Schliemann Digs Up Troy

Why this matters

In 1874, Schliemann photographed his wife Sophia wearing gold from the dig and called it the "Jewels of Helen," even though that gold came from a layer roughly a thousand years too old for any Trojan War queen. A staged photograph shaped public memory of this discovery more than the archaeology did.

The great trench is the part I linger on longest, since it did not just damage the site, it erased the record of where within Hisarlik each object was found. That loss matters more than the treasure itself, since an object without context tells archaeologists far less than one properly recorded.

From one teacher to another

I put Schliemann's own words in front of my students before I tell them what's wrong with them, because his 1875 account of finding "Priam's Treasure" reads like he's the hero of his own story. Then I show them the math: the gold is real, but it's Troy II gold, roughly a thousand years too old for any Trojan War king. My students end up running an audit on a guy who cut a trench straight through his own evidence and still get to credit him for proving a real Bronze Age city was down there. It's a good lesson in holding credit and criticism about the same person at once, instead of picking a side too early.