1 00:00:30,963 --> 00:00:34,023 In this place there once stood a city, 2 00:00:34,533 --> 00:00:36,694 the most famous city in the world. 3 00:00:37,102 --> 00:00:38,933 A city whose tragic fate has inspired 4 00:00:39,104 --> 00:00:42,403 poets and artists for 3,000 years. 5 00:00:43,008 --> 00:00:47,945 A city whose memory will outlive the last trace of its physical existence. 6 00:00:48,380 --> 00:00:50,814 A city called Troy. 7 00:00:52,351 --> 00:00:53,943 But what happened here? 8 00:00:54,219 --> 00:00:57,950 What lies beneath the legend of the Trojan War? 9 00:01:59,952 --> 00:02:03,285 The story as we know it is told by the poet Homer, 10 00:02:03,455 --> 00:02:05,821 who may have lived around 700 BC, 11 00:02:06,024 --> 00:02:09,687 500 years after the war is supposed to have taken place. 12 00:02:10,062 --> 00:02:12,758 It has been retold over the centuries. 13 00:02:15,100 --> 00:02:17,568 It is a tale of love and war. 14 00:02:18,670 --> 00:02:20,831 Long ago, a prince of Troy, paris, 15 00:02:21,006 --> 00:02:23,099 eloped with a Greek queen, Helen, 16 00:02:23,275 --> 00:02:25,266 the most beautiful woman in the world. 17 00:02:27,913 --> 00:02:29,107 He took her back to Troy, 18 00:02:29,281 --> 00:02:31,909 a city by the Dardanelles in what is now Turkey, 19 00:02:32,084 --> 00:02:34,848 where his father, priam, was king. 20 00:02:37,022 --> 00:02:40,253 The Greeks followed with a thousand ships to take revenge. 21 00:02:40,425 --> 00:02:42,086 Their leader was Agamemnon, 22 00:02:42,261 --> 00:02:44,957 king of Mycenae, rich in gold. 23 00:02:45,531 --> 00:02:48,932 For 10 years they fought in the plain before the city. 24 00:02:49,134 --> 00:02:51,466 The heroes of both sides were killed. 25 00:02:51,770 --> 00:02:53,294 The Greek Achilles, 26 00:02:53,739 --> 00:02:55,900 the gallant Trojan Hector. 27 00:02:56,208 --> 00:02:57,573 The city was finally entered by 28 00:02:57,743 --> 00:02:59,870 the famous trick of the wooden horse, 29 00:03:00,078 --> 00:03:02,774 inside which the Greeks hid armed men. 30 00:03:03,982 --> 00:03:07,213 Troy was burned, its people slaughtered, 31 00:03:07,553 --> 00:03:10,784 sharing the fate of all victims of war. 32 00:03:41,553 --> 00:03:44,784 Berlin, February 1945. 33 00:03:44,990 --> 00:03:49,893 Here took place what is so far the last act in the destruction of Troy. 34 00:03:51,396 --> 00:03:54,991 And here, 40 years on, my search started. 35 00:04:09,114 --> 00:04:12,208 Berlin had been famous for the arts of civilisation. 36 00:04:12,551 --> 00:04:16,078 Its museum buildings, now gutted by the fires of war, 37 00:04:16,255 --> 00:04:20,487 had been the greatest centre of classical scholarship in the 19th century. 38 00:04:22,494 --> 00:04:24,325 Here, the rediscovery of Homer 39 00:04:24,496 --> 00:04:27,795 and the beginnings of archaeology had gone hand in hand. 40 00:04:35,040 --> 00:04:35,904 That November day 41 00:04:36,074 --> 00:04:39,168 I went to the Charlottenburg Museum in West Berlin, 42 00:04:39,344 --> 00:04:44,748 drawn by the lure of the man who, it is commonly said, discovered Troy. 43 00:04:45,450 --> 00:04:46,940 Heinrich Schliemann, 44 00:04:47,319 --> 00:04:48,843 father of archaeology, genius, 45 00:04:49,021 --> 00:04:50,613 romantic, liar... 46 00:04:50,956 --> 00:04:53,322 No one is sure how to take him nowadays. 47 00:05:00,932 --> 00:05:03,457 In 1886, four years before he died, 48 00:05:03,635 --> 00:05:05,626 Schliemann gave his Trojan finds, 49 00:05:05,804 --> 00:05:07,704 including a priceless gold treasure, 50 00:05:07,873 --> 00:05:09,465 to the Berlin museum. 51 00:05:11,877 --> 00:05:14,539 Here it was displayed until the Second World War. 52 00:05:15,947 --> 00:05:18,177 - Is there much of it? - Difficult to say. 53 00:05:18,350 --> 00:05:20,545 That afternoon, Dr Klaus Goldman showed me 54 00:05:20,719 --> 00:05:24,587 the remnants from Troy which survived 1945. 55 00:05:26,191 --> 00:05:28,318 After the bombs, German archaeologists 56 00:05:28,493 --> 00:05:31,291 had to excavate these things a second time 57 00:05:31,463 --> 00:05:33,988 from the debris of their own museum. 58 00:05:34,166 --> 00:05:37,761 The gold alone escaped but has never been seen since. 59 00:05:37,936 --> 00:05:39,631 Only replicas remain. 60 00:05:39,805 --> 00:05:44,674 So these are copies of the actual gold pieces Schliemann found at Troy? 61 00:05:45,010 --> 00:05:50,539 Copies of the gold objects which were missed from World War II on. 62 00:05:50,916 --> 00:05:52,611 The originals are? 63 00:05:53,185 --> 00:05:55,278 - Nobody knows. - OK. 64 00:06:03,829 --> 00:06:08,766 To fight to save these fragments when our own civilisation is in ruins around us 65 00:06:08,934 --> 00:06:12,370 is to make a statement of faith in the achievements of human kind, 66 00:06:12,537 --> 00:06:13,902 however small. 67 00:06:22,214 --> 00:06:27,277 We preserve even a single piece of pot for what it may tell future generations, 68 00:06:29,454 --> 00:06:31,649 carefully painted by a Bronze Age Greek 69 00:06:31,823 --> 00:06:33,984 before it was traded to Troy. 70 00:06:34,292 --> 00:06:37,853 Perhaps then the Greeks and Trojans had even been friends. 71 00:06:38,530 --> 00:06:44,059 Most people who fight wars can be the best friends several years later. 72 00:06:45,070 --> 00:06:48,198 - Or before! - Or before, yes. 73 00:06:49,074 --> 00:06:50,939 And the fire marks, you don't know whether 74 00:06:51,109 --> 00:06:54,442 it's the Second World War or the Trojan War! 75 00:06:55,013 --> 00:06:56,776 Maybe the Second World War. 76 00:06:57,716 --> 00:07:00,344 These all too human artefacts, 77 00:07:00,519 --> 00:07:04,182 with their burn marks separated by three or four thousand years, 78 00:07:04,356 --> 00:07:05,118 were found in the ruins of 79 00:07:05,290 --> 00:07:08,987 a real place which we now call Troy. 80 00:07:10,862 --> 00:07:12,386 And what of the man who found them, 81 00:07:12,564 --> 00:07:16,625 now commonly branded as a crook, Schliemann himself? 82 00:07:16,835 --> 00:07:20,202 He was one of the greatest archaeologists 83 00:07:20,372 --> 00:07:28,040 because nobody believed that Troy has been a real place in history. 84 00:07:28,213 --> 00:07:32,240 And Schliemann did believe it, 85 00:07:32,417 --> 00:07:38,720 excavated the place that was Troy, in historic terms too. 86 00:07:38,924 --> 00:07:44,453 And so he, I think, opened a new chapter in history, in archaeology. 