Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
to Greece after his death. Moreover, the government agreed to let Schliemann
dig at Mycenae, his next project, under the supervision of the Archeological
Society of Greece, at his own expense, conditional upon his handing over all the
finds. They did give him exclusive rights on publishing his discoveries for up to
three years.
After two years of legal battles with the Turks, which ended in his having
to pay them compensation, he finally began to dig at Mycenae. With Sophie
by his side and an entourage of workers, in the summer of 1876, Schliemann
began to dig in an area known as the
Lion Gate
, which is a gateway upon which
sit two lions carved in stone. This is a gateway to what Schliemann called the
Citadel of the Atridae
, a flat top of a hill crowned with a vast ring of walls.
He found upright slabs 87 feet in diameter, beyond which there was a circular
stone altar, more gravestones, and a gold ring. At this point, the workers
were dismissed, leaving only Heinrich, Sophie, and Stamatkis, the
ephor
who
represented the archeological society. They uncovered a total of six graves within
the ring of stone slabs, a Grave Circle. Each grave was a shaft of varying depths,
containing a total of nineteen bodies of men, women, and children, many laden
with gold. Numerous treasures were uncovered, from bronze daggers inlaid with
gold designs having various engravings in the men's graves, to engraved golden
crowns in the women's graves, treasure of gold masks and crowns. He was certain
that he had found the tomb of Agamemnon and Cassandra, among others. Was
Schliemann right? Later dating techniques showed that if Agamemnon actually
lived, it would have been around 1180BC, the presumed date of the Trojan
War. However, the finds at the Citadel were earlier, around 1600 BC. The
excavations Schliemann made at Hisar
¯
ik turned out to be the site of Troy but
the dating was off by several hundred years. He had dug
past
the level on which
Troy itself did reside! He had dug through the very walls of Troy to get to where
he thought it was. One of the
upper
levels
was
Priam's Troy. So
if
the treasure
found by Schliemann at the lower levels was from a much earlier age, who were
the owners? Scholars touted Schliemann for his intuitive acuity, but posed that
the objects were older than the period of the Trojan War, older than Homer.
There was someone else who shared that belief.
In 1882, a thirty-one year old Englishman, Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941),
came to visit the Schliemanns in Athens, having been introduced by his father
whom Schliemann had met in England. He was interested in looking at some of
the bead seals and signet rings that Schliemann had found at Mycenae. He be-
lieved that they were Aegean, but they fascinated him because he saw elements
of ancient Egypt in them. He wanted to unravel the puzzle. Now we continue
with the fascinating story that will take us back full circle to Crete, and stories
surrounding it, that we discussed in Section 1.1, and a cryptological find that
stunned the world.
Evans was born in Nash Mills, England, the son of a paper manufacturer
and amateur archeologist of Welsh descent. He was educated principally at the
University of Oxford, England, and the University of Gottingen, Germany. He
was a recognized scholar who became the curator of the Ashmolean Museum at
the University of Oxford from 1884 to 1908, and was appointed as
extraordinary
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