Gold of Troy - myth or reality: what Heinrich Schliemann actually found at the excavations. “Priam’s treasure”: mysticism, detective and treasure rescue Items from Helen’s treasure were found by Schiemann

Valentin Ponomarenko

Schliemann's Gold

Registration number 0006063 issued for the work:

Valentin Ponomarenko

Schliemann's Gold

From childhood he knew that Troy was, is, and he will find it.

In distant legendary times, the king of Phrygia announced a competition for heroes. The winner was the brave and powerful young man Il. As one of his rewards, the king gave him a mottled cow and informed him of the oracle’s command: “Build a city in the place where she lies.”

Returning home, Il let the pestle go for a walk and without thinking twice, it lay down on the hill. To eliminate any doubts, Ilus turned to Zeus and the next day the priests discovered a sign confirming the choice of a cow. Encouraged by the support of Zeus, Ilus began to build a city, giving it the first name Ilion (hence the Iliad). Years passed, the gods intervened in the fate of the city, and, in the end, they burned it.

When Priam became king, he rebuilt the city and named it Troy. The king and his wife Hecuba had nineteen children. Among them are the famous Hector, Cassandra, and of course, the cause of all the Trojan troubles - Paris.

When Hecuba was pregnant with Paris, she had a dream that a fire came out of her belly and burned Troy. Hecuba told her husband a prophetic dream, and, in order not to tempt fate, the child, after birth, was taken into the forest, relying on the will of the Gods. But the Gods decreed that the shepherds took the child in and raised him to be strong, but deceitful and cowardly in character. They named the boy Alexander, and only many years later would he receive the name Paris.

Years passed. People lived their lives, and Gods lived theirs.

In the vast cave of the centaur Chiron, the gods celebrated the wedding of Peleus with the goddess Thetis. The wedding feast was luxurious. All the gods of Olympus took part in it. The golden cithara of Apollo sounded loudly, and to its sounds the muses sang about the great glory that would be the lot of the son of Peleus and the goddess Thetis. The gods feasted. Among them, the warrior goddess Athena and the young goddess Artemis stood out for their majestic beauty, but the eternally young goddess Aphrodite surpassed all the goddesses in beauty. The gods were having fun. Only the goddess of discord, Eris, did not participate in the wedding feast. She wandered alone near the cave, deeply harboring a grudge in her heart that she was not invited to the feast. Finally, the goddess Eris figured out how to take revenge on the gods, how to stir up discord between them. She took a golden apple and wrote just one word on it - “most beautiful.” Eris quietly approached the banquet table, and, invisible to everyone, threw a golden apple on the table. The gods saw the apple, picked it up and read the inscription on it. But which of the goddesses is the most beautiful? A dispute immediately arose between three goddesses: Zeus’s wife Hera, the warrior Athena and the golden goddess of love Aphrodite. Each of them wanted to get this apple, none of them wanted to give it to the other. The goddesses turned to the king of gods and people Zeus and demanded to resolve their dispute.
Zeus refused to be a judge. He took the apple, and giving it to Hermes, he ordered the goddesses to be led to the vicinity of Troy, to the slopes of high Ida. This dispute should

Priam's beautiful son, Paris, was to decide which of the goddesses would get the apple.

Each began to promise the young man wealth, fame and power. But Aphrodite turned out to be the most cunning. She knew perfectly well that there is nothing greater happiness in the world than love. Aphrodite promised Paris Helen the Beautiful, the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus, as his wife. She got the apple.

From this place the history of the Trojan War begins.

With the help of Aphrodite, Paris returns to his family. Father and mother recognize their son, but his brothers are suspicious of him. And sister Cassandra predicts the death of Troy precisely because of Paris.

Cassandra's story is sad. Once he sees the beauty, Apollo falls in love with her, but Cassandra rejects his love. As punishment for this, God puts into her chest a high poetic gift with elements of prediction. Her beautiful speech is so sublime that no one understands the predictions put into the girl’s mouth, and everyone considers the beauty crazy. And when, after the fall of Troy, one of the kings, Agamemnon, takes her to his home, his wife kills Cassandra on the threshold of the temple. This is how Apollo took revenge on her for her rejected love.

Helen was soon kidnapped and taken to Troy.

Preparations for going to war began. Menelaus decided to gather all the heroes and take them with him, since without them it would not be possible to defeat Troy. The biggest difficulties arose with Odysseus and Achilles.

Being very cunning, Odysseus decided to deceive Menelaus and not go to war.

The easiest thing, it turned out, was to pretend to be insane and act out a scene of madness in front of the ambassadors. Odysseus yoked a donkey and an ox and began to sow salt. And then one of those who arrived took the baby Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, and put him under the plow. The hero immediately stopped pretending. He also had to put on his armor.

Things were more complicated with Achilles. His mother, Thetis, knowing the fate of her son, decided to make him immortal. She took the child by the heel and dipped him into the waters of the underground river Styx. Everything would have been fine, but it was the heel by which Thetis held the boy that remained vulnerable. The child grew up, Chiron raised him to be brave and courageous, but his mother again intervened in his fate. She still hoped to save her son. To prevent Achilles from going to war, she hid him on the island of Skyros among the daughters of Lycomedes, dressing her son in women's clothing.

Odysseus was sent for Achilles, but no matter how they searched, the whole palace was interrupted, they could not find the hero.

Then Odysseus asked to call all the girls and laid out a lot of jewelry in front of them, putting military accessories on the edge. Everyone rushed to sort out the gifts dear to a woman’s heart, and one began to try on a weapon. This was Achilles.

Soon the army, boarding ships, set off on a campaign against Troy.