87 00:07:44,696 --> 00:07:46,721 He was a very great man. 88 00:08:04,416 --> 00:08:06,680 That day in Berlin, it seemed, 89 00:08:06,918 --> 00:08:11,321 the Troy story was part of the remorseless march of history, 90 00:08:11,556 --> 00:08:12,352 not a fairy tale 91 00:08:12,524 --> 00:08:14,719 but a real story with real people. 92 00:08:15,360 --> 00:08:18,625 It was almost as if ghosts were waiting to be summoned. 93 00:08:19,664 --> 00:08:21,359 Schliemann would only be the first. 94 00:08:21,633 --> 00:08:23,931 In this series there are many chapters, 95 00:08:24,102 --> 00:08:27,037 leading from Berlin to Troy and Mycenae, 96 00:08:27,205 --> 00:08:29,605 across Europe from Ireland to Armenia 97 00:08:29,875 --> 00:08:31,968 and eventually back to Berlin. 98 00:08:32,310 --> 00:08:36,269 A search in which major discoveries have been made in the last few months. 99 00:08:37,082 --> 00:08:39,073 Each generation of archaeologists 100 00:08:39,251 --> 00:08:42,652 has made a different version of the tale of Troy. 101 00:08:43,154 --> 00:08:45,486 But is the tale true? 102 00:09:00,805 --> 00:09:05,003 To even attempt to find answers, the first step had to be Schliemann. 103 00:09:05,810 --> 00:09:06,799 He defined the search, 104 00:09:06,978 --> 00:09:09,412 fired the generations who came after him 105 00:09:09,581 --> 00:09:13,415 with his romantic faith in the truth of Homer's "lliad". 106 00:09:20,725 --> 00:09:23,353 His obsession with Troy started, he claimed, 107 00:09:23,528 --> 00:09:26,053 with this picture in a book given by his father 108 00:09:26,231 --> 00:09:29,257 at Christmas 1830, when he was eight. 109 00:09:29,968 --> 00:09:33,199 Its childlike vision of the Trojan tragedy, he said, 110 00:09:33,371 --> 00:09:36,033 made finding the city the goal of his life. 111 00:09:39,311 --> 00:09:41,370 All he did later was to that end. 112 00:09:41,780 --> 00:09:43,008 A business career took him from 113 00:09:43,181 --> 00:09:45,809 the California gold rush to the Crimean War 114 00:09:46,051 --> 00:09:48,451 and made him a million by the time he was 30. 115 00:09:50,989 --> 00:09:53,014 Even his love life became a step towards 116 00:09:53,191 --> 00:09:55,682 that ultimate goal of proving Homer true, 117 00:09:55,860 --> 00:09:58,761 in his second marriage to the 16-year-old Sophie, 118 00:09:58,997 --> 00:10:00,760 a Greek girl who knew her Homer and 119 00:10:00,932 --> 00:10:03,264 who would accompany him on his quest. 120 00:10:05,503 --> 00:10:08,666 Schliemann has sold us all his fairy tale. 121 00:10:15,880 --> 00:10:19,407 The people who knew him are divided over his character. 122 00:10:19,584 --> 00:10:22,246 Some thought him cheery, kindly, 123 00:10:22,420 --> 00:10:23,682 always ready for new facts. 124 00:10:23,855 --> 00:10:26,346 Others said he was dogmatic, devious, 125 00:10:26,524 --> 00:10:28,549 and even a liar and a cheat. 126 00:10:28,827 --> 00:10:31,022 He himself, retrospectively, 127 00:10:31,196 --> 00:10:34,723 liked to think of himself as a solitary, romantic figure 128 00:10:34,899 --> 00:10:36,628 with Troy as his ultimate goal. 129 00:10:36,801 --> 00:10:40,464 And yet in all the 60,000 letters and papers that survive of his, 130 00:10:40,639 --> 00:10:43,267 there is no mention of the Trojan obsession 131 00:10:43,441 --> 00:10:45,807 until he reaches the age of 46. 132 00:10:45,977 --> 00:10:48,002 Then he wanted to get out of business 133 00:10:48,179 --> 00:10:50,579 and into some scientific field. 134 00:10:50,749 --> 00:10:53,445 What, he didn't know, and he thought it was too late. 135 00:10:53,618 --> 00:10:56,553 But he enrolled as a mature student in paris. 136 00:10:56,855 --> 00:11:00,586 He enrolled in a new science in which 137 00:11:00,759 --> 00:11:03,660 an amateur could possibly make a mark. 138 00:11:03,962 --> 00:11:06,522 A new science engendered by a dramatic change 139 00:11:06,698 --> 00:11:10,031 in people's attitude to the past - archaeology. 140 00:11:18,777 --> 00:11:24,079 At that moment, 1859, the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" 141 00:11:24,249 --> 00:11:26,410 signalled a scientific revolution, 142 00:11:26,618 --> 00:11:28,711 not only in geology and natural history 143 00:11:28,887 --> 00:11:30,752 but also in human history. 144 00:11:31,222 --> 00:11:34,988 The Bible could no longer contain the answers to man's past. 145 00:11:35,160 --> 00:11:40,427 A vast and mysterious pre-history lay waiting to be uncovered by the spade. 146 00:11:45,437 --> 00:11:48,406 But where did the new science stand when Schliemann began? 147 00:11:48,573 --> 00:11:53,374 I went to Cambridge to ask the professor of archaeology, Colin Renfrew. 148 00:11:53,845 --> 00:11:56,109 When Schliemann began his work in Greece, 149 00:11:56,281 --> 00:12:00,308 then it was 10 or 15 years since man's antiquity had been established. 150 00:12:00,485 --> 00:12:03,613 One thinks of that happening in about 1859. 151 00:12:03,788 --> 00:12:07,121 Up to that time, the biblical view was followed 152 00:12:07,292 --> 00:12:10,784 that the world was created in seven days. 153 00:12:10,962 --> 00:12:14,659 Some scholars had calculated that to be in the year 4004 BC. 154 00:12:14,833 --> 00:12:17,666 So there wasn't a pre-history to speak of. 155 00:12:17,902 --> 00:12:18,766 The word "pre-history" 156 00:12:18,937 --> 00:12:20,928 wasn't invented till about 1865. 157 00:12:21,106 --> 00:12:24,337 So it's all the time that Schliemann was young, 158 00:12:24,509 --> 00:12:29,503 the time he was starting his work the following decade in Greece. 159 00:12:29,714 --> 00:12:34,981 He was criticised by some of the professional scholars who didn't approve of this amateur, 160 00:12:35,153 --> 00:12:37,917 but I'm sure he was as good as they were 161 00:12:38,089 --> 00:12:40,785 and he was opening up this new field. 162 00:12:40,959 --> 00:12:42,586 So he's a towering figure 163 00:12:42,761 --> 00:12:44,251 whereas they're forgotten. 164 00:12:44,429 --> 00:12:47,421 But where would Schliemann look for his Troy? 165 00:12:48,566 --> 00:12:53,094 He owed the idea which brought him world fame to a now forgotten figure 166 00:12:53,271 --> 00:12:55,569 who literally told him where to dig. 167 00:12:57,075 --> 00:13:01,944 An elusive Englishman whose shadowy face peers from indistinct photos. 168 00:13:02,514 --> 00:13:06,974 Frank Calvert, United States consul in north-western Turkey, 169 00:13:07,152 --> 00:13:09,985 knew the region's history better than anyone. 170 00:13:11,389 --> 00:13:13,823 It was Calvert who persuaded Schliemann 171 00:13:13,992 --> 00:13:18,292 to try to prove the existence of Homer's Troy by excavation. 