Archaeology and Heinrich Schliemann 2012

398 Oliver T.P.K. Dickinsonmen hard to get; and his own quarrel with Stamatakishad blown up again, because Stamatakis was makinghis own reports of the finds to newspapers and thus,in Schliemann’s view, grabbing part of his glory.Moreover, he was suffering from intense frustration:on the 27th November he wrote to Müller, “but theseimmense treasures make the Greeks tremble of theirshadow (i.e. afraid of their own shadows); thus delayafter delay in the excavation, for two days they havestopped me saying that the governor of the provincemust be present and the governor came but said twoofficials from Athens must assist. But at all events Ihope to continue the work tomorrow and finish it thisweek”. 12 It was with these “officials”, actually professorsfrom Athens, that he excavated the last grave,with the finest mask and well-preserved burial, notwith Mrs. Schliemann, who returned to Athens on thesteamer that brought them. Perhaps because he believedhe had found the correct number of gravesmentioned by Pausanias, he stopped; it would be likehim. But he also wrote to Müller on the last day of theyear: “Believe me, I have had hard times at Mycenae.I had here an overseer not a bit better than that furiousTurk whom I had at Troy; in fact, a man whowould have made an excellent executioner, but whowas an insupportable burden in scientific researches.Only ‘τe îερeν πÜρ τÉς âπιστήµης’ (the holy flame ofknowledge) made Mrs. S. and me endure all; ‘πάταξονµbν ôκουσον δb’ (strike me, but hear me, a quotationfrom Plutarch that one might feel more appropriatein the mouth of Stamatakis). They all beg me tocontinue the work; but I won’t do it”. 13To me, this rings true as the bitterness of a manwho has not been taken at his own valuation. It isindeed true that he had made great discoveries andendured considerable privations to do so; but despiteearlier comments on his procedures at Troy he seemsto have maintained his naive belief that the remainsof the Heroic Age must necessarily be buried deep inthe soil, and also to have considered it entirely legitimateto clear away anything found above them withoutmore than the most cursory record. On the creditside, it can be said that he did record a fair amount ofinformation and certainly had many photographsmade of his finds around the Acropolis, including ofmore than a thousand pieces of pottery, and that heshowed an interest in many matters, having someanalyses made of metal objects from the graves. Healso recorded from what grave various finds hadcome, and since in this respect his diary agrees withthe published account it should be preferred to thelater National Museum catalogue which Karo used asthe basis for his full publication of the material in the1930’s; but until the end he recorded very little detailabout what was found where in any grave, eventhough one might have expected him at least to recordhow the bodies were dressed and ornamented.Even the most exacting analysis of his writings canonly produce a general impression, relating to someof the more prominent items. With such a mass ofmaterial, one could hardly expect every item’s positionto be individually recorded; but he could havedone a lot more than he did.His publications of his finds may be fairly describedas a somewhat tarted-up version of his reportsto the Times, and it omitted details that he hadnoticed in his diary. More surprisingly, he was curiouslyreluctant to identify the burial of Agamemnonor any of the others specifically, and he did not reallycope with the problem that, although he believedthe graves to be simultaneous, the hurried intermentsof murdered people, Pausanias quite clearly spoke ofone grave as that of Atreus, Agamemnon’s father,and of another as that of Electra, his daughter, whoseburial must have taken place long after Orestes’s revengefor his father. Indeed, when criticisms of histheory were produced, he reputedly commented thathe never said that he had discovered the tomb ofAgamemnon, but that Gladstone, in his preface to theEnglish publication, had proved it. 14 But in private hewas a believer, as shown by Ludwig’s entertainingstory that once he said, “What? So this is not Agamemnon’sbody, these are not his ornaments? All right,let’s call him Schultze.” 15More serious, from the point of view of assessinghis place in the history of Mycenaean archaeology, isthat he rarely discussed his finds again. Although heclaimed that he had opened up a new field for archaeology,he did very little to cultivate it; he noted closesimilarities between pots found at Mycenae and examplesfrom tombs dug on Rhodes between 1868 and1871, but failed to follow up this promising lead. He12. Meyer 1962, 93.13. Meyer 1962, 95.14. Ludwig 1931, 237.15. Ludwig 1931, 296-297.