CHAPTER VI.

New assistants for 1872--Cost of the excavations--Digging of the great platform on the North--Venomous snakes--A supporting buttress on the North side of the hill--Objects discovered: little idols of fine marble--Whorls engraved with the _suastika_ 卐 and [Illustration: block-style cross]--Significance of these emblems in the old Aryan religion--Their occurrence among other Aryan nations--Mentioned in old Indian literature--Illustrative quotation from Émile Burnouf.

On the Hill of Hissarlik, April 5th, 1872.

My last report was dated November 24th, 1871. On the first of this month, at 6 o’clock on the morning of a glorious day, accompanied by my wife, I resumed the excavations with 100 Greek workmen from the neighbouring villages of Renkoï, Kalifatli, and Yenishehr. Mr. John Latham, of Folkestone, the director of the railway from the Piræus to Athens, who by his excellent management brings the shareholders an annual dividend of 30 per cent., had the kindness to give me two of his best workmen, Theodorus Makrys of Mitylene, and Spiridion Demetrios of Athens, as foremen. To each of them I pay 150 fr. (6_l._) per month, while the daily wages of the other men are but 1 fr. 80 cent. Nikolaos Zaphyros, of Renkoï, gets 6 fr., as formerly; he is of great use to me on account of his local knowledge, and serves me at once as cashier, attendant, and cook. Mr. Piat, who has undertaken the construction of the railroad from the Piræus to Lanira, has also had the kindness to let me have his engineer, Adolphe Laurent, for a month, whom I shall have to pay 500 fr. (20_l._), and his travelling expenses. But in addition there are other considerable expenses to be defrayed, so that the total cost of my excavations amounts to no less than 300 fr. (12_l._) daily.

Now in order to be sure, in every case, of thoroughly solving the Trojan question this year, I am having an immense horizontal platform made on the steep northern slope, which rises at an angle of 40 degrees, a height of 105 feet perpendicular, and 131 feet above the level of the sea. The platform extends through the entire hill, at an exact perpendicular depth of 14 meters or 46½ English feet, it has a breadth of 79 meters or 233 English feet, and embraces my last year’s cutting.[102] M. Laurent calculates the mass of matter to be removed at 78,545 cubic meters (above 100,000 cubic yards): it will be less if I should find the native soil at less than 46 feet, and greater if I should have to make the platform still lower. It is above all things necessary for me to reach the primary soil, in order to make accurate investigations. To make the work easier, after having had the earth on the northern declivity picked down in such a manner that it rises perpendicularly to the height of about 8½ feet from the bottom, and after that at an angle of 50 degrees, I continue to have the _débris_ of the mighty earth wall loosened in such a manner that this angle always remains exactly the same. In this way I certainly work three times more rapidly than before, when, on account of the small breadth of the channel, I was forced to open it on the summit of the hill in a direct horizontal direction along its entire length. In spite of every precaution, however, I am unable to guard my men or myself against the stones which continually come rolling down, when the steep wall is being picked away. Not one of us is without several wounds in his feet.

During the first three days of the excavations, in digging down the slope of the hill, we came upon an immense number of poisonous snakes, and among them a remarkable quantity of the small brown vipers called _antelion_ (Ἀντήλιον), which are scarcely thicker than rain worms, and which have their name from the circumstance that the person bitten by them only survives till sunset. It seems to me that, were it not for the many thousands of storks which destroy the snakes in spring and summer, the Plain of Troy would be uninhabitable, owing to the excessive numbers of these vermin.

Through the kindness of my friends, Messrs. J. Henry Schröder and Co., in London, I have obtained the best English pickaxes and spades for loosening and pulling down the rubbish, also 60 excellent wheel-barrows with iron wheels for carrying it away.

