From the Riddles of Ancient Egypt to Cryptography in the Renaissance — 3500 Years in the Making - Codes: The Guide to Secrecy from Ancient to Modern Times - page 26

was born in Mecklenburg, North Germany, on January 6, 1822. At the early age
of seven, he was given a book, Jerrer's Universal History , by his father. The
book contained a painting of Troy in flames. Throughout his life he believed
that the Homeric versions were more than myth, and he became obsessed with
Troy and Homer.
After some early work of little significance, he ultimately managed to acquire
a huge fortune using his innate merchant skills, by the time he was thirty.
Then he married Katherina, a niece of a business acquaintance. Although the
marriage lasted fifteen years, and produced a son and two daughters, it was
filled with violent verbal arguments, separations, reconciliations, and ultimately
divorce.
He had an aptitude for languages, mastering fifteen by the age of thirty-
three, including ancient and modern Greek. In 1851, he first visited America,
became a U.S. citizen, and opened a bank in California during the gold rush,
which added to his fortune. In 1858, he took an extensive tour of the Middle
East, returning to America a second time in 1868, trying to reconcile with his
wife, but it was doomed to failure. He then began another extensive voyage of
wandering, this time setting foot for the first time on the island of Ithaca. Here
he began to dig and excavate, finding what he believed to be the remains of
Odysseus and his wife, Penelope. After Ithaca, he travelled to the Peloponnese,
Mycenae, the Dardanelles, and the Plain of Troy. Now he was ready to relinquish
his business ventures and settle into an extended search for Troy. He was also
ready for divorce and finding a new wife. This time, he would not leave it to
chance. He wrote a letter in the winter of 1868 to his old friend Vimpos, who
had taught him Greek earlier in his life. Now Vimpos was archbishop of Athens.
Schliemann appealed to him to find him a Greek wife. After his divorce from
Katherina the next year, he arrived in Athens in August and married his new
young bride, Sophie.
There had been speculation among scholars and archeologists that a probable
site of Troy could be the hill of Hisar ¯ ik, in modern-day Turkey. Schliemann
had visited the area in 1868, and now was convinced of it. In 1870, with his
eighteen-year-old bride by his side, he made some preliminary excavations at
Hisar ¯ ik. By late 1871, he and numerous workers under his command drove
deeply into the northern slope of the hill. Schliemann was a novice at this, and
there were little precedents in the archeological world to guide him at that time.
The scale and magnitude of the venture was unprecedented. So, believing that
Troy was at the lowest levels, when he encountered a building of relatively late
date that impeded his progress he demolished it without attempting to record
any of it (which would make modern-day archeologists shudder). By 1873, he
uncovered the ruins of a city, which he believed to be the Troy of Homer's Iliad ,
and what he thought was Priam's gold.
Not wanting to part with the treasure, he smuggled the gold and jewellery
(some of which he believed to have been worn by Helen herself, and with which
he adorned Sophie) out of Turkey to Athens. In 1874, after numerous political
and legal problems, he was able to offer the Greek government a suggestion that
he be able to keep part of the treasure during his lifetime, but that it would revert