172 00:13:20,565 --> 00:13:22,362 Early in 1870, 173 00:13:22,534 --> 00:13:26,595 this middle-aged retired businessman arrived in Istanbul, 174 00:13:26,771 --> 00:13:28,432 then the capital of Turkey. 175 00:13:40,952 --> 00:13:43,352 After a lifetime playing the markets of the world, 176 00:13:43,621 --> 00:13:47,955 Schliemann was about to engage in the riskiest speculation of his life. 177 00:13:59,604 --> 00:14:01,037 From Istanbul he sailed 178 00:14:01,206 --> 00:14:03,731 through the Sea of Marmara to the Dardanelles. 179 00:14:04,075 --> 00:14:06,839 In the north-eastern corner of the Aegean Sea 180 00:14:07,078 --> 00:14:10,241 was believed to be the site of Homer's Troy. 181 00:14:15,119 --> 00:14:18,680 That April, he entered Homer's swift-flowing Hellespont. 182 00:14:18,957 --> 00:14:19,616 From now on, 183 00:14:19,791 --> 00:14:21,622 Homer would be his guide book. 184 00:14:21,993 --> 00:14:25,759 Following in his footsteps, it was easy to feel his excitement. 185 00:14:41,980 --> 00:14:42,969 "Now," he wrote, 186 00:14:43,147 --> 00:14:48,278 "I hope finally to resolve the great riddle as to where Troy was." 187 00:14:50,855 --> 00:14:54,018 The age of archaeology was about to begin. 188 00:15:11,109 --> 00:15:12,633 Canakkale in Asia. 189 00:15:12,844 --> 00:15:13,708 Since medieval times, 190 00:15:13,878 --> 00:15:16,938 western travellers had come through here looking for Troy. 191 00:15:17,148 --> 00:15:18,513 French, Venetian, English 192 00:15:18,683 --> 00:15:21,345 had walked these streets, Homer in hand, 193 00:15:21,519 --> 00:15:23,749 under the gaze of amused locals, 194 00:15:23,922 --> 00:15:26,516 buying provisions, hiring transport, 195 00:15:26,691 --> 00:15:29,990 before heading south in search of Troy. 196 00:15:52,150 --> 00:15:57,110 The exact site of the lost city had long been the subject of controversy. 197 00:15:57,422 --> 00:16:00,414 Its general location had never been in any doubt - 198 00:16:00,658 --> 00:16:04,617 somewhere above the flat green plain at the mouth of the Dardanelles. 199 00:16:06,064 --> 00:16:08,498 In the ancient world it was believed that Troy 200 00:16:08,666 --> 00:16:11,635 lay under a little Roman town, New llium, 201 00:16:11,869 --> 00:16:13,598 which stood at the end of a long ridge, 202 00:16:13,771 --> 00:16:16,433 pointing down the plain towards the sea. 203 00:16:16,941 --> 00:16:20,035 In modern times, this idea fell out of favour. 204 00:16:20,244 --> 00:16:22,235 But at a hill called Hisarlik, 205 00:16:22,413 --> 00:16:24,881 Frank Calvert had found deep remains 206 00:16:25,049 --> 00:16:26,983 below the Roman foundations. 207 00:16:27,552 --> 00:16:30,487 This was where he persuaded Schliemann to look for Troy. 208 00:16:30,955 --> 00:16:34,652 And in 1870, this was where Schliemann came. 209 00:17:45,863 --> 00:17:50,129 In this place, the ancients believed, Troy had stood. 210 00:17:53,071 --> 00:17:56,734 Here, one said, no stone is without a name. 211 00:17:57,075 --> 00:18:01,671 "I confess," wrote Schliemann, "that I could hardly control my emotions. 212 00:18:01,913 --> 00:18:05,440 "Lts image had haunted my childhood dreams. 213 00:18:15,827 --> 00:18:20,196 "But did Helen stand on these walls and watch the heroes die for her? 214 00:18:20,932 --> 00:18:22,229 "Did Achilles drag dead 215 00:18:22,400 --> 00:18:24,197 Hector here in the dust, 216 00:18:25,069 --> 00:18:29,438 "the wooden horse bring down on the city a whirlwind of doom? 217 00:18:32,376 --> 00:18:34,674 "I was convinced this was the place," 218 00:18:34,846 --> 00:18:36,177 wrote Schliemann. 219 00:18:36,881 --> 00:18:38,542 "'Lliad' in hand I sat 220 00:18:38,716 --> 00:18:42,379 and imagined the armies marching on the plain. 221 00:18:42,620 --> 00:18:46,886 "The fleet, the camp, the fortress of Troy on Hisarlik. 222 00:18:47,325 --> 00:18:51,352 "For two hours the events of the 'lliad' passed before my eyes 223 00:18:51,529 --> 00:18:55,124 "until hunger and darkness forced me to leave." 224 00:19:01,539 --> 00:19:04,531 But did Troy ever exist in reality 225 00:19:05,009 --> 00:19:06,977 and did it stand here? 226 00:19:18,523 --> 00:19:23,790 Schliemann first put spade into Hisarlik in April 1870. 227 00:19:25,696 --> 00:19:27,755 The hill was about 700 feet square, 228 00:19:27,932 --> 00:19:30,162 130 feet above the plain. 229 00:19:31,002 --> 00:19:34,836 Calvert had told him that the hill was composed of debris, 230 00:19:35,006 --> 00:19:37,702 in layer upon layer up to 50 feet deep. 231 00:19:38,009 --> 00:19:41,501 So, assuming Homer's Troy must be deep down near the bedrock, 232 00:19:41,712 --> 00:19:45,148 Schliemann decided on a simple but brutal method of finding it. 233 00:19:48,186 --> 00:19:51,087 From the beginning, Calvert counselled Schliemann 234 00:19:51,255 --> 00:19:54,884 to go carefully and dig a network of small trenches. 235 00:19:55,059 --> 00:19:59,655 But convinced that Homer's Troy must lie deep inside the hill, 236 00:19:59,864 --> 00:20:03,163 Schliemann attacked it with over 100 workmen, 237 00:20:03,501 --> 00:20:09,804 armed with pickaxes, wheelbarrows, windlasses, chains and battering rams, 238 00:20:09,974 --> 00:20:13,705 to drive a terrific hole into Hisarlik. 239 00:20:14,378 --> 00:20:16,710 This is Schliemann's great trench today, 240 00:20:17,081 --> 00:20:18,275 like a bomb site. 241 00:20:18,516 --> 00:20:21,679 You can still walk right into the heart of the mound 242 00:20:21,852 --> 00:20:25,083 without encountering any architectural detail. 243 00:20:25,623 --> 00:20:27,682 Architectural detail there was, though. 244 00:20:27,959 --> 00:20:33,625 He describes a prehistoric building 20 feet deep with 10-feet-high walls 245 00:20:33,798 --> 00:20:36,198 made of squared blocks of limestone, 246 00:20:36,367 --> 00:20:37,459 beautifully smoothed. 247 00:20:38,069 --> 00:20:39,866 All of which he destroyed. 248 00:20:40,371 --> 00:20:45,138 But searching for a Troy that looked like Homer's Troy, 249 00:20:45,443 --> 00:20:48,708 Schliemann pressed on deeper into Hisarlik. 250 00:20:55,720 --> 00:21:00,783 In the course of three seasons, Schliemann identified four main cities 251 00:21:00,958 --> 00:21:04,052 superimposed one upon the other below the Roman. 252 00:21:10,968 --> 00:21:14,233 But Homer's city did not appear to be among them. 253 00:21:14,872 --> 00:21:17,363 What pottery he found was primitive. 254 00:21:17,541 --> 00:21:19,031 Strange two-handled cups 255 00:21:19,210 --> 00:21:22,236 were the nearest to anything Homer mentioned. 