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According to widely published legend, the finder of the true site of Troy was Heinrich Schliemann, adventurer, speaker of 15 languages, world traveler, and gifted amateur archaeologist.
When German businessman Heinrich Schliemann discovered a cache of ancient artifacts in the place now known as Hisarlik, Turkey, in 1873, he was quick to identify the gold jewelry, silver...
Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist and excavator of Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns. He is sometimes considered to be the modern discoverer of prehistoric Greece, though scholarship in the late 20th and early 21st centuries revealed that much self-mythologizing was involved in establishing his reputation.
In the late 19th century, a wealthy German businessman, called Heinrich Schliemann, undertook a quest to uncover the legendary city of Troy. As a child, he had become fascinated by the epic tales of Homer and the Trojan War.
In northwestern Turkey, Heinrich Schliemann excavated the site believed to be Troy in 1870. Schliemann was a German adventurer and con-man who took sole credit for the discovery, even though he was digging at the site, called Hisarlik, at the behest of British archaeologist Frank Calvert.
Schliemann proudly published his work describing the great discovery, Troy and Its Remains, in 1874. At first, he offered his collections, which included Priam’s Gold, to the Greek government, then the French, and finally the Russians.
Heinrich Schliemann's 19th-century discovery and excavation of the ancient city of Troy remains a controversial moment in the history of archaeology. Was he a pioneer of archaeology or a con man who got lucky?
His fortune made, at 41, Schliemann decided to pursue the search for Troy. Despite having no archaeological or classical education, he was convinced that the works of Homer could be used as a definitive guide to discovering the site of the lost ancient city.
In the 1860s, driven by a belief in the historical accuracy of Homer’s epics, Schliemann embarked on a quest to locate Troy. This endeavor, initiated in earnest in 1871, marked the beginning of his controversial yet momentous archaeological career.
At the age of seven, Heinrich Schliemann became so fascinated by the myth of Troy that he decided he would find it. Forty years later, in 1871, he did just that, discovering the real-life site of Homer’s lost city.