And when this horse appeared before the residents and defenders of the city, they were very happy. And the false defector confirmed that it was a gift. Ah, stupid, stupid Trojans. They did not listen to Cassander, they did not listen to Laocoon and his sons. And when a serpent emerged from the sea and strangled the father and sons, the Trojans believed that it was the Gods who punished Laocoon. And they dragged the horse into the city. Night came quickly. The Trojans fell asleep peacefully, and Odysseus, with his squad, left the belly of the horse and, opening the gates, carried out a real massacre. Men were killed, and women and children were taken into slavery. Thus ended the Trojan War. But, as it turned out later, the real Helen was sitting on one of the islands all this time and waiting for Menelaus. And in Troy, there was a ghost that simply disappeared.

True, after that there was “Odyssey” and “Aeneid”, but that’s another story.

Let's fast forward to the nineteenth century.

In Holland in one provincial town there lived a boy. The son of a pastor, he was also supposed to become a pastor, but fate decreed otherwise. The boy's name was Hermann Schliemann. Little Schliemann was a strange, sickly, dreamy boy, and when Homer’s Iliad, a gift for the holiday, came into his hands, he felt like the chosen one of fortune. Gradually, childhood love began to seem to him like the love of his life. And the childhood dream of Troy gradually turned into the passion of an adult - he constantly re-read Homer, and the heroes of the Iliad were much more real for him than company owners, commission agents, ship brokers and sales agents.

The mother died, and the father, having married a young maid, actually kicked his son out of the house, taking all the money left by the mother. Henry began to wander around cities and countries. Time goes by, oh he already knows fifteen languages ​​and is now trying to learn Russian - his new owners conduct large trade with St. Petersburg. No one in Holland knows the language of the great northern empire, and Schliemann is sure that he will need it very soon. He fought for survival and did not allow himself unnecessary emotions: a minimum of spending and unnecessary actions, everything was verified, calculated and expedient.

Meanwhile, his position in the company where he worked became more and more secure, and finally real success came to him. The Russian language nevertheless helped him out: the Schroeder company needed a representative in Russia, and Schliemann went to St. Petersburg - from a clerk he turned into a partner. There, his tenacity, acumen, lively mind and acquired business experience served him well - Heinrich Schliemann became a millionaire in just a few years. He went to America to see off his brother who died in the gold mines on his last journey, and returned to Russia, doubling his fortune. During the gold rush, fortunes of millions were made in a few months, and Schliemann immediately opened his own bank in California. He looked peculiar. A big game was going on in the saloon, shots were fired and chairs were flying, and in the next room Heinrich Schliemann was weighing gold dust on apothecary scales and giving paper dollars for it. He continued to work, even when he fell ill with typhus, bought gold in a semi-delirious state and never allowed himself to be shortchanged. Returning to Russia, Schliemann became one of the richest people in commercial St. Petersburg. Now he could live as he wanted - but he had nothing to live with. At thirty, he married the sister of one of the richest Russian merchants, eighteen-year-old Katya Lyzhina. She bore him three children, but did not give him happiness. Ekaterina Petrovna did not want to listen to poems from the Iliad for the hundredth time, learn ancient Greek and listen to her husband’s reasoning about ancient history. She had a tough character - scandal followed scandal, after work Heinrich Schliemann did not want to go home. He had an established business, a huge fortune, but enrichment never seemed to him an end in itself. In fact, he had nothing but an old, tattered Homer’s Iliad, bought with copper money. When Heinrich Schliemann liquidated the business and left St. Petersburg, his former partners only threw up their hands. His wife and children remained in the city, to whom he assigned a good allowance, old servants, former clerks who received a generous reward. None of them will see him again. Heinrich Schliemann left St. Petersburg in order to fulfill his main dream. He did not allow those who knew the former Schliemann into his new life. In order to achieve his cherished goal, he needed to get an education, and the forty-six-year-old millionaire began visiting the Sorbonne - there he listened to lectures on archeology. The matter was not limited to studies: Schliemann decided to change himself completely. Every man needs a wife, Schliemann decided and began searching for her with his characteristic thoroughness and acumen. A wealthy man can afford to marry a young woman, Schliemann reasoned, but the old merchant culture demanded maximum return on invested capital. His chosen one should personify ancient Greece - let her be young, beautiful, like the statue of Praxiteles, know ancient Greek, love Homer... Schliemann is trying on his future popularity - the wife of a famous scientist should give him additional shine. What happened next is reminiscent of the plot of Moliere's comedy about an elderly groom and an overly simple-minded young bride: an acquaintance matched Schliemann with his relative, the beautiful and well-bred Sophia, and Schliemann subjected her to a strict examination. She knew in what year Emperor Hadrian visited Athens and expressively recited several passages from the Odyssey. Heinrich Schliemann, balding, weak-sighted, stooped, never able to court the ladies, fell head over heels in love with young Sophia. He will marry her and try to make her happy. He would buy Sophia luxurious dresses and force her to learn foreign languages, take her with him to excavations and torment her with constant, frantic and senseless jealousy - she was getting prettier, but Schliemann was getting old, and it was not in his power to come to terms with this. Be that as it may, he ensured her place in history, and this was much more than what Sophia’s parents expected, who asked for diamonds worth one hundred and fifty thousand francs for their daughter.

The main advantages of Schliemann the archaeologist were the absence of doubts, an almost religious belief in his own rightness and magnificent, barbaric self-confidence. Since childhood, he dreamed of Troy, therefore, it had to exist; if she once existed, he would certainly find her. He had already had to do the impossible, and he - in spite of the high-browed pedants crowned with academic titles - would be able to insist on his own... Heinrich Schliemann stocked up on letters of recommendation, bought a batch of English picks and shovels, ordered improved carts in France for transporting earth and went to Turkey. There, on the Mediterranean coast, under the Hissarlik hill, according to his calculations, Troy should have been located.

