Buried Cities, vol 3, Mycenae | Page 3

He rented houses in the little village. Myceae was a busy
place again after three thousand years. More than a hundred men were
digging on the top of this hill. They wore the fezes and kilts of the
modern Greek. Little two-wheeled horse-carts creaked about, loading
and dumping.
Some of the men were working about the wall near the stone lions.
"This is the great gate of the city," said Dr. Schliemann. "Here the king

and his warriors used to march through, thousands of years ago. But it
is filled up with dirt. We must clear it out. We must get down to the
very stones they trod."
But it was slow work. The men found the earth full of great stone
blocks. They had to dig around them carefully, so that Dr. Schliemann
might see what they were.
"How did so many great stones come here?" they said among
themselves.
Then Dr. Schliemann told them. He pointed to the wall above the gate.
"Once, long, long ago," he said, "the warriors of Mycenae stood up
there. Down here stood an army--the men of Argos, their enemies. The
men of Argos battered at the gate. They shot arrows at the men of
Mycenae, and the men of Mycenae shot at the Argives, and they threw
down great stones upon them. See, here is one of those broken stones,
and here, and here. After a long time the people of Mycenae had no
food left in their city. Their warriors fainted from hunger. Then the
Argives beat down the gate. They rushed into the city and drove out the
people. They did not want men ever again to live in Mycenae, so they
took crowbars and tried to tear down the wall. A few stones they
knocked off. See, here, and here, and here they are, where they fell off
the wall. But these great stones are very heavy. This one must weigh a
hundred twenty tons,--more than all the people of your village. So the
Argives gave up the attempt, and there stand the walls yet. Then the
rain washed down the dirt from the hill and covered these great stones,
and now we are digging them out again."
The men worked at the gateway for many weeks. At last all the dirt and
the blocks had been cleared away. The tall gateway stood open. A hole
was in the stone door-casing at top and bottom. Schliemann put his
hand into it.
"See!" he cried. "Here turned the wooden hinge of the gate."
He pointed to another large hole on the side of the casing. "Here the
gatekeeper thrust in the beam to hold the gate shut."
Just inside the gate he found the little room where the keeper had
stayed. He found also two little sentry boxes high up on the wall. Here
guards had stood and looked over the country, keeping watch against
enemies. From the gate the wall bent around the edge of the hilltop,
shutting it in. In two places had been towers for watchmen. Inside this

great wall the king's palace and a few houses had been safe. Outside,
other houses had been built. But in time of war all the people had
flocked into the fortress. The gate had been shut. The warriors had
stood on the wall to defend their city.
But while some of Dr. Schliemann's men were digging at the gateway
and the wall, others were working outside the city. They were making a
great hole, a hundred and thirteen feet square. They put the dirt into
baskets and carried it to the little carts to be hauled away. And always
Dr. Schliemann and his wife worked with them. From morning until
dusk every day they were there. It was August, and the sun was hot.
The wind blew dust into their faces and made their eyes sore, and yet
they were happy. Every day they found some little thing that excited
them,--a terra cotta goblet, a broken piece of a bone lyre, a bronze ax,
the ashes of an ancient fire.
At first Dr. Schliemann and his wife had fingered over every spadeful
of dirt. There might be something precious in it. "Dig carefully,
carefully!" Dr. Schliemann had said to the workmen. "Nothing must be
broken. Nothing must be lost. I must see everything. Perhaps a bit of a
broken vase may tell a wonderful story."
But during this work of many weeks he had taught his workmen how to
dig. Now each man looked over every spadeful of earth himself, as he
dug it up. He took out every scrap of stone or wood or pottery or metal
and gave it to Schliemann or his wife. So the excavators had only to
study these things and to tell the men where