Word: troy
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Nobody really knew where Troy had stood till Heinrich Schliemann came along and dug it up. Schliemann was not a professional archeologist but a retired indigo tycoon who made his pile and then dug for fun, for treasure, and to satisfy his belief in the literal truth of Homer...
...studied his subject for five years. His first excavation was at Ithaca; his report of what he found there won him a doctorate from the University of Rostock, much abuse from resentful scholars who had no money to go digging ancient sites. Before he started his big job at Troy, divorced, he wanted to marry an appropriate Greek wife. He wrote to a friendly Greek archbishop to get him one. Her name was Sophia; she turned out to be not only beautiful but a great help. The children she bore him he insisted on calling Andromache and Agamemnon...
...excavations at Troy were successful but they found no Homeric treasure. The day before digging was to stop the two Schliemanns, standing together, saw the glint of gold. With great presence of mind they dismissed the workmen, finished the digging themselves, smuggled the treasure away in Sophia's red shawl. Technically all such finds belonged to the Turkish Government, but Schliemann got safely away with it, finally gave it to the Berlin Museum...
Schliemann discovered too much at Troy; not one stratum but several. The level at which he found the treasure he naturally wanted to believe was the Homeric city, but scholars, still disagreeing among themselves, now think Schliemann was probably wrong. A richer find-richest of all archeological finds-Schliemann made four years later, at Mycenae, Greece. His excavations at the ancient sites of Orchomenos and Tiryns were only slightly less fortunate...
Editor Henry F. Childers of the Troy (Mo.) Free Press for "continuous publication of one journal for more than 50 years...