For the purpose of consolidating the buildings on the top of the hill, the whole of the steep northern slope has evidently been supported by a buttress, for I find the remains of one in several places. This buttress is however not very ancient, for it is composed of large blocks of shelly limestone, mostly hewn, and joined with lime or cement. The remains of this wall have only a slight covering of earth; but on all other places there is more or less soil, which, at the eastern end of the platform, extends to a depth of between 6½ and 10 feet. Behind the platform, as well as behind the remains of the buttress, the _débris_ is as hard as stone, and consists of the ruins of houses, among which I find axes of diorite, sling-bullets of loadstone, a number of flint knives, innumerable handmills of lava, a great number of small idols of very fine marble, with or without the owl’s-head and woman’s girdle, weights of clay in the form of pyramids and with a hole at the point, or made of stone and in the form of balls; lastly, a great many of those small terra-cotta whorls, which have already been so frequently spoken of in my previous reports. Two pieces of this kind, with crosses on the under side, were found in the terramares of Castione and Campeggine,[103] and are now in the Museum of Parma. Many of these Trojan articles, and especially those in the form of volcanoes, have crosses of the most various descriptions, as may be seen in the lithographed drawings.[104] The form [Illustration: block-style cross] occurs especially often; upon a great many we find the sign 卐, of which there are often whole rows in a circle round the central point. In my earlier reports I never spoke of these crosses, because their meaning was utterly unknown to me.

This winter, I have read in Athens many excellent works of celebrated scholars on Indian antiquities, especially Adalbert Kuhn, _Die Herabkunft des Feuers_; Max Müller’s _Essays_; Émile Burnouf, _La Science des Religions_ and _Essai sur le Vêda_, as well as several works by Eugène Burnouf; and I now perceive that these crosses upon the Trojan terra-cottas are of the highest importance to archæology. I therefore consider it necessary to enter more fully into the subject, all the more so as I am now able to prove that both the [Illustration: block-style cross] and the 卐, which I find in Émile Burnouf’s Sanscrit lexicon, under the name of “suastika,” and with the meaning εὖ ἐστι, or as the sign of good wishes, were already regarded, thousands of years before Christ, as religious symbols of the very greatest importance among the early progenitors of the Aryan races in Bactria and in the villages of the Oxus, at a time when Germans, Indians, Pelasgians, Celts, Persians, Slavonians and Iranians still formed one nation and spoke one language. For I recognise at the first glance the “suastika” upon one of those three pot bottoms,[105] which were discovered on Bishop’s Island near Königswalde on the right bank of the Oder, and have given rise to very many learned discussions, while no one recognised the mark as that exceedingly significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors. I find a whole row of these “suastikas” all round the famous pulpit of Saint Ambrose in Milan; I find it occurring a thousand times in the catacombs of Rome.[106] I find it in three rows, and thus repeated sixty times, upon an ancient Celtic funereal urn discovered in Shropham in the county of Norfolk, and now in the British Museum.[107] I find it also upon several Corinthian vases in my own collection, as well as upon two very ancient Attic vases in the possession of Professor Kusopulos at Athens, which are assigned to a date as early, at least, as 1000 years before Christ. I likewise find it upon several ancient coins of Leucas, and in the large mosaic in the royal palace garden in Athens. An English clergyman, the Rev. W. Brown Keer, who visited me here, assures me that he has seen the 卐 innumerable times in the most ancient Hindu temples, and especially in those of Gaïna.[108] I find in the Ramayana that the ships of king Rama--in which he carried his troops across the Ganges on his expedition of conquest to India and Ceylon--bore the 卐 on their prows. Sanscrit scholars believe that this heroic epic (the _Ramayana_) was composed at the latest 800 years before Christ, and they assign the campaign of Rama at the latest to the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C., for, as Kiepert points out in his very interesting article in the _National-Zeitung_, the names of the products mentioned in the 2nd Book of Kings, in the reign of King Solomon, as brought by Phœnician ships from Ophir, as for example, ivory, peacocks, apes and spices, are Sanscrit words with scarcely any alteration. Hence we may surely regard it as certain, that it took at least three or four centuries before the language of the conquerors was generally introduced into the immensely large and densely peopled country of India, especially as the number of the conquerors cannot have been very large. In the myths of the Rigvêda, which were written before the expedition into Northern India (_Heptopotamia_), the Aryan population is always represented as inconsiderable in numbers.

