Word: schliemann
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Traill eventually turned up so many discrepancies that he branded Schliemann a "pathological liar" who invented events in his diaries and books or appropriated them from other people's lives. The discovery of Priam's Treasure was evidently one more such invention. Schliemann wrote that he slipped the objects into the shawl of his second wife, Sophia, to hide them from larceny-minded laborers. According to his field notes, it didn't happen that way at all. Besides, Sophia was in Greece at the time...
Writers in those days found nothing wrong with a little embellishment to dress up a story. But as an archaeologist, Schliemann committed an even greater sin: he claimed to have found together within what he called a royal palace some objects that were almost certainly discovered separately and outside the nearby city wall. Why did he twist the facts? Probably, says Traill, because his obsession with verifying the Iliad--quite real, even if it didn't date from childhood--demanded proof that King Priam, Helen's father-in-law, existed. What better proof than a royal treasure...
...Schliemann's brazenness didn't stop there. His original dig was done without a permit from the Ottoman (now Turkish) government, and when he later got permission, it was with the understanding that he would split what he found with the Turks. But he smuggled many objects out of the country. When Turkey sued for the return of Priam's Treasure, Schliemann bought the Turkish share for a fraction of its value. He donated the treasure to Germany...
There it stayed until the end of World War II, when the advancing Red Army arrived in Berlin in 1945 and confiscated art by the truckload. The world believed Schliemann's gold was lost. Curators at the Pushkin knew better. It wasn't until 1991, however, that Russian art historians Grigorii Kozlov and Konstantin Akinsha, who had ferreted out the existence of the artifacts, announced the discovery to the West. It took two more years for the Pushkin and the Russian government to fess...
...mean other nations are cheering the Russians on, however. Germany is negotiating to recover all the artwork seized by the Soviets in 1945, including Priam's Treasure. "Contrary to custom," sniffs a statement from Berlin's Museum of Early and Pre-History, "the Pushkin Museum will be exhibiting the Schliemann gold without the participation of its owner." German curators have even broached the idea of lending the lesser Schliemann artifacts they still possess to the Pushkin, presumably in exchange for a return loan. But so far there has been no response...