256 00:21:22,780 --> 00:21:25,874 But these were gritty clay, not silver or gold. 257 00:21:31,088 --> 00:21:34,455 The deeper he dug, the more his worst fears grew. 258 00:21:34,859 --> 00:21:37,123 "Perhaps Troy is not here after all" 259 00:21:37,295 --> 00:21:39,126 he confided to his diary. 260 00:21:41,732 --> 00:21:43,791 Then, deep in the mound... 261 00:21:46,737 --> 00:21:48,637 30 feet below the Roman city, 262 00:21:48,873 --> 00:21:51,933 he came across the ruins of a prehistoric citadel. 263 00:21:57,415 --> 00:21:58,848 It had a paved ramp 264 00:21:59,016 --> 00:22:02,816 leading up to a gate set in a massive fortification wall. 265 00:22:03,087 --> 00:22:03,951 "Perhaps," he thought, 266 00:22:04,121 --> 00:22:06,180 "this was Homer's Scaean Gate, 267 00:22:06,457 --> 00:22:07,924 "through which Hector had spurred 268 00:22:08,092 --> 00:22:10,583 his chariot down from priam's palace." 269 00:22:14,899 --> 00:22:17,732 The place was tiny, only 100 yards across, 270 00:22:17,935 --> 00:22:21,063 but it lay covered in a mass of charred debris. 271 00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:24,908 It had been destroyed by war. 272 00:22:28,346 --> 00:22:32,009 If the city had existed, then this must be it. 273 00:22:32,483 --> 00:22:33,973 Schliemann announced to the world 274 00:22:34,151 --> 00:22:36,847 that he had found Homer's Troy. 275 00:22:38,956 --> 00:22:40,287 "Troy's not large," he said, 276 00:22:40,458 --> 00:22:43,052 "but Homer is a poet, not a historian. 277 00:22:43,227 --> 00:22:44,524 "He had never seen it, 278 00:22:44,695 --> 00:22:47,892 but Hisarlik is the site of the citadel of priam. 279 00:22:48,065 --> 00:22:51,296 "I have opened up a new world for archaeology." 280 00:22:59,643 --> 00:23:00,701 Publicly applauded, 281 00:23:00,945 --> 00:23:02,845 Schliemann was privately unhappy. 282 00:23:03,547 --> 00:23:05,242 "After long searching," he wrote, 283 00:23:05,416 --> 00:23:09,546 "I admit I have not succeeded in making the debris 284 00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:12,484 "agree with historical chronology." 285 00:23:14,258 --> 00:23:16,749 Now, with hindsight, we can see why. 286 00:23:16,994 --> 00:23:18,655 With the aid of a computer, 287 00:23:18,829 --> 00:23:21,024 let's put ourselves in Schliemann's shoes. 288 00:23:21,198 --> 00:23:24,429 There was a logic to the way he had tackled the hill. 289 00:23:25,736 --> 00:23:29,001 He'd read the classical sources very carefully. 290 00:23:29,640 --> 00:23:31,073 The tradition as we seen 291 00:23:31,242 --> 00:23:34,040 was that the Roman city of llium, the Greek llion, 292 00:23:34,211 --> 00:23:37,977 whose location had never been doubted, stood on the site of Troy. 293 00:23:38,149 --> 00:23:42,210 Schliemann could expect near the top to find a Roman city. 294 00:23:42,386 --> 00:23:43,375 That's exactly what he had. 295 00:23:43,554 --> 00:23:46,785 There, in yellow, is the city wall of llium 296 00:23:46,957 --> 00:23:51,587 and the temple precinct visited by Julius Caesar and Constantine. 297 00:23:51,896 --> 00:23:54,330 Below that he thought there'd be a Greek city, 298 00:23:54,498 --> 00:23:57,023 the one visited by Alexander the Great. 299 00:23:57,201 --> 00:24:03,003 Again he had it. He demolished its northern circuit as he went through. 300 00:24:03,274 --> 00:24:07,768 Below that, he expected to find a Lydian city, from Homer's own lifetime. 301 00:24:07,945 --> 00:24:09,913 There were two main phases to this. 302 00:24:10,181 --> 00:24:14,311 He had little idea of what this was really about. 303 00:24:14,485 --> 00:24:16,817 Again he demolished its northern circuit. 304 00:24:17,021 --> 00:24:20,752 But if the logic of the sequences in the ancient sources was right, 305 00:24:20,925 --> 00:24:24,326 then below these ought to be Homer's Troy. 306 00:24:24,628 --> 00:24:31,727 Sure enough, he came upon the greatest of the prehistoric settlements, Troy II. 307 00:24:31,969 --> 00:24:32,936 Tiny as it was, 308 00:24:33,137 --> 00:24:35,605 that was the one he thought was Homer's. 309 00:24:35,773 --> 00:24:40,005 It's wrong to think he was engaging in fantasy. 310 00:24:40,177 --> 00:24:43,078 He had worked it out as far as his evidence permitted - 311 00:24:43,247 --> 00:24:48,082 that is, without pottery to make the dating secure. 312 00:24:48,419 --> 00:24:51,286 But when you consider what we now know about this site, 313 00:24:51,455 --> 00:24:54,219 its incredible maze of ruins, 314 00:24:54,492 --> 00:24:58,428 over 50 layers making up nine major settlements 315 00:24:58,596 --> 00:25:01,622 going back 5,000 years of human habitation, 316 00:25:01,832 --> 00:25:05,063 it helps us to understand why poor old Schliemann found 317 00:25:05,236 --> 00:25:09,070 such difficulty in untangling the mysteries of Hisarlik. 318 00:25:20,985 --> 00:25:23,317 By 1873, Schliemann had removed 319 00:25:23,487 --> 00:25:26,422 tonnes of debris from the hill of Hisarlik 320 00:25:26,590 --> 00:25:30,117 and was deeply disappointed by his unimpressive finds. 321 00:25:30,427 --> 00:25:31,394 Critics said 322 00:25:31,562 --> 00:25:36,158 priam's palace would be more believable as priam's pigsty. 323 00:25:36,634 --> 00:25:40,627 In the cold light of day, it did not fit Homer's story. 324 00:25:45,342 --> 00:25:49,676 Schliemann was worried about his health in "this pestilential plain". 325 00:25:49,847 --> 00:25:55,046 He suffered bouts of malaria and depression with premonitions of death. 326 00:25:55,553 --> 00:26:00,081 "The difficulties of excavating in this wilderness are immense," he wrote, 327 00:26:00,291 --> 00:26:01,656 "and increase day by day. 328 00:26:01,825 --> 00:26:05,261 "My dear wife is present from morning till night." 329 00:26:07,765 --> 00:26:12,202 He decided to call the whole thing off in mid-June 1873. 330 00:26:13,070 --> 00:26:16,801 And then, on May 31st, came a twist of fate 331 00:26:16,974 --> 00:26:20,034 which Schliemann seemed to conjure out of nothing. 332 00:26:20,411 --> 00:26:26,008 It appeared to Schliemann's suggestible mind a gift from the gods. 333 00:26:45,736 --> 00:26:49,729 Schliemann claimed he and Sophie had found a stone-lined chamber 334 00:26:49,907 --> 00:26:51,738 in the debris of the burned city. 335 00:26:52,276 --> 00:26:56,542 There, in a copper cauldron were gold, silver and bronze vessels, 336 00:26:56,714 --> 00:26:58,045 bronze lance heads, 337 00:26:58,215 --> 00:27:01,651 several thousand gold rings and earrings, 338 00:27:01,885 --> 00:27:05,981 bracelets and necklaces, and two splendid diadems, 339 00:27:06,156 --> 00:27:10,217 one of which comprised 16,000 pieces of gold. 340 00:27:14,865 --> 00:27:18,801 It was with this last that he later bedecked his wife, Sophie. 