Heinrich Schliemann

Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890) was a German businessman and pioneer of archaeology. The son of a poor Mecklenburg pastor, he made a fortune in trade in St. Petersburg and in the California gold rush, and retired at forty-six to pursue his conviction that Homer described real places. From 1871 he excavated the mound of Hisarlik in Turkey, identifying it as Troy and finding the hoard he called Priam's Treasure; in 1876 he opened the shaft graves at Mycenae with their gold masks, and he later dug at Tiryns. His methods were destructive and his claims extravagant, but he revealed the Bronze Age Aegean to the modern world.