The Mask of Troy (40 page)

‘I believe that the language of Homer was the language of Agamemnon.’

‘Mr Schliemann, I stand corrected
again
. My mind is in a perfect
hurricane
of astonishment.’

‘Scholars will ridicule me for the idea, those same scholars who mocked my quest for Troy. But I am sure of it.’

Bismarck pointed at Schliemann’s right fist. ‘And your other hand? What treasure have you concealed there?’

Schliemann held out the hand, then hesitated. ‘This, gentlemen, is truly why you are here.’ His voice was tense with excitement. ‘I knew I had to return to Troy. I believe, Mr Gladstone, that urgency, that feverish urgency, to have been the cause of my past illness. A mounting anxiety, with physical symptoms. Now that I am back here again, those symptoms have lifted. Two months ago, when we returned, we found this. To be precise, Sophia found it. She picked it from the spoil heap left beside the great trench we had dug through the site in 1871. I remembered seeing many of these, dozens, hundreds, but ignoring them in my thirst to dig deeper. I had been driven by a lust for gold, yes, but more than that, by a passion to prove that I was right, to find the Troy of Priam. And I
was
right. Yet in my enthusiasm I failed to see a greater truth that was staring at me. A truth that became my obsession in the years that followed, that vexed me day and night, that nearly overwhelmed me. Not
whether
Troy fell, but
how
. How mankind was toppled so quickly from brilliant civilization to the deepest well of barbarism. I talk not of Helen of Troy, not of the sophistry of poets, not of war caused by love and jealousy and rage, but of hard truth, the truth of power and bloodlust and the force of arms. A truth revealed not in gold and bronze, but in this.’

He opened his hand to reveal a shapeless lump about two inches across, discoloured with red and brown oxidation. Gladstone peered closely at it, bringing up his monocle again. ‘Mmm. Ferrous concretion, unless I am mistaken.’

Schliemann nodded, then held the lump between his thumb and forefinger. ‘This, gentlemen, is another arrowhead. But not an arrowhead made of bronze. An arrowhead made of
iron
.’

‘Of the age that followed the fall of Troy, you mean?’ Hoar murmured. ‘Some great battle of the Dark Ages, unknown to history, fought in the ruins of Troy?’

Schliemann shook his head emphatically. ‘These arrowheads were all found in the destruction layer of the seventh citadel.
Homeric Troy
. They were found intermingled with bronze arrowheads. After Sophia recognized this lump for what it was, we re-examined a section of the rampart we had exposed all those years ago. We found two bronze arrowheads and three of these iron ones, embedded at different places in the outer wall.’

‘Arrows fired by an attacker,’ Gladstone murmured.

‘You follow my train of thought, Mr Gladstone.’

Bismarck thumped his stick down. ‘Superior technology,’ he exclaimed. ‘That is what you have discovered, Herr Schliemann, yes?
Superior technology
.’

‘He who possessed iron in the age of bronze possessed the advantage,’ Gladstone said.

‘As he who possesses the Maxim gun in the age of the musket is tempted to war,’ Hoar murmured.

‘An advantage not in the
quality
of weapons, but in their
quantity
,’ Schliemann continued. ‘We are speaking of the very cusp of the age of iron, when the technology was in its infancy. The quality of this iron, the edge, the strength, may not have been greater than the best bronze. But that is not the point, gentlemen. The point was made by Mr Gladstone.
Tin is exceedingly rare
. It was worth its weight in gold. But iron ore is found virtually everywhere. Once you have mastered the technology, you have an unlimited raw material. And if you are the first to master the technology, before it becomes widespread, then for a few years, for a few decades perhaps,
you reign supreme
. You are king of kings.
You are god
.’

‘Agamemnon,’ Gladstone breathed. ‘You speak of
Agamemnon
.’

‘Troy was felled not by a trick of Odysseus, not by a wooden horse,’ Hoar murmured. ‘But by another kind of cunning. By the cunning of Hephaestus. By the cunning of the forge.’

‘Perfectly put, Mr Hoar,’ Schliemann said.