Émile Burnouf, in his excellent work _La Science des Religions_, just published, says, “The 卐 represents the two pieces of wood which were laid cross-wise upon one another before the sacrificial altars in order to produce the holy fire (_Agni_), and whose ends were bent round at right angles and fastened by means of four nails, [Illustration: suastika with dots], so that this wooden scaffolding might not be moved. At the point where the two pieces of wood were joined, there was a small hole, in which a third piece of wood, in the form of a lance (called _Pramantha_) was rotated by means of a cord made of cow’s hair and hemp, till the fire was generated by friction. The father of the holy fire (_Agni_) is Twastri, _i.e._ the divine carpenter, who made the 卐 and the Pramantha, by the friction of which the divine child was produced. The Pramantha was afterwards transformed by the Greeks into Prometheus, who, they imagined, stole fire from heaven, so as to instil into earth-born man the bright spark of the soul. The mother of the holy fire is the divine Mâjâ, who represents the productive force in the form of a woman; every divine being has his Mâjâ. Scarcely has the weak spark escaped from its mother’s lap, that is from the 卐, which is likewise called mother, and is the place where the divine Mâjâ principally dwells--when it (Agni) receives the name of child. In the Rigvêda we find hymns of heavenly beauty in praise of this new-born weak divine creature. The little child is laid upon straw; beside it is the mystic cow, that is, the milk and butter destined as the offering; before it is the holy priest of the divine Vâju, who waves the small oriental fan in the form of a flag, so as to kindle life in the little child, which is close upon expiring. Then the little child is placed upon the altar, where, through the holy “sôma” (the juice of the tree of life) poured over it, and through the purified butter, it receives a mysterious power, surpassing all comprehension of the worshippers. The child’s glory shines upon all around it; angels (_dêvâs_) and men shout for joy, sing hymns in its praise, and throw themselves on their faces before it. On its left is the rising sun, on its right the full moon on the horizon, and both appear to grow pale in the glory of the new-born god (Agni) and to worship him. But how did this transfiguration of Agni take place? At the moment when one priest laid the young god upon the altar, another poured the holy draught, the spiritual “sôma” upon its head, and then immediately anointed it by spreading over it the butter of the holy sacrifice. By being thus anointed Agni receives the name of the Anointed (_akta_); he has, however, grown enormously through the combustible substances; rich in glory he sends forth his blazing flames; he shines in a cloud of smoke which rises to heaven like a pillar, and his light unites with the light of the heavenly orbs. The god Agni, in his splendour and glory, reveals to man the secret things; he teaches the Doctors; he is the Master of the masters, and receives the name of Jâtavêdas, that is, he in whom wisdom is in-born.

Upon my writing to M. É. Burnouf to enquire about the other symbol, the cross in the form [Illustration: block-style cross], which occurs hundreds of times upon the Trojan terra-cottas, he replied, that he knows with certainty from the ancient scholiasts on the Rigvêda, from comparative philology, and from the _Monuments figurés_, that _Suastikas_, in this form also, were employed in the very remotest times for producing the holy fire. He adds that the Greeks for a long time generated fire by friction, and that the two lower pieces of wood that lay at right angles across one another were called “σταυρός,” which word is either derived from the root “stri,” which signifies lying upon the earth, and is then identical with the Latin “sternere,” or it is derived from the Sanscrit word “stâvara,” which means firm, solid, immovable. Since the Greeks had other means of producing fire, the word σταυρός passed into simply in the sense of “cross.”

Other passages might be quoted from Indian scholars to prove that from the very remotest times the 卐 and the [Illustration: block-style cross] were the most sacred symbols of our Aryan forefathers.

In my present excavations I shall probably find a definite explanation as to the purpose for which the articles ornamented with such significant symbols were used; till then I shall maintain my former opinion, that they either served as _Ex votos_ or as actual idols of Hephæstus.