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Henryh ShlimanGerman amateur archaeologist.
Date of Birth: 06.01.1822
Country:  Germany |
Content:
- Biography of Heinrich Schliemann
- Life in Russia and America
- Discoveries in Troy and Mycenae
- Later Expeditions and Legacy
Biography of Heinrich Schliemann
Early Life and CareerHeinrich Schliemann, a German amateur archaeologist and one of the pioneers of modern archaeology, was born in a poor pastor's family in Neubukow, Mecklenburg on January 6, 1822. At the age of 14, he started working as a shop boy in a grocery store in Fürstenberg, but had to leave his job after five years due to health reasons. Schliemann then got a job as a cabin boy on a ship bound for Venezuela from Hamburg, but the ship wrecked near the Dutch island of Texel, leaving him stranded in the Netherlands. In Amsterdam, he worked as a messenger in a trading company and soon became an accountant. Schliemann developed a passion for learning foreign languages and became fluent in Dutch, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.
Life in Russia and America
After mastering the Russian language, Schliemann was sent to St. Petersburg, Russia, in January 1846, where he lived for 11 years. There, he started his own business and achieved significant success (he joined the merchant guild in 1847) and married a Russian woman. In the 1850s, he visited the United States and obtained American citizenship. Stepping away from his business, Schliemann learned ancient and modern Greek and traveled to Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, and Greece in 1858-1859. In 1864, he visited Tunisia, Egypt, India, Java, China, and Japan, and in 1866, he settled in Paris. After 1868, Schliemann focused on the history of Greece, with a particular interest in Homer's poems. He studied Corfu, Ithaca, and Mycenae and developed the theory (based on the speculation of English archaeologist Frank Calvert) that the ancient city of Troy was located on the hill of Hisarlik in Asia Minor. His work "Ithaka, der Peloponnes und Troja" (Ithaca, the Peloponnese, and Troy) earned him a doctoral degree from the University of Rostock.
Discoveries in Troy and Mycenae
In 1870, Schliemann divorced his wife, moved to Athens, and married a young Greek woman. Over the next three years, he led excavations in Troy, where he discovered numerous gold artifacts. In 1874, he published his excavation reports in French under the title "Antiquites Troyennes" (Trojan Antiquities). Disappointed with the public's reaction to the book and facing difficulties with the Turkish government due to the illegal exportation of gold from the country, Schliemann went to Mycenae, where he discovered the tombs of the Mycenaean kings in November 1876. In 1878, Schliemann returned to Troy to continue the excavations, with the assistance of archaeologist Emil Burnouf and renowned pathologist Rudolf Virchow. The book "Ilios" included Schliemann's autobiography and an introduction by Virchow. Unable to keep his collection at his home in Athens, Schliemann donated it to the German government in 1880 (it is now located in Moscow).
Later Expeditions and Legacy
In 1880 and 1881, Schliemann conducted excavations in another "Homeric" city, Orchomenos, and his published work "Orchomenos" (1881) contributed to a better understanding of ancient Greek architecture. In 1882, he resumed his explorations in Troy, this time in collaboration with Wilhelm Dörpfeld, a professional architect who had already been involved in German excavations in Olympia. Their preliminary publication, "Troy" (1884), was followed by the book "Ilios, ville et pays des Troyens" (Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans) in 1885, which clearly showed Dörpfeld's influence. In 1884, Schliemann began excavations at the citadel of Tiryns but entrusted the completion of this work to Dörpfeld. In 1886, he conducted further excavations in Orchomenos and spent the winter of 1886-1887 on the Nile. He had plans for excavations in Egypt and Crete (later carried out by Arthur Evans) and started work in Kea and Pylos. Despite fierce criticism from French and German scholars, in 1890, Dörpfeld and Schliemann began new excavations in Troy, which allowed Dörpfeld to establish the historical sequence of overlapping city structures uncovered by Schliemann. It was determined that the second layer from the bottom, containing the treasure of gold objects, was much older than Homeric Troy, and the city of Homer was the one identified by Dörpfeld as the sixth from the mainland rocks. However, Schliemann did not live to see the truth established. He passed away in Naples on December 25, 1890.