He dug, guided by his own intuition and childhood ideas about Troy: it was supposed to be a large and majestic city, and Schliemann mercilessly demolished buildings that did not meet the ideal. The foundations of the walls and the bases of the towers protruded from the ground, the city went lower and lower, and his head was spinning - the miserable villages that his workers found did not resemble the city of Priam. The excavations continued in the second year, and in the third, powerful foundations with traces of fire were discovered in the lower layers... And then Schliemann discovered the treasure that made him famous: it was buried in the corner of the building, which he immediately dubbed the “house of Priam.”

One and a half kilograms of gold: twenty-four necklaces, six bracelets, eight hundred and seventy rings, four thousand and sixty-six brooches, a six-hundred-gram gold bottle, two magnificent tiaras, rings, chains, and many small jewelry.

These were purely historical finds. But there were also scientific finds.

With the gold jewelry, Schliemann found... beautifully crafted rock crystal lenses. The glitter of gold eclipsed the light of the Sun, collected at the focus of these main elements of any modern optical instrument.

Now let’s think: how did people in Trojan times know what they only figured out thousands of years later? And didn’t they know a microscope and a telescope?

According to the agreement concluded with the Ottoman government, Schliemann was supposed to transfer half of the finds to Turkey, but he did not intend to do this. Schliemann and Sophia hid the treasure and took it to Europe; it was impossible to imagine better evidence that he had found the real, Homeric Troy. The treasures enriched the exhibition of the Athens museum, Schliemann became one of the national heroes of Greece - his popularity acquired fantastic proportions, and the general public attributed all subsequent archaeological discoveries only to him. Heinrich Schliemann gained wild, all-European popularity: reporters seized on the sensation, newspaper readers believed in the success of a simple man, who from a beggar became a millionaire, outwitted the professors who didn’t care for him. Schliemann became one of the creators of the myth of a man from the bottom who overcomes unfavorable circumstances with his mind and will. His success became a triumph for archeology: it was rapidly turning into a fashionable, prestigious science - allocations for excavations grew all over the world, competitions for archaeological departments increased exponentially. Schliemann, just yesterday an unknown amateur who aroused only contempt among professional scientists, became a master: his second success made his reputation unshakable.

Schliemann was revered all over the world, but serious science eluded him: new excavations were carried out by professional archaeologists; the methods by which he got to his treasures seemed barbaric to them. He felt increasingly lonely, his relationship with his wife deteriorated: Sophia matured, learned her worth (now she was the famous Frau Schliemann, a comrade-in-arms of the legendary man) and no longer wanted to listen to the lectures that her husband regaled her with for 24 hours. Sometimes the blues attacked Heinrich Schliemann, and he began to think that life was essentially over. Schliemann often recalled that winter when he, hungry and desperate, wandered around Amsterdam: if a stranger had not remembered him, he would probably have died in some hospital for the poor. It seemed to Schliemann that fate was testing him for a long time, but in the end, he overruled her... He did not know that she would soon play out the same ending, only delayed for more than forty years.

December 26, 1890. The stooped old man, who fell into the dust on a Neapolitan street, was dressed so modestly and inconspicuously that passersby carried him to the hospital for the poor, laid him on the dirty pavement at the locked entrance and knocked for a long time on the heavy oak door. He had no documents with him, and the doctor on duty placed the poor fellow on a hard wooden bench that stood in the hallway. The patient was unconscious - eyes closed, mouth sunken, thin arms falling helplessly. Time passed, no one took care of him, and only when gold coins poured out of a bag hanging around his neck, which accidentally came untied, did the doctors fuss around the old man. By evening, the poor man began to rave: he remembered some kind of shipwreck, talked about the piercing cold (in Naples at that time the heat was thirty degrees), that he was still young, and he should certainly be lucky. That same night he died, and telegraph agencies notified the world that the great Heinrich Schliemann, who came to Italy for treatment, died in one of the Neapolitan hospitals.

This, in brief, is the history of the legendary Troy and Heinrich Schliemann. Even during his lifetime, Schliemann was accused of falsifying excavations, even outright falsifying treasures.

Heinrich Schliemann excavated Troy. Everyone knows this from school. However, few people know that in the scientific world, in the words of the German scientist Erich Zoren, the “Trojan War” is still going on.
The beginning of this “war” and even the current “bombings” are often rooted in elementary feelings of envy and hostility towards a successful amateur, because archeology is the most complex of sciences, despite its apparent simplicity and accessibility to almost everyone who picks up a pick. All this is both true and false. For a hundred and twenty-five years now, real scientific discussions have not subsided on the topic: which Troy is the one, Homer’s? hands!), without suspecting it, he made another discovery a century earlier: neglecting the upper (late) cultural layers, he dug to the rock - the mainland, as they say in archeology. Now scientists do this consciously, although for reasons other than those of Heinrich Schliemann...
The archaeologists were angry with him. Especially pedantic Germans: how is it possible to skip through all cultural layers? The Germans, instead of admiring, laughed in Schliemann's face. But when Troy, the seventh in a row, was dug up by the American S.V. Bledzhen, the same Germans, immediately declared Homer's Troy... Heinrich Schliemann's Troy!
But what is the fate of the “treasures of Priam”? Isn't this a fairy tale?
No, not a fairy tale. It is not so difficult to find out the reasons why the “treasure” was kept silent and inaccessible to the viewer for the first 50-60 years. In 1934, it was nevertheless classified according to its value (Hitler, who came to power in 1933, counted all state resources, and a basic inventory was carried out at the Berlin Museum of Prehistoric and Ancient History). With the outbreak of World War II, the exhibits were packed and locked in bank safes (Turkey, after all, was an ally of Germany and could suddenly lend a “hairy paw” to the treasures). Soon, given the bombing of Germany by the “Allies”, the sad fate of the Dresden palaces, the “treasures of Priam” were locked in a bomb shelter on the territory of the Berlin Zoo. On May 1, 1945, the director of the museum handed over the boxes to the Soviet expert commission. And they... disappeared for another 50 years!.. It seems that if a “treasure” has this distinctive property - to disappear for 50-60 years, it is better not to carry out any more transfers or gifts, but still put it on public display .