341 00:27:19,103 --> 00:27:21,970 Could they not be the jewels of Helen herself? 342 00:27:22,906 --> 00:27:24,100 For the romantic Schliemann, 343 00:27:24,274 --> 00:27:27,471 past and present had momentarily merged. 344 00:27:31,081 --> 00:27:35,142 The past, Homer's past, had come to life. 345 00:28:04,848 --> 00:28:10,150 Had the jewels really framed "the face that launched a thousand ships"? 346 00:28:10,354 --> 00:28:14,120 Were the ashes heaped around them really the debris of the Trojan War? 347 00:28:15,192 --> 00:28:19,595 No. They were not only too early, they were 1,000 years too early. 348 00:28:19,763 --> 00:28:23,824 Schliemann had dug far too deep, as observers told him at the time. 349 00:28:24,001 --> 00:28:28,700 Frank Calvert brilliantly observed that he had a gap in his finds 350 00:28:28,872 --> 00:28:32,968 covering the very period he wanted, the period of the Trojan War. 351 00:28:33,310 --> 00:28:36,211 Schliemann called his critics libellers and liars 352 00:28:36,380 --> 00:28:39,474 but he was perplexed. 353 00:28:39,783 --> 00:28:43,480 The following year, when he published his finds, 354 00:28:43,954 --> 00:28:48,948 he included an enormous atlas of photographs, plans and maps. 355 00:28:49,126 --> 00:28:50,457 This copy came to the 356 00:28:50,627 --> 00:28:52,652 John Rylands Library in Manchester. 357 00:28:53,130 --> 00:28:54,597 In it, he asks 358 00:28:54,865 --> 00:29:00,201 "That my colleagues may explain to me all the things that I found obscure 359 00:29:00,370 --> 00:29:01,928 "because everything there 360 00:29:02,106 --> 00:29:05,542 "appeared to me strange and mysterious." 361 00:29:09,146 --> 00:29:12,274 But there is another question to ask of priam's treasure. 362 00:29:12,449 --> 00:29:14,076 Was it even genuine? 363 00:29:14,485 --> 00:29:18,478 It is now widely believed that Schliemann faked it. 364 00:29:19,056 --> 00:29:22,890 Unfortunately, the treasure itself is no longer available as evidence. 365 00:29:25,562 --> 00:29:29,862 Early in 1945, as Berlin burned, it vanished. 366 00:29:31,335 --> 00:29:32,996 It has never been seen since, 367 00:29:33,237 --> 00:29:37,264 though it is rumoured to survive in a private collection in the West. 368 00:29:38,842 --> 00:29:42,744 But was it genuine? And was it found at Troy? 369 00:29:44,748 --> 00:29:46,807 Schliemann's accounts contradict each other, 370 00:29:46,984 --> 00:29:50,818 and it's now known that Sophie was not present as he alleged. 371 00:29:54,057 --> 00:29:59,017 But at Cambridge, Donald Easton, who's examined Schliemann's dig notebooks, 372 00:29:59,196 --> 00:30:03,826 believes he has solved the mystery of Schliemann's discovery. 373 00:30:04,535 --> 00:30:08,062 He was a fantasy merchant in some ways. 374 00:30:08,372 --> 00:30:13,969 That comes out in other aspects of his life, in his records of his travels, for instance. 375 00:30:14,144 --> 00:30:16,305 That's been quite well documented. 376 00:30:17,781 --> 00:30:23,276 You've got to expect always to find some discrepancies and inconsistencies 377 00:30:23,453 --> 00:30:25,819 in the notebook of any archaeologist. 378 00:30:26,089 --> 00:30:29,684 You shouldn't lean too heavily on such things. 379 00:30:30,427 --> 00:30:32,554 As regards priam's treasure, 380 00:30:33,397 --> 00:30:35,456 despite all the hoo-ha there's been recently, 381 00:30:35,632 --> 00:30:40,695 it's almost certain that it was found as a single hoard, 382 00:30:41,672 --> 00:30:45,199 although it's perfectly true that Sophie wasn't there at the time. 383 00:30:45,742 --> 00:30:48,336 It wasn't an abandoned treasure chest. 384 00:30:48,512 --> 00:30:52,107 It seems now that it was dug down into the deposits of Troy II 385 00:30:52,282 --> 00:30:54,944 from a later period as a tomb. 386 00:30:55,452 --> 00:30:57,215 These were grave goods 387 00:30:57,387 --> 00:31:00,788 that somebody deposited in Troy III or IV. 388 00:31:00,991 --> 00:31:03,983 So you defend him against his detractors? 389 00:31:04,294 --> 00:31:06,194 On this particular point, yes. 390 00:31:06,630 --> 00:31:12,091 It's clear that he didn't have the time to look at the treasure in any great detail 391 00:31:12,569 --> 00:31:16,096 and therefore if there are a few discrepancies or things omitted 392 00:31:16,273 --> 00:31:19,834 or wrongly described in that very brief and garbled account, 393 00:31:20,010 --> 00:31:22,001 it's not at all surprising. 394 00:31:22,646 --> 00:31:28,778 But some of his interpretations on the grand scale were absolutely right 395 00:31:28,986 --> 00:31:34,515 because, for instance, what he identified as prehistoric material, 396 00:31:34,691 --> 00:31:37,455 and which nobody else had come across, 397 00:31:37,861 --> 00:31:40,694 IS prehistoric material. He was right. 398 00:31:41,164 --> 00:31:43,928 What he identified as Mycenaean material 399 00:31:44,101 --> 00:31:45,898 IS Mycenaean material. 400 00:31:46,069 --> 00:31:51,473 So on these very broad questions of interpretation he could be dead right. 401 00:31:51,642 --> 00:31:54,736 He stuck to his guns in the teeth of opposition. 402 00:31:54,978 --> 00:31:58,778 And he did have the one great scoop - 403 00:31:58,949 --> 00:32:04,410 he actually found a late Bronze Age citadel in the right place, 404 00:32:04,588 --> 00:32:07,580 that is to say, underneath classical llium. 405 00:32:08,358 --> 00:32:12,488 And the reason he found that was that he had the guts, 406 00:32:12,696 --> 00:32:17,565 he had the drive and he had the money to get out there and dig. 407 00:32:19,703 --> 00:32:24,436 After the sensation of the jewels of Helen, where would Schliemann dig now? 408 00:32:25,742 --> 00:32:28,267 With Homer as his guide, the answer was obvious. 409 00:32:28,578 --> 00:32:30,136 If all Homer was true, 410 00:32:30,347 --> 00:32:33,111 then Agamemnon and the Greek heroes who had sacked Troy 411 00:32:33,283 --> 00:32:35,274 must also be real people. 412 00:32:36,053 --> 00:32:38,647 Across the Aegean in Greece lay the fortress 413 00:32:38,822 --> 00:32:41,620 where legend said Agamemnon was buried - 414 00:32:41,792 --> 00:32:43,521 Golden Mycenae. 415 00:32:44,394 --> 00:32:47,261 And to Mycenae Schliemann turned next. 416 00:32:59,343 --> 00:33:02,744 Unlike Troy, the site of Mycenae had never been forgotten. 417 00:33:02,913 --> 00:33:07,941 Its ruins still stood above ground and had been described by many earlier visitors. 