‘Herr Schliemann? You have a theory?’ Bismarck asked, stomping his cane again. The three men looked at Schliemann expectantly. He pocketed the arrowheads, and took a deep breath. ‘The twenty years since I first set foot on the mound of Troy have been a whirlwind for me. Some would say that I have been restless, unable to concentrate. Within two years of arriving here I announced the discovery of the treasure of King Priam. Then I went to Mycenae, and found the Mask of Agamemnon. Then I travelled around Greece, searching for the other great Bronze Age palaces, at Tiryns, at Ithaka, at Orchomenos. I went to Sicily, on the path of those western Phoenicians, the tin traders. Then I went to Egypt. I told them I was searching for the tomb of Alexander the Great, in Alexandria. The world thought I was on the hunt for yet more gold. Heinrich Schliemann, self-made millionaire, who made his fortune on the back of the California gold rush, had seen the lustre of gold at Troy and Mycenae and had fallen bewitched again, lured by Mammon. My critics shouted with glee. They were vindicated. I was no archaeologist, I was a treasure-hunter.
But they were wrong
.’

‘They were wrong,’ Gladstone murmured, ‘because you were not in search of gold. You were in search of bronze and iron.’

Schliemann clapped his hands. ‘Mr Gladstone!’ he declared. ‘You
do
understand me.’ He stared at them intensely, then pointed down the passageway. ‘The very last place where Sophia and I dug all those years ago was right here, where we stand now. We found something extraordinary, something we knew would take weeks more, months more, to dig out. We sealed it up, intending to return. I went to Mycenae seeking confirmation, and seeking a key. And I found it, gentlemen.
I found it
. We uncovered the shaft graves, the Mask of Agamemnon. But we also found another tomb, the great beehive-shaped structure I called the Treasury of Atreus. I was elated. I went to the other palaces, and I found more of them, more so-called tombs. And then to Egypt. Beneath Alexandria I found not the steps down to the tomb of Alexander, but something infinitely older. And then in a blinding flash I knew what the pyramids were for. Tombs, gentlemen, royal tombs to be sure, like the tombs of the Mycenaeans,
but something else
. The pyramids were erected at the beginning of the Bronze Age, with the explosion of power and wealth that bronze created.
The Bronze Age
, gentlemen. Structures meant to safeguard the treasures not just of the dead, but of the living as well.’

‘The Treasury of Atreus,’ Hoar murmured, the shadow of a smile on his face. ‘I believe, Mr Schliemann, you have surpassed yourself. You have kept this trail you are on a secret, yet like any good explorer you have left clues, a safeguard, perhaps, against calamity, that some future-day archaeologist might follow. Clues in the names.’

‘You chose not to call it the
Tomb
of Atreus,’ Bismarck exclaimed. ‘You chose to call it the
Treasury
of Atreus.’

‘And not a treasury of gold,’ Gladstone rejoined. ‘But a treasury of
bronze
.’

‘Herr Bismarck asked if I had a theory,’ Schliemann said. ‘So here it is. The advent of bronze technology, two thousand years before the fall of Troy, was the most revolutionary advance in human history. For the first time, people had good agricultural tools, ploughshares and sickles. They had tools for carpentry, and for masonry. And they had superior weapons.’ He delved in his pockets, and produced a clear flint arrowhead in one hand, and a leaf-shaped metal one in the other. ‘Stone points, like this one we found in the oldest Troy layer, little different from chipped tools made by their ancestors of the Stone Age, gave way to bronze weapons like this one. But there was a rub. The tin needed to make bronze was always in short supply. It was hugely prized. The power of chieftains rested on it. The smiths - the bronze-workers - were kept within the walls of palaces, of citadels. Supplies of tin and bronze were closely guarded. Great vaults were built, places that doubled as the burial ground of kings. Vaults such as the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. Vaults such as the one that I believe lies before you down this passageway, gentlemen, dug into the limestone deep beneath the citadel of Troy.’

‘You have brought us to see the treasury!’ Gladstone exclaimed.