At the end of the 1880s, the sensational fame of Heinrich Schliemann, who excavated the legendary Troy, thundered throughout the world. That Troy, which was considered a fairy tale not only by the great poets I.V. Goethe and G. Byron, but also all European scientists. But the German archaeologist trusted the ancient tale and defeated everyone.

Heinrich Schliemann

In the 19th century, few people believed that Troy really existed and that it could be found. Heinrich Schliemann himself began to dream of Troy as a child, when he saw a picture depicting the death of this glorious city in the book “World History for Children” given by his father for Christmas. It depicted Aeneas, the surviving Trojan of the royal family, carrying his father Anchises out of the city and leading his son Ascanius by the hand. Young Schliemann could not, did not want to believe that Troy had perished irrevocably, that nothing remained of such a once mighty city - neither destroyed walls, nor even stones.

Aeneas' flight from Troy
Carl van Loo

Fascinated by the ancient poems of Homer, G. Schliemann decided to find traces of the heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey. He first visited “Troy” in 1869, having with great difficulty received a firman from the Turkish Pasha for excavations. According to this firman, G. Schliemann had to give half (according to other sources - two thirds) of all the things found to the High Porte.

He began excavations in the north-west of Turkey - on the Hissarlik hill, at the entrance to the Dardanelles Strait. Since ancient times, the sea has retreated here by seven kilometers, and one could only guess that there was once a port city here. The plain that lay beneath Hisarlik was infertile, and it was difficult to work on it, especially in conditions of chronic malaria. But nevertheless, an archaeological camp grew here, where G. Schliemann was supplied with tools for excavations from all European cities, and over time they even built a narrow-gauge railway.

Excavations continued from 1871 to 1890, but the most successful season was 1873, when treasures were found, called by G. Schliemann “Priam’s treasure.”

Sophia Schliemann in "Helen's Headdress" from Priam's treasure

Archaeologists from different countries are still working on the Hissarlik Hill. But their subsequent excavations showed that G. Schliemann did not find Homeric Troy, but an even more ancient settlement. But then it seemed to the German archaeologist that he was walking along the streets where King Priam once walked, whose son kidnapped the Spartan Menelaus’s wife, the Beautiful Helen.

Beautiful Elena
Antonio Canova

The sensational inscription: “I found Priam’s treasure” - appeared in G. Schliemann’s diary on June 17, 1873. On this day, workers were digging a site near the city wall at the Scaean Gate, where (according to Homer) Andromache said goodbye to Hector before he left to fight Achilles. Early in the morning, between eight and nine o'clock, something flashed in the excavation. Fearing theft from the workers, G. Schliemann released them all, and then collected precious things and took them to his house.

Hector's farewell to Andromache
Anton Losenko

The “Treasure of King Priam” - more than 10,000 items - was in a silver two-handled vessel. In addition to 1000 gold beads, it included neck hryvnias, bracelets, earrings, temple rings, a gold forehead band and two gold tiaras. There was also a massive golden gravy boat (weighing about 600 grams), which was probably intended for ritual sacrifices.

The beads themselves were very diverse in shape: there were small beads, thin tubes, and beads with flattened blades. When the Berlin restorer W. Kukenburg reconstructed the pectoral pectoral, he came up with twenty luxurious threads of the necklace, from the bottom of which 47 gold rods were suspended, and in the center there was one very special one - with thin cuts.

The earrings found in the “Priam’s treasure,” especially the “lobed” ones, were made in the form of a half ring, folded from a series of wires (from 2 to 7), flattened at the end and chained into a needle. Among the rings there are large, massive specimens with thick needles. Such earrings were obviously not put into the ears, and scientists later called these things “temporal rings.” However, how they were worn was unclear: either they were used to thread curls through them, or they were used to decorate a headdress. Later similar finds in ancient burial grounds allowed scientists to assume that the rings were tied to the ears with thin cords.

The most elegant earrings have the shape of a basket, to which thin chains with stylized figures of the goddess hanging on them are attached at the bottom. The work of ancient jewelers was simply amazing. In the best-preserved items, the body of the earring was soldered from a number of thin wires, and the top was decorated with rosettes, graining and filigree.

When G. Schliemann showed the Trojan gold to the best English jeweler, he noted that such things could only be made with the help of a magnifying glass. Later, dozens of mysterious rock crystal “lenses” were found in the last treasure, and among them was one that gave twofold magnification.

In addition to gold items, bones of sheep and bulls, goats and cows, pigs and horses, deer and hares, as well as grains, peas, beans and corn were found in the Trojan treasure. A huge number of tools and axes were made of stone, and none of them were made of copper. Numerous clay vessels were made by hand, and some on a potter's wheel. Some of them stood on three legs, others were shaped like animals.

Among the Trojan finds, Heinrich Schliemann himself valued above all the ritual hammer axes found in 1890. These hammer-axes are among the masterpieces of world art. Their perfection is so great that some scientists doubt that they could have been made in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. All of them are well preserved, only one (made of Afghan lapis lazuli) was damaged, as it was used in antiquity. What specific ritual he participated in has not yet been established.

