author
Heinrich Schliemann
1822–1890
Driven by an almost mythic belief in Homer, this self-made German excavator helped bring Troy and Mycenae into the modern imagination. His discoveries made him famous, even as later scholars questioned some of his methods and claims.
2 Audiobooks
Troy and Its Remains A Narrative of Researches and Discoveries Made on the Site of Ilium and in the Trojan Plain
by Heinrich Schliemann
Mycenæ: a narrative of researches and discoveries at Mycenæ and Tiryns
by Heinrich Schliemann
About the author
Born in 1822 in what is now Germany, Heinrich Schliemann began life far from academic archaeology. He first built a successful business career, then turned his wealth and energy toward the ancient world, convinced that Homer’s epics preserved real places and memories from the past.
He became best known for excavations at Hisarlık, long linked with Troy, and at Mycenae and Tiryns in Greece. Those digs made him one of the most famous archaeological figures of the 19th century and helped spark broad public fascination with Bronze Age Greece.
His legacy is complicated. Schliemann is still remembered as a pioneering popularizer of archaeology, but modern scholars have also pointed to his talent for self-dramatization and to excavation practices that damaged important layers of the sites he explored. He died in 1890, leaving behind both remarkable discoveries and lasting debate about how those discoveries were made.