Schliemann held up his hand. ‘There is another rub. A most extraordinary one. Bronze tools, carefully controlled, doled out by the king, their use supervised, allowed the city-states of the Aegean to flourish. A brilliant civilization emerged. But I know the question you are asking yourselves, gentlemen. You are politicians. You have seen what men will do. At Gettysburg, at Sedan. Give them weapons, and they will make war. And in the Bronze Age Aegean, men
did
fight. We know about it from Homer. The clashes of arms, the bellows and taunts of the victor, the cries of the vanquished. But these are individual combats, not pitched battles. Why? Because there was never enough bronze to equip a city-state with an army large enough to take on another city, to lay siege to it and conquer it. And sheer force of numbers was never possible, huge numbers like the sweeping tides of men we know fought battles in the ancient Near East. The mountain-girt valleys of the Aegean did not have the population, the surplus manpower. Homer reveals it: individual kings in the Greek forces contributed all they had, but it was often merely a few ships, a few hundred men. He gives us a blood-soaked stage, true, but we watch his heroes just as Romans watched gladiators, or as the masses of our industrial age might view a sporting fixture. This was a world of
peace
, gentlemen, of peace that spawned a brilliant civilization, a civilization that grew so fast and so strong that it outstripped the ability of men to destroy it with the technology at their disposal.’

‘There is a weakness in your theory,’ Bismarck rumbled. ‘A weakness we all know from our own age. Men hungry for power will form alliances, often to prosecute war, not to prevent it. And surely that is what we see in Homer. Agamemnon leads a huge alliance of all the Greeks.’

Schliemann paused. ‘When I studied at the Sorbonne before embarking on my great quest for Troy, I had a thirst to know what the living world might tell about my long-dead heroes. I travelled to the islands of the Pacific, and observed the native peoples. Where their own limitation of technology and manpower prevented them from defeating each other, they ritualized their standoffs, in an
entente cordiale
. They exchanged gifts, women, cemented friendships. They held secret ceremonies in which the chieftains would confer, at one place recognized by all as a paramount meeting place. And whenever power was unbalanced, when a new technology was introduced, gunpowder, for example, when one chieftain had a brief ascendancy before the others had the technology as well, his first objective would be to conquer that paramount place where power had always been maintained, a balance of power that had kept the peace.’

‘You speak in metaphor of Troy, I believe,’ Gladstone murmured. ‘You speak of Troy, and you speak of this chamber before us. Am I correct?’

Schliemann stared hard at them. ‘Herr Bismarck spoke of an alliance. What of this? Agamemnon, already power-hungry in his own land, straining at the leashes that keep him in his citadel of Mycenae, learns of a new technology: the technology of iron. It is not yet perfected, but he sets his smiths to work. He knows he has no time to lose before others have it too. He gambles, and embarks on his path to war before the weapons are ready. He uses all his kinship ties and his strength and he summons an alliance, one that casts its net across the Mycenaean world. They are going to the place Agamemnon has gone to before in peace, as a broker of power, as a member of a council that kept war at bay. Yes, Mr Gladstone:
they go to Troy
. The alliance provides the manpower to lay siege to the citadel, but not yet the weapons. On the island of Tenedos, Agamemnon’s smiths work day and night, experimenting, testing. For nine years, if we are to believe Homer, his army fought in the traditional way, individual duels below the walls of Troy, Achilles and Hector, Patroclus and Diomedes. For nine years Agamemnon bided his time, while the forges hissed and burned, while the technology he had secretly acquired was honed and perfected. One day, let us surmise, in that ninth year, some master smith discovered a way to forge a metal that was no longer brittle, iron that could be stronger than bronze. Suddenly the stage was set. The world groaned. Agamemnon unleashed hell. A thousand iron arrows flew into the walls of Troy. Then ten thousand arrows. Then ten thousand more. Forges, gentlemen, forges on the island of Tenedos, forges that once had wrought the finery of heroes, helmets and breastplates and spears of the finest bronze, burned and blasted day and night to produce these new weapons, weapons that overwhelmed Troy like a tidal wave, that unleashed the bonds on what men could do.’

‘And all of this because a young Trojan prince kidnapped a Greek queen named Helen?’ Hoar said.

‘The spark of war,’ Schliemann said. ‘A spark created by Agamemnon, perhaps. A subterfuge. In a world where high-status women were part of the web of alliances, it could have been enough.’

‘Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans,’ Bismarck grumbled.

‘What did you say?’ Gladstone demanded.

‘What I have said to the new kaiser, seemingly to no avail. I said to him that one day the great European war will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans. That will be our Helen of Troy.’

‘You see?’ Schliemann exclaimed. ‘We speak of a coming war as if it is inevitable. That is why I have brought you here tonight, gentlemen.’

‘What would you have us do?’ Hoar asked.