The beauty of the proportions of these stone axes could not be a consequence of the talent of the craftsmen alone, even if it was exceptional. Behind them there certainly had to be a school with strong traditions.

On two axes (lapis lazuli and jadeite), scientists found traces of gilding that adorned decorative friezes with knobs. These axes could be attributes of a king or queen, who also performed priestly functions.

Of the treasures found during the excavations, G. Schliemann did not give anything to the Porte, but secretly (with the help of F. Calvert) transported everything to Athens. The Sublime Porte considered itself robbed and filed a case against Schliemann for concealing treasures. In 1874, a court was held in Athens, which sentenced the German archaeologist to pay a fine, however, very moderate for those times. Subsequently, G. Schliemann's relations with the Turks improved, and he returned to Troy several more times.

However, the fate of the treasures remained unresolved. Heinrich Schliemann wanted to give them to his beloved Hellas, but the Greek parliament did not accept his gift. Then he began to offer his finds to various museums in Europe: the British National Museum, the Louvre, the Hermitage and others.

Hermitage

Convincing the French authorities to buy the treasure of Troy from him, G. Schliemann never tired of repeating that we were talking about unique objects, moreover, of Trojan origin. “The utterance of this one word,” he said, “will immediately make all hearts tremble and will attract millions of visitors to Paris every year.” And yet no one wanted to accept the Trojan treasures, although they included such masterpieces as two tiaras, one of which was made of more than 16,000 links of a gold chain.

The fact was that G. Schliemann was known as a great mystifier who assembled his treasures from things of various origins. The objects he found did not correlate with the archaeological context, some of them did not fit in with others... The description of the circumstances of the discovery of the “Priam’s treasure” even at its very discovery caused bewilderment. So, for example, Sophia Schliemann allegedly witnessed this, but in those days she was in Athens, where she was caring for her sick father. Some even thought that G. Schliemann “hoarded” his finds for several years, and when he decided that he would not find anything else, he announced the treasure.

In the end, in 1881, only Berlin favorably accepted the “treasures of King Priam”. Heinrich Schliemann specifically emphasized that he gave them to the “German people,” and Prussia, in gratitude, awarded him the title of honorary citizen of Berlin. In 1882, the Trojan treasure was transferred to the Berlin Museum of Ancient and Ancient History, and before World War II, W. Unverzagt (director of the museum), foreseeing the possibility of the destruction of priceless monuments, packed them in suitcases, which he kept in a bunker in the Tiergarten area.

Museum of Ancient and Ancient History

Upon the surrender of Berlin, the Trojan items were handed over to the Soviet command, and in June 1945 they were sent to Moscow (259 items, including the Trojan treasure) and Leningrad (414 items made of bronze, clay and copper). True, in the recently published memoirs of Andrei Belokopytov, who removed the Pergamon Altar and the “treasure of Priam” from the defeated Berlin, it is said that he discovered the treasures of Troy by accident - in nondescript wooden boxes in the bunker of the anti-aircraft tower of the Berlin Zoo.

In the Soviet Union, the “trophies” from Berlin were kept in extreme secrecy, and only in 1993 the Russian government announced that the treasures of Troy were in Moscow.

Text by Nadezhda Ionina

As has already been established, the treasure has no relation to the king of Troy, Priam. It dates back to 2400-2300. BC e., that is, it existed a thousand years before Priam.

The treasure itself was in a silver two-handed vessel. It consisted of more than 10,000 items. Most of all it contained gold beads - about 1000. Moreover, the beads were very diverse in shape - small beads, thin tubes, and beads with flattened blades. When the reconstruction of the chest pectoral, consisting of these beads, was carried out, twenty luxurious threads of the necklace were obtained, from the bottom of which 47 gold rods were suspended, and in the center there was one very special one - with thin cuts.

Also in the treasure were earrings, in particular “lobed” earrings, made in the form of a half ring, folded from a series of wires (from 2 to 7), flattened at the end. There were temple rings - quite massive decorations, which, as scientists later suggested, were tied with thin cords to the ears. The treasure also contained elegant earrings in the shape of a basket, to which a figurine of the goddess was attached. Also in the treasure were bracelets, a gold forehead band, two gold tiaras and a massive gold boat-shaped bowl weighing about 600 grams, probably used in ritual sacrifices.

Experts noted that such things could only be made with the help of magnifying devices. Later, dozens of rock crystal lenses were found in the last treasure.

In addition to gold items, bones of sheep, bulls, goats, cows, pigs and horses, deer and hares, as well as grains, peas, and beans were found in the Trojan treasure. A huge number of tools and axes were made of stone, but not a single one was made of copper. Numerous clay vessels were made by hand, and some on a potter's wheel. Some of them stood on three legs, others had the shape of animals. Also in the treasure were ritual hammer axes found in 1890. Their perfection is so great that some scientists doubt that they could have been made in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. All of them were well preserved, only one (made of Afghan lapis lazuli) was damaged, as it was used in ancient times. What specific ritual they participated in has not yet been established.

Story

Nakhodka

Heinrich Schliemann discovered the treasure on May 31, 1873. As Schliemann himself described, he noticed objects made of copper and announced a break for the workers in order to independently dig up the treasure together with his wife. In fact, Schliemann's wife was not present at this event. From under the shaky ancient wall, Schliemann used one knife to unearth various objects of gold and silver. The treasure was located under the dust of millennia and a heavy fortress wall in a kind of stone box.

Schliemann mistakenly mistook the find for the legendary treasures of the Trojan king Priam.

