turkish shore of the Dardanelles. Winds and currents make it a logical place for safe
harbor and trade. But Homer tells of drawing Greek ships up on Troy's beach, and no such
beach is to be discovered. Schliemann reasoned that the ancient harbor must have silted
up and that Troy lay inland. But where? Inland, near present-day Cannakale, are several
mounds suggesting ruins deep in the earth. But which one is Troy? Homer does not lie, said
Schliemann. One battle scene has Achilles dragging the body of the Trojan hero, Hector,
three times around the walls of Troy. Schliemann and his aides repeated the chase at several
sites, until a satisfactory match was found. Here, he and Sophia set their Turkish workers
to digging. One day, she spied something glinting in the ground. Workmen were sent home
on the pretext that it was her husband's birthday. Out of sight of watchful Turkish officials
(whom Schliemann had promised the treasure, should it ever be found), 9,000 gold items
were smuggled out of Turkey.
Schliemann was correct in his finding the site of Troy, but in his unsystematic and
overly enthusiastic archaeology, he dug down past Troy to a pre-Trojan city. It would not
be until the 1930s that Carl Blegan of the University of Cincinnati would find the real Troy.
In triumph and with a gift for garnering honors and publicity, Schliemann was feted world-
wide. His Trojan treasures were given to the city of Berlin, where they would disappear in
the waning days of World War II.
To pile triumph on triumph, Schliemann set out to find the legendary treasures of
Agamemnon in the city of Mycenae in the Peleponnesus. The Greek government took
no chances with a self-confessed, boastful smuggler. Its agents supervised the digs. Once
again, intuition triumphed. Schliemann dug fairly far from the large, domed structure that
popular lore called Agamemnon's Treasury. Among Schliemman's great discoveries were
several death masks in solid gold. Schliemann proclaimed the most beautiful one to be
the Mask of Agamemnon. When doubts surfaced about its identity, an angry Schliemann
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