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Part of Priam's
treasure.
Priam's Treasure is a cache of gold and other artifacts discovered by classical archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann at Hissarlik in modern Turkey. The majority of the artifacts are currently in
the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.
Schliemann
claimed the site to be that of Homeric Troy, and assigned
the artifacts to the Homeric king Priam. This
assignment is now thought to be a result of Schliemann's zeal to find sites and
objects mentioned in the Homeric epics which take
place in northwestern Turkey. At the time the stratigraphy at Troy had not been
solidified, which was done subsequently by the archaeologist Carl Blegen. The layer in
which Priam's Treasure was alleged to have been found was assigned to Troy II,
whereas Priam would have been king of Troy VI or VII, occupied hundreds of
years later.
Contents
·
1Background
·
2The treasure
·
3The treasure as an art
collection
·
4Authenticity of the
treasure
·
5Notes
·
6References
·
7External links
With the rise of modern critical history, Troy and
the Trojan War were
consigned to the realms of legend. In 1871-73 and 1878–79, Schliemann excavated
a hill called Hissarlik in
the Ottoman Empire, near the town
of Chanak (Çanakkale) in
north-western Anatolia, Turkey. Here
he discovered the ruins of a series of ancient cities, dating from the Bronze Age to
the Roman period.
Schliemann declared one of these cities—at first Troy I, later Troy II—to be
the city of Troy, and this identification was widely accepted at that time.
Concerning events
on or about May 27, 1873 Schliemann reported:
In excavating
this wall further and directly by the side of the palace of King Priam, I came
upon a large copper article of the most remarkable form, which attracted my
attention all the more as I thought I saw gold behind it. … In order to
withdraw the treasure from the greed of my workmen, and to save it for archaeology, … I immediately had "paidos"
(lunch break) called. … While the men were eating and resting, I cut out the
Treasure with a large knife…. It would, however, have been impossible for me to
have removed the Treasure without the help of my dear wife, who stood by me
ready to pack the things which I cut out in her shawl and to carry them away.
Schliemann's
oft-repeated story of the treasure being carried by his wife, Sophie, in her
shawl was untrue. Schliemann later admitted making it up, saying that at the
time of the discovery Sophie was in fact with her family in Athens, following
the death of her father.[1]
Sophia Schliemann [de] (néeEngastromenos) wearing the "Jewels of Helen" excavated by her husband, Heinrich Schliemann, in Hisarlik(photograph taken ca. 1874)
The
"big" diadem in modern exhibition
The
"small" diadem
A partial
catalogue of the treasure is approximately as follows:
·
A copper shield
·
a copper cauldron with handles
·
an unknown copper artifact, perhaps the hasp of a chest
·
a silver vase containing two gold diadems (the
"Jewels of Helen"), 8750
gold rings, buttons and other small objects, six gold bracelets, two gold
goblets
·
a copper vase
·
a wrought gold bottle
·
two gold cups, one wrought, one cast
·
a number of red terra cotta goblets
·
an electrum cup
(mixture of gold and silver and copper)
·
six wrought silver knife blades (which Schliemann put
forward as money)
·
three silver vases with fused copper parts
·
more silver goblets and vases
·
thirteen copper lance heads
·
fourteen copper axes
·
seven copper daggers
·
other copper artifacts with the key to a chest
Apparently, Schliemann
smuggled Priam's Treasure out of Anatolia. The officials were informed when his
wife, Sophia, wore the jewels for the public. The Ottoman official assigned to
watch the excavation, Amin Effendi, received a
prison sentence. The Ottoman government revoked Schliemann's permission to dig
and sued him for its share of the gold. Schliemann went on to Mycenae. There,
however, the Greek Archaeological
Society sent an agent to monitor him.
Later Schliemann traded some treasure to the
government of the Ottoman Empire in
exchange for permission to dig at Troy again. It is located in the Istanbul Archaeology
Museum. The rest was acquired in 1881 by the Royal Museums of Berlin (Königliche Museen zu Berlin),[2][3] in whose
hands it remained until 1945, when it disappeared from a protective bunker beneath
the Berlin Zoo.
In fact, after the capture of the bunker by the Red Army Professor Wilhelm Unverzagtturned the treasure
over to the Soviet commander and thus saved it from plunder and division. The
commander promised to guarantee the safety of the art treasures. The artefacts
were taken away to Moscow. During
the Cold War, the Soviet
government denied any knowledge of the fate of Priam's Treasure. However, in
September 1993 the treasure turned up at the Pushkin Museum.[4][5]
Russia keeps
what the West terms the looted art as
compensation for the destruction of Russian cities and looting of Russian
museums by Nazi Germany in World War II. A 1998 Russian
law, the Federal Law on Cultural
Valuables Displaced to the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located
on the Territory of the Russian Federation, legalizes the
looting in Germany as compensation and prevents Russian authorities from
proceeding to restitutions.
There have always been doubts about
the authenticity of the treasure. Within the last few decades these doubts have
found fuller expression in articles and books.[6] The
treasures are actually a thousand years older than Homer's King Priam of Troy,
who died about 1200 B.C.[citation needed]
1.
^ Moorehead, Caroline
(1994). The Lost Treasures of Troy, Weidenfeld
and Nicolson, page 133. ISBN 0-297-81500-8.
2.
^ Urice, Stephen K., editor
(2007). Law, Ethics and the
Visual Arts,
Kluwer Law International, page 63. ISBN 90-411-2517-5.
3.
^ Greenfield, Jeanette (2007). The Return of Cultural
Treasures,
Cambridge University Press, page 197. ISBN 0-521-80216-4.
4.
^ Tolstikov, 2007.
5.
^ Atkinson, Rick (September 6, 1993). "Trojan treasure
unlocks art war".
6.
^ Wood, 1987; Silberman, 1989; Traill,
1997.[pages needed]
·
Silberman, Neil Asher (1989). Between Past and
Present: Archaeology, Ideology and Nationalism in the Modern Middle East,
Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-41610-5.
·
Smith, Philip, editor (1976). Heinrich Schliemann:
Troy and Its Remains: A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries Made on the
Site of Ilium, and in the Trojan Plain, Arno Press, New York, 1976, ISBN 0-405-09855-3.
·
Tolstikov, Vladimir; Treister, Mikhail (1996). The Gold of Troy. Searching
for Homer's Fabled City. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-3394-2. A catalog of artifacts from Schliemann's excavations at Troy, with
photographs.
·
Traill, David
(1997). Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit, St. Martin's
Press, 1997, ISBN 0-312-15647-2
·
Wood, Michael (1987). In Search of the Trojan War,
New American Library, ISBN 0-452-25960-6.
·
Art News article,
originally published in April 1991 revealing the secret Soviet collections of
looted art, including the Schliemann collection.
·
Calvert's Heirs Claim
Schliemann Treasure
·
Scholia reviews at the Wayback Machine (archived May 9, 2008)
·
Looted Art BBC radio documentary on art looted by the Soviets
at the end of World War II, with special mention of the Schliemann collection
·
Pushkin Museum of Fine
Arts collection of Schliemann's treasure
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This page was last edited on 30 December 2018, at
08:44 (UTC).
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![Sophia Schliemann [de] (néeEngastromenos) wearing the "Jewels of Helen" excavated by her husband, Heinrich Schliemann, in Hisarlik(photograph taken ca. 1874)](https://trwelling.org/File:Sophia_schliemann_treasure.jpg){kind=link}