418 00:33:23,100 --> 00:33:24,533 Here was a mysterious gate 419 00:33:24,701 --> 00:33:27,261 still adorned with headless stone lions, 420 00:33:27,437 --> 00:33:31,168 perhaps, it was thought, the badge of Agamemnon's family. 421 00:33:32,342 --> 00:33:34,776 Nearby were gigantic tombs, 422 00:33:34,978 --> 00:33:37,947 their vaulted roofs the most tremendous monuments 423 00:33:38,115 --> 00:33:39,742 of the European Bronze Age. 424 00:33:41,018 --> 00:33:43,111 Since the ancient travel writer pausanias, 425 00:33:43,286 --> 00:33:48,622 these extraordinary remains had intrigued all the searchers who had come here 426 00:33:48,792 --> 00:33:51,317 looking for truth behind Homer's tale. 427 00:34:34,037 --> 00:34:37,529 "I arrived here on 7th of August, 1876," 428 00:34:37,707 --> 00:34:38,674 wrote Schliemann, 429 00:34:38,942 --> 00:34:41,911 "by the same road as pausanias describes. 430 00:34:42,179 --> 00:34:45,774 "The situation of Mycenae", he adds with typical enthusiasm, 431 00:34:45,949 --> 00:34:48,042 "is beautifully described by Homer, 432 00:34:48,218 --> 00:34:51,881 "deep in the depths of horse-feeding Argos." 433 00:35:00,697 --> 00:35:03,894 Like many travellers who had visited Greece since independence, 434 00:35:04,067 --> 00:35:09,095 Schliemann approached Mycenae as a pilgrim, in a mood of veneration. 435 00:35:26,289 --> 00:35:28,553 The night before he first set eyes on it, 436 00:35:28,792 --> 00:35:30,817 he slept on a wooden bench in a wretched inn, 437 00:35:30,994 --> 00:35:34,020 pestered by mosquitoes, but oblivious to the discomfort 438 00:35:34,197 --> 00:35:40,102 as he contemplated the gigantic figures of the Greek heroes in this memorable place. 439 00:35:41,071 --> 00:35:46,839 Heroes who murdering and murdered were sacrificed to their inexorable fate. 440 00:35:49,813 --> 00:35:52,577 Now Schliemann would surpass his fellow romantics. 441 00:35:52,883 --> 00:35:55,044 At Mycenae he would literally bring 442 00:35:55,218 --> 00:35:57,914 "the age of heroes" back to life. 443 00:36:10,567 --> 00:36:12,398 Schliemann's theory was simple. 444 00:36:12,869 --> 00:36:16,896 Pausanias said that Agamemnon and his murdered companions 445 00:36:17,073 --> 00:36:18,870 were buried within the walls. 446 00:36:19,743 --> 00:36:23,201 It was assumed he meant the outer walls of the lower city. 447 00:36:23,513 --> 00:36:27,449 But Schliemann thought they'd been buried inside the citadel itself. 448 00:36:28,084 --> 00:36:29,949 The scholars laughed. 449 00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:32,213 But in the autumn of 1876, 450 00:36:32,389 --> 00:36:36,917 he started a great trench just inside the Lion Gate across a terraced area 451 00:36:37,093 --> 00:36:39,857 which looked as if it had been levelled long ago. 452 00:36:46,336 --> 00:36:49,965 Immediately he came across a circle of standing stones. 453 00:36:50,240 --> 00:36:53,869 Inside it were what looked like the remains of tombstones, 454 00:36:54,044 --> 00:36:56,410 carved with chariots and fighting men. 455 00:36:58,815 --> 00:36:59,907 He dug deeper and found 456 00:37:00,083 --> 00:37:03,484 the tops of five shafts sunk into the bedrock. 457 00:37:13,830 --> 00:37:18,494 At the bottom were some of the greatest finds ever made in archaeology. 458 00:37:19,636 --> 00:37:24,300 In those shafts were the remains of bronze-clad royalty from the heroic age. 459 00:37:24,874 --> 00:37:26,967 Men, women and children. 460 00:37:29,412 --> 00:37:31,676 They were literally covered in gold. 461 00:37:44,361 --> 00:37:48,229 Here too were the first signs seen by modern man of a heroic world 462 00:37:48,398 --> 00:37:51,162 which might be reflected in Homer's "lliad". 463 00:37:59,776 --> 00:38:03,109 Studded swords like the one Hector gave to Ajax. 464 00:38:05,548 --> 00:38:11,111 A dagger blade inlaid with a scene showing tower shields like those described by Homer. 465 00:38:13,957 --> 00:38:17,916 There were wonderfully worked gold ornaments covering the head and chest, 466 00:38:18,395 --> 00:38:22,388 extraordinary finger rings exquisitely engraved. 467 00:38:28,071 --> 00:38:33,236 Schliemann had no doubt that he had discovered here in the shaft graves 468 00:38:33,410 --> 00:38:36,868 the world of Homer, the world of the "lliad". 469 00:38:37,647 --> 00:38:38,443 Everything fitted. 470 00:38:38,615 --> 00:38:40,810 Pausanias said there were five graves 471 00:38:41,017 --> 00:38:42,985 and Schliemann had found five. 472 00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:47,188 The legend even required Cassandra's two babies to be buried with her 473 00:38:47,390 --> 00:38:50,757 and Schliemann had found two infants leafed in gold. 474 00:38:51,461 --> 00:38:53,122 But here in the fifth grave, 475 00:38:53,396 --> 00:38:55,557 as with the jewels of Helen of Troy, 476 00:38:55,799 --> 00:38:59,030 Schliemann found what he had above all wished to find. 477 00:38:59,536 --> 00:39:03,495 There were three male bodies down there with gilt war gear, 478 00:39:03,873 --> 00:39:05,773 gold adornments on their breasts 479 00:39:05,942 --> 00:39:07,170 and gold masks. 480 00:39:07,344 --> 00:39:09,369 When the mask was lifted off the first one, 481 00:39:09,546 --> 00:39:11,514 the skull crumbled into dust. 482 00:39:12,082 --> 00:39:13,982 The same happened with the second one. 483 00:39:14,250 --> 00:39:17,742 But with the third one, when the mask was lifted, 484 00:39:17,987 --> 00:39:20,353 as Schliemann himself tells the story, 485 00:39:20,690 --> 00:39:25,093 "The round face, with all its flesh, was wonderfully preserved 486 00:39:25,261 --> 00:39:27,729 "underneath the ponderous golden mask. 487 00:39:28,131 --> 00:39:31,897 "There was no hair but the eyes were perfectly visible 488 00:39:32,135 --> 00:39:35,627 "and the mouth was wide open owing to the weight upon it, 489 00:39:35,872 --> 00:39:38,670 "revealing 32 beautiful teeth 490 00:39:38,908 --> 00:39:41,809 "which led the physicians who examined the body 491 00:39:42,045 --> 00:39:46,379 "to believe that the man had died at the early age of 35." 492 00:39:47,984 --> 00:39:53,251 Schliemann, so the story has it, picked up the mask and kissed it. 493 00:39:53,490 --> 00:39:56,391 That evening he sent the king of Greece a telegram. 494 00:39:56,793 --> 00:40:00,229 "I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon!" 495 00:40:39,469 --> 00:40:43,064 Professor George Mylonas, the modern excavator of Mycenae, 496 00:40:43,306 --> 00:40:46,969 shares his predecessor's faith in the Homeric tradition. 