Heinrich Schliemann: Improbable Archaeologist

Home > Magazines > Archaeology Odyssey > July/August 1999

Athens at the height of summer. Visitors are negotiating their way through the crowded Mycenaean room of the National Museum. The name “Schliemann” rustles through the air as the guides halt their groups at strategic points and launch into their mini-lectures on the finds. The tourists gaze in awe at the Mask of Agamemnon and at the vitrines with gold jewelry from the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. And they wonder about the strange, obsessed German archaeologist who found them. Who was this pioneer of Aegean archaeology and why is he still important? I: Heinrich Schliemann’s veracity is gently challenged […]

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Footnotes

For an English translation of von Hahn’s excavation report, see David A. Traill, “J.G. von Hahn’s Report of His Excavations at Balli Dagû; in 1864: The Finlay Translation,” Annual of the British School at Athens 92 (1997), pp. 169–189.

Endnotes

W.M. Calder III, “Schliemann on Schliemann: A Study in the Use of Sources,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies (1972), pp. 335–53.

For more details on Schliemann’s life see David A. Traill’s Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995) and Excavating Schliemann (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993).