ANCIENT TROY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 April 1938, Page 10

ANCIENT TROY

GATES RECENTLY UNEARTHED. Discovery of ancient Troy’s Scaean Gate from which Helen watched the Grecian and Trojan heroes in battle 3000 years ago was described by Carl W. Blegan, field director of the University of Cincinati’s archaelogical expedition to the site of the famous city in Turkey. Dr Blegan told the Archaeological Institute of America at its annual session that his expedition uncovered massive foundations of walls vzhich surrounded Troy at the time Agamemnon and Ulysses led the Greeks against it. The foundations found at the northwest side of the city, were approximately 20 feet thick and supported, Dr Blegan estimated, walls 30 to 40 feet high.

A clearly defined break in the foundations was described as the Scaean Gate, through which, Homer recounted, the Trojans went to battle and where Helen watched the fighting.

Dating back even farther than the 3000-year-old gate, however, was a stele, or stone slab, which Dr Blegan’s expedition discovered this year, the sixth of its excavations. Its age is estimated by the archaeologist at almost 5000 years, the slab has arough heartshaped outline of a face cut upon it. “Discovery of the stele pushes back our knowledge of existence of monumental art about 1000 years,” Dr Blegan declared.