497 00:40:47,243 --> 00:40:51,577 There's no doubt that the finds do exist, that the things were there, 498 00:40:51,748 --> 00:40:53,443 that he found those graves. 499 00:40:53,616 --> 00:40:59,555 Everything else he does all comes out of his faith, his unique faith, 500 00:40:59,722 --> 00:41:04,352 in the historicity of Homer and of the ancient authorities. 501 00:41:04,527 --> 00:41:06,688 Do you believe in the Trojan War? 502 00:41:06,863 --> 00:41:09,024 There's no doubt in my mind. 503 00:41:09,232 --> 00:41:11,097 I have lived in these hills 504 00:41:11,267 --> 00:41:16,000 and looked at those stones for almost a quarter of a century. 505 00:41:16,606 --> 00:41:19,803 They say that it might be sort of a myth, 506 00:41:20,043 --> 00:41:24,002 that all the long years of siege is something impossible. 507 00:41:24,214 --> 00:41:27,479 I want you to look at those walls from outside. 508 00:41:27,650 --> 00:41:32,212 These stone walls average a thickness of 14 feet. 509 00:41:32,388 --> 00:41:36,415 Imagine an army that's not equipped with guns 510 00:41:36,626 --> 00:41:42,121 but is equipped only with swords made of bronze or bows and arrows. 511 00:41:42,298 --> 00:41:46,291 How could they hope to carry a place like that? 512 00:41:46,469 --> 00:41:50,371 The only way to take this place was by a long siege 513 00:41:50,540 --> 00:41:52,974 that would deprive water and supplies. 514 00:41:53,209 --> 00:41:55,404 That's what happened in Troy. 515 00:41:55,578 --> 00:41:57,273 Troy was a fortified citadel. 516 00:41:57,447 --> 00:42:00,348 Not perhaps as strong walled, but still walled. 517 00:42:00,917 --> 00:42:03,784 You could only capture it by siege. 518 00:42:03,953 --> 00:42:08,117 Do you believe a king called Agamemnon took a force from here? 519 00:42:08,291 --> 00:42:12,455 Absolutely. Agamemnon is my long-lost relative! 520 00:42:14,264 --> 00:42:18,564 I believe... Sometimes I come by myself during the night 521 00:42:18,735 --> 00:42:22,227 and converse with him, as a matter of fact! 522 00:42:22,405 --> 00:42:27,342 It's a marvellous feeling to have this feeling again 523 00:42:27,610 --> 00:42:33,674 of certainty that those things that you are around had life once upon a time. 524 00:43:10,253 --> 00:43:13,051 Was the man behind the mask really Agamemnon? 525 00:43:13,222 --> 00:43:16,749 Again, alas, no. 526 00:43:17,660 --> 00:43:19,525 We can't even be sure he was Greek. 527 00:43:19,829 --> 00:43:22,525 The graves didn't date from the same time. 528 00:43:22,699 --> 00:43:25,224 They'd been added to over a century. 529 00:43:25,668 --> 00:43:27,067 There weren't even five. 530 00:43:27,236 --> 00:43:28,931 A sixth turned up almost as soon as 531 00:43:29,105 --> 00:43:30,538 Schliemann stopped digging. 532 00:43:30,940 --> 00:43:35,104 And the date was obvious to those experts studying the pottery - 533 00:43:35,278 --> 00:43:38,805 it was two or three hundred years before the Trojan War, 534 00:43:38,982 --> 00:43:40,950 let's say about 1500 BC. 535 00:43:41,117 --> 00:43:45,349 For Schliemann the most disturbing fact was that in all these finds 536 00:43:45,521 --> 00:43:48,115 there was nothing to connect with Troy. 537 00:43:48,424 --> 00:43:50,324 That was what drove him back to Troy 538 00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:54,462 in 1878, in 1879, in '81 and '82. 539 00:43:54,631 --> 00:43:56,929 Full of doubts, trekking round the Troad, 540 00:43:57,100 --> 00:44:01,002 even looking for a possible other site for Troy, 541 00:44:01,270 --> 00:44:02,237 but to no avail. 542 00:44:02,405 --> 00:44:06,000 In fact, his next triumph was back on the mainland, 543 00:44:06,209 --> 00:44:12,273 in the company of a man who revolutionised Schliemann's ideas about archaeology, 544 00:44:12,482 --> 00:44:17,545 a man who gave him what he'd lacked before - an architect's eye. 545 00:44:18,021 --> 00:44:20,751 His name was Wilhelm Dorpfeld. 546 00:44:21,391 --> 00:44:24,690 Dorpfeld will turn out to be a key figure in our search. 547 00:44:25,028 --> 00:44:26,461 A 30-year-old architect, 548 00:44:26,629 --> 00:44:29,530 he complemented Schliemann's eye for objects 549 00:44:29,766 --> 00:44:33,258 with an uncanny ability to untangle building structures. 550 00:44:33,870 --> 00:44:34,996 In 1884, 551 00:44:35,171 --> 00:44:39,164 the two set out for a site famous in Homer's tale of Troy - 552 00:44:39,375 --> 00:44:41,070 "Tiryns of the great walls", 553 00:44:41,244 --> 00:44:43,337 the fortress of Hercules. 554 00:44:58,728 --> 00:45:01,788 Tiryns rises like a ship from the plain of Argos, 555 00:45:01,964 --> 00:45:05,491 nine miles south of Mycenae and a mile from the sea. 556 00:45:13,776 --> 00:45:16,142 From here, says the "lliad", King Diomedes 557 00:45:16,312 --> 00:45:19,042 led 80 black ships to Troy. 558 00:45:36,833 --> 00:45:40,633 At Tiryns, Schliemann at last touched on the palace civilisation 559 00:45:40,803 --> 00:45:43,897 which had existed in around 1300 BC, 560 00:45:45,208 --> 00:45:47,836 the date he and Dorpfeld established from numerous finds 561 00:45:48,010 --> 00:45:52,709 of what was now known to be Bronze Age Mycenaean pottery. 562 00:45:58,554 --> 00:45:59,543 They were found in the ruins of 563 00:45:59,722 --> 00:46:02,384 a prehistoric palace on top of Tiryns 564 00:46:02,859 --> 00:46:06,295 with fragments of wall paintings from the heroic age. 565 00:46:06,496 --> 00:46:10,694 For the first time, the modern world looked on the faces of people 566 00:46:10,867 --> 00:46:13,768 who had lived at the time of the Trojan War. 567 00:46:50,373 --> 00:46:52,637 "The age of the heroes" had come alive. 568 00:46:52,875 --> 00:46:55,105 With his digs at Mycenae and Tiryns, 569 00:46:55,278 --> 00:46:58,213 Schliemann had proved that, however distantly, 570 00:46:58,414 --> 00:47:02,578 the world of Homer reflected a world that had actually existed. 571 00:47:02,752 --> 00:47:05,550 And that places Homer says were important were indeed, 572 00:47:05,721 --> 00:47:08,713 no matter how insignificant they'd been later. 573 00:47:08,958 --> 00:47:12,621 Schliemann followed up this hunch, still using Homer. 574 00:47:12,862 --> 00:47:16,354 He looked in vain for the palace of King Nestor at pylos, 575 00:47:16,532 --> 00:47:19,365 for the palace of Helen herself at Sparta. 576 00:47:19,635 --> 00:47:24,265 He hoped to find clues to the origin of his Mycenaean civilisation. 577 00:47:24,574 --> 00:47:26,064 There he looked to Crete 578 00:47:26,242 --> 00:47:29,143 and to a site already exposed at Knossos 579 00:47:29,345 --> 00:47:31,404 where he hoped writing might be found. 