RELICS OF TROY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 177, 10 May 1935, Page 8

RELICS OF TROY.

IMPORTANT FINDS REPORTED. After years of search, archaeologists have discovered ashes of heroes of ancient Troy. More important from a scientific view, they have learned that the Troad region in Asia Minor, centring in the Troy of the Iliad, was inhabited by successive cultures of 'men as long ago as the Neilitliic age. Dr. Carl W. Blegen, professor of classical archaeology at the University of Cincinnati and director of the university’s three successive expeditions to the site of Troy announced recntly that these were some of the results of the third Cincinnati expedition’s work, states the “Liteiary Digest.” " - . The site of Troy proper is a lonely hill known as the Hill of Hissarlik. The Scammander of the Iliad is now called the Menderez, Excavations commenced about 1872 by the German Archaeological Institute established the identity of these features, and also that the Hill of Hissarlik was the site not of one, but nine successive cities. Their remains lie compressed one above the other like leavs of a book.

A Complete Floor. The sixth of these settlements (counting from the bottom) is that generally believed to have been the Troy of Priam, sung by Homer. Soundings in the ruins of a house of this settlement, stjll partly covered by t lie debris of centuries, revealed last season a complete floor, well preserved and covered with a layer of carbonised matter, such as might have been deposited upon the floors of a city destroyed by fire. This is the first house of the sixth settlement to he found with its floor intact. The stone bases of the columns, probably of wood, which supported the upper storey or roof were in place aligned in two rows, apparently five in each row. The exact arrangement cannot be determined until excavation of the house is completed.

The expedition kept a sharp look-out for objects not native to Troy. “A settlement of relatively great size and wealth, with a long history extending through the whole Bronze Age, and occupying a position almost unparalleled in its strategic aspect with reference to the main trade-routes of the ancient world, must have been a centre of traffic,” Dr. Blcgen explained recently. In such an emporium, with a flourishing business in exports and imports, it might be expected that there would be relics from other lands to provide valuable evidence for dating the prehistoric cities.

Many such items did come to light. In one portion of the excavations, in strata belonging to the sixth Troy and part of the early seventh, were found pieces of pottery in Mycenean stylo, along with the characteristic grey wares of the Trojans. One of the' most notable imported articles was a well-shaped kyljx, a shallow earthenware drinking-cup, decorated on either side with a boldly painted octopus. Dr. Blcgen believes that this article found in the upper layers of the sixth Troy, can hardly have been made later than the fourteenth century B.C. The prize of the season’s work was the discovery of nineteen undisturbed cinerary urns and fragments of many broken ones, buried just outside the citadel and attributed to the sixth Troy. Hitherto no burials have been found at the site, which is not surprising in view of these urns, which reveal that cremation was practised. Tiro jars were of many shapes. They contained ashes, remnants of burned hones, and ornaments which had not been entirely consumed by the (funeral pyres.