Athens and Berlin

Schliemann feared that such valuable treasures might be confiscated by the local Ottoman authorities and become unavailable for further scientific study, and therefore smuggled them to Athens. The Sublime Porte demanded damages from Schliemann in the amount of 10,000 francs. Schliemann offered 50,000 francs on the condition that the money would be used to finance archaeological work. Schliemann proposed to the young Greek state to build a museum in Athens at its own expense to display the treasure, provided that during the archaeologist’s lifetime the treasure would remain his property and that he would be given permission to conduct large-scale archaeological excavations in Greece. For political reasons, Greece rejected this offer; for financial and political reasons, museums in London, Paris and Naples also rejected Schliemann's treasure. In the end, Prussia and the German Empire announced their desire to accept the treasure into the Ancient Collection.

Moscow

At the end of World War II in 1945, Professor Wilhelm Unferzagt handed over the Priam treasure along with other works of ancient art to the Soviet commandant's office. Priam's treasure was transported to the USSR as trophy art. From that moment on, the fate of Priam's treasure was unknown, and it was considered lost. In the Soviet Union, the “trophies” from Berlin were kept in extreme secrecy, and only in 1993 the Russian government announced that the treasures of Troy were in Moscow. Only on April 16, 1996, 51 years later, Priam’s treasure was exhibited at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The issue of returning valuables to Germany has not been resolved to date.

Theories about the falsification of the treasure by Schliemann

The German writer Uwe Topper in his book “Falsifications of History” suggested that Priam’s treasure was made by order of Schliemann by one of the Athenian jewelers. From his point of view, suspicious is the rather simplified stereotypical style in which gold products are made: Priam's 23-carat drink vessel resembles a 19th-century gravy boat. Another theory of Schliemann's falsification of the treasure claims that all the vessels were simply purchased. The theories were rejected by the vast majority of the scientific world.

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Literature

• Krish E. G. Treasures of Troy and their history = Elli G. Kriesch. Der Schatz von Troja und seine Geschichte. - Hamburg, Carlsen Verlag GmbH, 1994 / Trans. with him. E. Markovich. - M.: A/O Publishing House "Raduga", 1996. - 240 p. - 15,000 copies. - ISBN 3-551-85020-8; ISBN 5-05-004386-7.
• Klein L.S. Shadow of stolen gold // Smena: newspaper. - 1990. - No. 236, October 10, 1990. - P. 4.

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Excerpt describing Priam's Treasure

A burning, unfamiliar pain threw me into the alien and cold world of adults, never giving me the opportunity to return back. My fragile, bright, fairy-tale children's world was broken into thousands of small pieces, which (I somehow knew) I would never be able to completely restore. Of course, I was still a small six-year-old child, with my dreams and fantasies, but at the same time, I already knew for sure that this wonderful world of ours is not always so fabulously beautiful, and it turns out that it is not always safe to exist in it ...
I remember how literally a few weeks before that terrible day, my grandfather and I were sitting in the garden and “listening” to the sunset. For some reason, grandfather was quiet and sad, but this sadness was very warm and bright, and even somehow deeply kind... Now I understand that he already knew then that he would be leaving very soon... But, unfortunately, not I knew this.
“Someday, after many, many years... when I’m no longer next to you, you will also look at the sunset, listen to the trees... and maybe sometimes remember your old grandfather,” grandfather’s voice gurgled like a quiet stream. – Life is very dear and beautiful, baby, even if at times it may seem cruel and unfair to you... Whatever happens to you, remember: you have the most important thing - your honor and your human dignity, which no one can have from you take them away, and no one can drop them except you... Keep it, baby, and don’t let anyone break you, and everything else in life can be replenished...
He rocked me like a little child in his dry and always warm arms. And it was so amazingly calm that I was afraid to breathe, so as not to accidentally frighten away this wonderful moment, when the soul warms up and rests, when the whole world seems huge and so extraordinarily kind... when suddenly the meaning of his words dawned on me!!!
I jumped up like a disheveled chicken, choking with indignation, and, as luck would have it, unable to find in my “rebellious” head the words that were so necessary at that moment. It was so offensive and completely unfair!.. Well, why on such a wonderful evening did he suddenly need to start talking about that sad and inevitable thing that (even I already understood) would sooner or later have to happen?! My heart did not want to listen to this and did not want to accept such “horror”. And it was completely natural - after all, all of us, even children, so do not want to admit this sad fact to ourselves that we pretend that it will never happen. Maybe with someone, somewhere, sometime, but not with us... and never...
Naturally, all the charm of our wonderful evening disappeared somewhere and I no longer wanted to dream about anything else. Life again made me understand that, no matter how hard we try, not so many of us are truly given the right to have control in this world... The death of my grandfather truly turned my whole life upside down in the literal sense of the word. He died in my children's arms when I was only six years old. It happened early on a sunny morning, when everything around seemed so happy, affectionate and kind. In the garden, the first awakened birds happily called to each other, cheerfully passing on the latest news to each other. The rosy-cheeked dawn, softened by the last morning's sleep, was just opening her eyes, washed with morning dew. The air was fragrant with the amazingly “delicious” smells of a summer riot of flowers.
Life was so pure and beautiful!.. And it was absolutely impossible to imagine that trouble could suddenly mercilessly burst into such a fabulously wonderful world. She simply had no right to do this!!! But it is not in vain that it is said that trouble always comes uninvited and never asks permission to enter. So this morning she came to us without knocking, and playfully destroyed my seemingly well-protected, affectionate and sunny children’s world, leaving only unbearable pain and the terrible, cold emptiness of the first loss in my life...

“The British Empire is dead. So is the era of cultural trophies,” ends an article by English art critic Jonathan Johnson in The Guardian. He is echoed by J. J. Charlesworth in Art Review: the very fact of the referendum in Scotland showed that the system of the British Empire is hopelessly outdated and it is time to abandon its political illusions, and at the same time all claims to dominance in the art sphere. The ancient Greek statues, which have been in the British Museum for the last 150 years, are called nothing less than “looted spoils”. Hence the campaign that has unfolded in the country to return antiquities to their homeland.

