The Trojan War in Homer and History - Recorded Books

LECTURE NINE
from the so-called “Death Pits” of Ur in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in the
east to the site of Poliochni on the Aegean island of Lemnos in the west, all
dating to the same approximate time period, just after the middle of the third
millennium BCE and more than a thousand years too early to have belonged
to Priam, Helen, or anyone else involved with the Trojan War.
Moreover, many scholars are convinced that Schliemann made up the entire
story of its discovery—not just placing Sophia at the site when she wasn’t
there, but making up the very existence of the treasure in the first place.
While there is little doubt that Schliemann did find all of these objects at Troy,
there is a good chance that he did not find them all together in a wooden
chest. Instead, it is now thought that he had made a series of smaller discoveries
all over the site throughout the excavation season, but had held off
announcing these finds until he had accumulated enough to put them together
as one big “treasure” that would amaze the world when he announced its
discovery.
Ironically, if Schliemann had not erroneously labeled these items “Priam’s
Treasure,” they would not hold nearly the value nor interest that they do
today. But Schliemann was a master showman and he knew that giving the
items this label, whether accurate or not, would draw the world’s attention to
his site and his claim to have found the city of Troy, as indeed it did.
And now, of course, Priam’s treasure—though it is definitely not Priam’s and
might not be a “treasure”—has acquired a life of its own. Schliemann sent it
to Germany, where it was displayed in the Berlin Museum until near the end
of World War II, when it simply disappeared. Lost for nearly fifty years, the
Russians admitted in the early 1990s that they had had the treasure the
whole time, since “liberating” it from Germany as part of what they considered
to be war reparations.
Now on display in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the treasure has been
claimed by no fewer than four separate countries: Turkey, because the
objects were found at Troy and smuggled away illegally; Greece, because
that’s where Schliemann had his house to which he smuggled the objects;
Germany, because Schliemann had presented the objects to the Berlin
Museum, where they had subsequently been displayed for decades before
disappearing; and Russia, because they had acquired them during wartime
and viewed them as partial reparation for the twenty-million Russian citizens
who died during World War II. To whom do they really belong? Are they
spoils of war? Are they stolen antiquities? The objects remain in Russia to
this day, while the dispute continues.
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