THE DIGGING UP OF TROY COMPLETED.

Kumara Times, Issue 1166, 24 June 1880, Page 3

THE DIGGING UP OF TROY COMPLETED.

[ST. PETERSBURG (SOLOS.] We have received a letter from the famous archtelogist) Schilemann, dated Athens, March 11. We print this extract:— “ I have just returned from Asia Minor, where I have at last finished that digging out of Troy which I began in 1870. During ten years 1 have struggled with great difficulties, among which, perhaps, the most troublesome has been the large amount of debris under which the ancient city was buried-. It has been necessary to dig down and dig up the ground for more than sixteen yards below, the surface. But I am fully recompensed for all my trouble. I found the remains of seven different ancient cities; the last of them was the Ilion of Homer. The city was built by the AEolians, banished from Greece by the Dorians in the eleventh century before our era. In one of the buried cities I found many statues of Minerva with the owl’s head, whence her name of Glaucopis. In another city were found many images of the divinites. But the most interesting and important of all discoveries is, of course, the city of King Priam. Every article found in the ruins of that city bears unmistakable signs of having been destroyed by fire and in a time of war. There were discovered many remains of human bodies iti full armour. I dug out and cleared aWay the debris from the entire wall that surrounded the city, and also from the principal buildings. Now I am finishing a large volume in English, describing with full details all my discoveries, and containing two hundred illustrations' of the most important of the discoveries. My Trojan collection is now in London, but at the end of this year I shall take it to my villa in Athens, which is fire-, proof, built only of marble and iron. . I have received large offers for my bollection from the United States, England, France, and Germany, but I cannot part with it for any money in the world.”