Word: ancient
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Dates: during 1890-1899
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Students of ancient art and archaeologists had long desired the excavation of the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, with its buildings and countless works of art. Winckelmann planned, as early as the eighteenth century, an international excavation of this celebrated site, but it was reserved for the late Professor Ernst Curtius to carry out the plan. During the years 1875-1881 the entire sanctuary and the places immediately adjacent were laid bare, at the expense ($200,000) of the German government. For four years Professor Dorpfeld was charged with the conduct of the excavations as supervising architect...
...Olympia contains inscriptions, articles of bronze, and terra cottas in almost bewildering number. Professor Dorpfeld exhibited at the close of his lecture panoramic views of the ruins, which showed clearly their present condition, and enabled his audience to picture to themselves in imagination the original aspect of this ancient seat of religious worship...
...buildings. The walls were built of massive blocks of stone and were fifteen feet in width. These walls, and in particular a great tower fifty feet in width, are very impressive even in their ruins. Professor Dorpfeld declared that he knew no where else in Greece walls of any ancient city that were so solid and so strong. There is a great probability that this citadel, found under the ruins of Greek Ilion, is the Troy that was destroyed by the Greeks under Agamemnon. This supposition is made certain by the character of the objects found in the houses...
Beneath the ruins of this stately citadel five prehistoric settlements have been discovered, which were made two thousand years before Christ and in still more ancient times. Even on the photographs, as shown by the slides, these early settlements have an extremely ancient and primitive look. Of these five a srata Professor Dorpfeld described one, the second from the bottom, at length, regrading this to be of special importance. This also was a citadel with great walls and towers; Schliemann believed it to be the citadel of Priam. I this stratum he found the celebrated articles of gold which...
...Greeks and Romans, said the lecturer in closing, were convinced that the citadel of ancient Troy had occupied the site of the later city of Ilion, although they were able to see nothing of the ruins of the settlement of heroic times. Can we, then, longer doubt that Troy has actually been found, when we see before us stately walls of heroic times, and when the great importance of the site is so clearly demonstrated by its frequent prehistoric settlement...