580 00:47:31,581 --> 00:47:34,709 But he was unable to buy the site. 581 00:47:34,917 --> 00:47:38,045 But the central riddle of his career remained. 582 00:47:38,221 --> 00:47:39,916 Where was the Trojan War? 583 00:47:40,089 --> 00:47:41,784 The more he found on the mainland, 584 00:47:41,958 --> 00:47:45,689 the less his tiny Troy II seemed to fit. 585 00:47:45,862 --> 00:47:47,887 There was no resemblance of material culture 586 00:47:48,064 --> 00:47:52,899 and no trace of the pottery he now knew to be Mycenaean. 587 00:47:53,102 --> 00:47:58,233 So the quest that had been engendered in the mind of the seven-year-old child, 588 00:47:58,407 --> 00:48:03,538 as he says it, still confronted the 67-year-old man. 589 00:48:10,519 --> 00:48:13,511 In 1890, Schliemann headed back to Hisarlik 590 00:48:13,689 --> 00:48:15,850 for the 12th time in 20 years, 591 00:48:16,092 --> 00:48:18,390 the riddle still gnawing at him. 592 00:48:22,131 --> 00:48:24,224 As he went over his excavation notes, 593 00:48:24,634 --> 00:48:26,465 something didn't fit. 594 00:48:28,104 --> 00:48:30,072 And now he took a different tack. 595 00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:33,800 He chose to dig outside the area he had ransacked, 596 00:48:34,010 --> 00:48:38,413 outside what he had said for so long was Homer's Troy. 597 00:48:39,582 --> 00:48:40,879 Why? 598 00:48:48,190 --> 00:48:53,287 Had he perhaps racked his brains back to those early destructive days 599 00:48:53,462 --> 00:48:57,421 when he had demolished limestone walls along the north of Hisarlik? 600 00:48:58,467 --> 00:49:03,427 Whatever the reason, to the end the old man remained a searcher. 601 00:49:06,208 --> 00:49:08,802 "I wish I could prove Homer to have been 602 00:49:08,978 --> 00:49:12,141 "an eye-witness of the Trojan War," he wrote. 603 00:49:12,581 --> 00:49:14,048 "But I cannot. 604 00:49:14,684 --> 00:49:18,711 But had Troy been merely this small fortified place, 605 00:49:19,021 --> 00:49:21,683 "a few hundred men would have sufficed to take it 606 00:49:21,924 --> 00:49:25,724 "and Homer's story would be exposed as a total fiction." 607 00:49:27,964 --> 00:49:31,127 Was that the truth of his long and costly obsession? 608 00:49:31,701 --> 00:49:35,933 Had the city only ever existed in the poet's imagination? 609 00:49:37,106 --> 00:49:43,067 Then Schliemann made perhaps the most important discovery he ever made at Troy. 610 00:49:43,279 --> 00:49:45,975 It wasn't gold or treasure, 611 00:49:46,148 --> 00:49:49,549 but it gave him the connection he'd searched for for so long, 612 00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:53,246 the connection between the world here at Troy 613 00:49:53,489 --> 00:49:56,890 and the world he'd discovered in Greece at Mycenae. 614 00:49:57,393 --> 00:50:00,385 And he found it not within the city 615 00:50:00,663 --> 00:50:05,293 but 25 yards outside the walls of what he thought was Homer's Troy. 616 00:50:11,273 --> 00:50:12,467 Here, Schliemann and Dorpfeld 617 00:50:12,641 --> 00:50:15,906 uncovered at an unexpectedly high level - 618 00:50:16,178 --> 00:50:19,272 because for Schliemann everything had to be deep - 619 00:50:19,749 --> 00:50:21,273 a house, a grand house, 620 00:50:21,450 --> 00:50:27,116 which immediately in their eyes resembled the royal palace at Tiryns. 621 00:50:27,289 --> 00:50:31,851 And, better still, inside it were masses of Mycenaean pottery, 622 00:50:32,094 --> 00:50:35,257 exactly the kind they'd found at Mycenae and Tiryns, 623 00:50:36,032 --> 00:50:40,992 the key in the dating of this search for them, just as they are for us today. 624 00:50:41,570 --> 00:50:44,164 This was a shattering revelation 625 00:50:44,340 --> 00:50:46,865 because the Troy that Schliemann thought 626 00:50:47,043 --> 00:50:50,740 was Homer's dated from 1,000 years before this, 627 00:50:51,013 --> 00:50:52,810 and the Troy with Mycenaean contacts, 628 00:50:52,982 --> 00:50:55,075 which Homer's Troy would be, 629 00:50:55,251 --> 00:51:00,086 was somewhere outside it and undiscovered. 630 00:51:04,827 --> 00:51:07,352 What a blow that must have been to the old man. 631 00:51:07,997 --> 00:51:12,866 He knew now that he'd destroyed much of the evidence not just for himself but for ever. 632 00:51:14,070 --> 00:51:16,630 But he resolved to go back the following year, 633 00:51:16,806 --> 00:51:18,899 hoping he could solve the riddle. 634 00:51:19,408 --> 00:51:21,740 "It is not too late," he wrote. 635 00:51:35,291 --> 00:51:39,057 But the gods, as he would have said, did not allow it. 636 00:51:41,464 --> 00:51:44,797 On Christmas Day, 1890, he died in Naples, 637 00:51:44,967 --> 00:51:47,094 worn out by Troy itself. 638 00:51:48,838 --> 00:51:53,172 He was taken back to his beloved Athens, his adopted home, for burial. 639 00:52:04,653 --> 00:52:08,054 Schliemann's tomb lies in the first cemetery of Athens, 640 00:52:08,224 --> 00:52:11,716 adorned with scenes of the heroes Hector and Achilles 641 00:52:11,894 --> 00:52:14,658 fighting in front of sacred llios. 642 00:52:16,832 --> 00:52:20,791 Alongside them in death, that latter-day hero Schliemann himself, 643 00:52:21,003 --> 00:52:24,803 Homer in hand, Sophie devoted by his side, 644 00:52:25,007 --> 00:52:28,443 together conquering new worlds for the imagination. 645 00:53:11,187 --> 00:53:13,849 Schliemann's house still stands in Athens. 646 00:53:14,456 --> 00:53:16,515 His ghost is still there too. 647 00:53:22,398 --> 00:53:25,162 "To make my beloved Greece live again," he said, 648 00:53:25,334 --> 00:53:27,529 "all I did was to that end." 649 00:53:38,847 --> 00:53:41,839 The new science of archaeology did not escape such feelings. 650 00:53:42,017 --> 00:53:43,006 How could it? 651 00:53:43,185 --> 00:53:46,154 In a sense, it is the most romantic of sciences, 652 00:53:46,422 --> 00:53:51,223 for we would have it physically restore to us the lost past. 653 00:54:00,269 --> 00:54:01,327 "My work", he wrote, 654 00:54:01,503 --> 00:54:05,405 "will remain as long as there are admirers of Homer. 655 00:54:05,608 --> 00:54:08,634 "As long as this globe will be inhabited by men. 656 00:54:10,546 --> 00:54:12,036 "Know yourself." 657 00:54:21,557 --> 00:54:23,650 But had the Trojan War ever happened? 658 00:54:24,193 --> 00:54:27,651 In our search we will see how Schliemann's successors - 659 00:54:27,830 --> 00:54:30,697 more scientific but no less romantic than he - 660 00:54:30,866 --> 00:54:33,198 tried to prove that Homer's tale was, 661 00:54:33,369 --> 00:54:35,564 after all, the truth.