Now a second wave of restitutions is beginning in Europe. The issue of returning art objects illegally exported from conquered countries is also acute in France and Germany. However, it would be a mistake to consider this only a European problem: Japan was also forced to return about 1,400 works to South Korea. This trend is explained by globalization, when the national idea is placed below interstate interests.

In Russia the situation is different. After World War II, Soviet troops removed a huge number of works from museums and private collections of the Third Reich. Later, in 1955, the USSR returned the paintings to museums in East Germany and the countries that signed the Warsaw Pact. Exhibits from Germany were kept for a long time in Moscow, Leningrad and Kyiv under the heading “Secret”, although the other winning countries had already given away most of what was exported. As a true empire, the Soviet Union did not take into account the opinion of the European public. Only in 1992 did Helmut Kohl and Boris Yeltsin begin to discuss the possibility of returning exported works to Germany. However, at this stage everything ended: in 1995, Russia imposed a moratorium on restitution.

The problem of returning works, which faces Western Europe, extends only to the plane of post-war trophies, while in Russia everything is much more complicated. After the revolution, Soviet museums enriched themselves at the expense of private “dispossessed” collections. Therefore, critics of restitution fear that by transferring things to foreign heirs, Russian descendants of collectors will be able to assert their rights. So we can say with confidence that the items below in the list will remain in domestic museums forever.

"Unknown masterpieces" in the State Hermitage

Works by French artists of the 19th and 20th centuries from the collections of Otto Krebs and Otto Gerstenberg were hidden during World War II and then taken to the Soviet Union. Many paintings from the collection were returned to Germany, but some are in the Hermitage.

The central place is occupied by the works of impressionists and post-impressionists. These are Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cezanne - in total more than 70 paintings by first-rate artists.

Pablo Picasso "Absinthe", 1901

Edgar Degas "Seated Dancer", 1879-1880.

Baldin collection of graphics in the State Hermitage

The collection consists of more than 300 drawings by such famous Western European artists as Durer, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Gogh. The collection was accidentally found by Soviet soldiers in one of the castles, where it was transported from the Kunsthalle in Bremen. Captain Baldin saved the precious sheets from theft and sent them to Moscow. Now they are in the Hermitage.

Albrecht Durer "Women's Bath", 1496

Vincent Van Gogh "Cypress Trees on a Starry Night", 1889

Collection of Frans Koenigs in the Pushkin Museum

Banker France Koenigs was forced to sell his rich collection of drawings by old masters, and by the beginning of World War II it ended up in the Dresden gallery, from where it was removed by Soviet troops. Until the early 1990s, the drawings were kept secretly in Moscow and Kyiv. Then, in 2004, Ukraine handed over the sheets it had kept to its heirs. Moscow is not inferior: 307 drawings are in the Pushkin Museum.

Drawing by Peter Paul Rubens

Drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn

"Schliemann's Gold" in the Pushkin Museum and the State Hermitage

The objects were found by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann during excavations of Troy in 1872–1890. The collection consists of 259 items dating from 2400 - 2300 BC. e. Objects made of gold, silver, bronze and stone were stored in Berlin before the war. Now the most valuable of them are in the Pushkin Museum, the rest are in the Hermitage, and it is unlikely that anything will change. Irina Antonova, former director of the Pushkin Museum, said of the restitution: “As long as we have the gold of Troy, the Germans will remember that there was a war and that they lost it.”

Great Diadem, 2400 – 2200 BC.

Small Diadem, 2400 – 2200 BC.

Gutenberg Bibles in the Russian State Library and Moscow State University Library

European printing originated in Germany in the 15th century. Johann Gutenberg published the first book, a 42-line Bible, in the mid-1440s in the city of Mainz. Its circulation was 180 copies, but by 2009 only 47 of them had survived. By the way, one sheet of this book costs 80 thousand dollars.

Soviet troops took two Bibles from Leipzig. One of them is kept in the library of Moscow State University, and the existence of the other was announced by the authorities only in the 1990s. This copy is in the Russian State Library.

In 1869, Schliemann married a Greek woman, Sophia Engastromenos, as beautiful as Helen; Soon she, like him, plunged headlong into searching for the country of Homer - she shared with her husband both hard work and adversity. Excavations began in April 1870; in 1871, Schliemann devoted two months to them, and in the following two years - four and a half months each.

He had about a hundred workers at his disposal. He worked without sleep or rest, and nothing could detain him in his work - neither the insidious and dangerous malaria, nor the acute shortage of good drinking water, nor the intractability of workers, nor the slowness of the authorities, nor the disbelief of scientists around the world who simply believed his fool, nor much else, even worse.

In the highest part of the city stood the temple of Athena, around which Poseidon and Apollo built the wall of Pergamum - so said Homer. Consequently, the temple had to be looked for in the middle of the hill; there should have been a wall built by the gods. Breaking the top of the hill, Schliemann discovered a wall. Here he found weapons and household utensils, jewelry and vases - indisputable evidence that there was a rich city in this place. But he also found something else, and then for the first time the name of Heinrich Schliemann thundered throughout the world: under the ruins of New Ilion he discovered other ruins, under these - another: the hill looked like some kind of monstrous onion from which it was necessary to remove a layer behind the layer. As one might assume, each of the layers belonged to a specific era. Entire nations lived and died, cities flourished and died, the sword raged and fire raged, one civilization replaced another - and each time, in place of the city of the dead, a city of the living grew.

Every day of excavation brought a new surprise. Schliemann undertook his excavations in order to find Homer's Troy, but in a relatively short period he and his assistants found no less than seven disappeared cities, and later two more - nine windows into the past, about which until that time they knew nothing and did not even suspect !

But which of these nine cities was Homer's Troy, the city of heroes, the city of heroic struggle? It was clear that the lower layer dates back to the most distant times, that it is the most ancient layer, so ancient that the use of metals was still unknown to the people of that era, and the upper layer is obviously the youngest; here the remains of that New Ilion, in which Xerxes and Alexander performed their sacrifices, should have been preserved.

Schliemann continued his excavations. In the second and third layers from the bottom, he found traces of a fire, the remains of giant ramparts and huge gates. Without hesitation, he decided: these ramparts encircled the palace of Priam, these gates were the Skaian Gate.

He discovered priceless treasures from a scientific point of view. From all that he sent home and handed over to specialists for review, the picture of the life of a distant era in all its manifestations gradually emerged more and more clearly, the face of an entire people appeared.

It was a triumph for Heinrich Schliemann, but at the same time a triumph for Homer. What was considered fairy tales and myths, what was attributed to the poet’s imagination, was in fact once reality - this has been proven.”

“It was the morning of a hot day. Schliemann, together with his wife, watched the usual progress of the excavations, not really expecting to find anything new, but still, as always, full of attention. At a depth of about 28 feet, the same wall was discovered, which Schliemann took for the wall that surrounded Priam's palace. Suddenly Schliemann's gaze was attracted by some object; he looked closely and became so excited that he acted further as if under the influence of some otherworldly force. Who knows what the workers would have done if they had seen what Schliemann saw? “Gold...” he whispered, grabbing his wife’s hand. She stared at him in surprise. “Quickly,” he continued, “send the workers home, now!” “But...” the beautiful Greek woman tried to object. “No buts,” he interrupted her, “tell them whatever you want, tell them that today is my birthday and I just remembered it, let them go celebrate. Just faster, faster!..”

The workers left. “Bring your red shawl!” - Schliemann shouted and jumped into the excavation. He worked with the knife as if possessed, not paying attention to the huge boulders of stone hanging menacingly above his head. “In the greatest haste, straining all my strength, risking my life, because the large fortress wall that I was digging through could at any moment bury me under it, I unearthed the treasure with the help of a large knife. The sight of all these objects, each of which was of colossal value, gave me courage, and I did not think about the danger.”

The ivory shone dullly, the gold rang...

Schliemann's wife held the shawl, gradually filling it with treasures of extraordinary value. Treasures of King Priam! The golden treasure of one of the most powerful kings of hoary antiquity, sprinkled with blood and tears: jewelry that belonged to people like gods, treasures that lay in the ground for three thousand years and were pulled out from under the walls of seven vanished kingdoms into the light of a new day! Schliemann did not doubt for a minute that he had found this particular treasure. And only shortly before his death it was proven that in the heat of passion he made a mistake. That Troy was not at all in the second or third layer from below, but in the sixth, and that the treasure found by Schliemann belonged to a king who lived a thousand years before Priam.

Stealing like thieves, Schliemann and his wife carefully carried the treasures to a nearby hut. A pile of treasures lay on a rough wooden table: tiaras and clasps, chains and dishes, buttons, jewelry, filigree. “It can be assumed that one of Priam’s family hastily put the treasures in the chest, without having time to remove the key from it, and tried to take them away, but died on the fortress wall at the hands of the enemy or was overtaken by fire. The chest he abandoned was immediately buried under the rubble of a nearby palace building and ashes, which formed a layer of five to six feet.” And so the dreamer Schliemann takes a pair of earrings, a necklace and puts on these ancient thousand-year-old jewelry to a twenty-year-old Greek woman - his beautiful wife. “Elena...” he whispers.

But what to do with the treasure? Schliemann will not be able to keep the discovery a secret; rumors about it will still leak out. With the help of his wife's relatives, he transports the treasures in a very adventurous manner to Athens, and from there to his homeland. And when, at the request of the Turkish ambassador, his house is sealed, the officials find nothing - there is no trace of gold.

Can you call him a thief? Turkish legislation allows for different interpretations of the question of the ownership of ancient finds; arbitrariness reigns here. Is it any wonder that a man who turned his whole life upside down to realize his dream tried to save a golden treasure for himself and thereby for European science? Had not Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin and Concardine done the same seventy years earlier? Athens at that time still belonged to Turkey. The firman received by Lord Elgin contained the following phrase: “No one should interfere with him if he wishes to remove from the Acropolis several stone slabs with inscriptions or figures.”

Elgin interpreted this phrase very broadly: he sent two hundred boxes of architectural details from the Parthenon to London. For several years, disputes continued over the ownership of these magnificent monuments of Greek art. Lord Elgin's collection cost him £74,240, and when it was purchased for the London Museum by decree of Parliament in 1816, he was paid £35,000, which was not even half its value.

Having found the “treasure of King Priam,” Schliemann felt that he had reached the pinnacle of life. Was it possible to count on anything more after such success?

“Yes, during his first excavations Schliemann made serious mistakes. He destroyed a number of ancient structures, he destroyed walls, and all of this was of some value. But Ed. Mayer, the greatest German historian, forgives him for this. “For science,” he wrote, “the method of Schliemann, who began his search in the lowest layers, turned out to be very fruitful; with systematic excavations it would be very difficult to discover the old layers hidden in the thickness of the hill, and thereby the culture that we designate as Trojan.”

The tragic failure was that the first definitions and dates of it were almost all wrong. But when Columbus discovered America, he believed that he had managed to reach the shores of India - does this in any way detract from his merits?

From the book: K.V. Ceram. “Gods. Tombs. Scientists"