Item: i109078

Authentic Medal of:

United States of America
Heinrich Schliemann – Discovery of Troy Centennial
1973 Proof Copper Token Medal 38mm (24.27 grams)
Reference: SCI 73-29 (Franklin Mint)
CENTENNIAL OF DISCOVERY OF TROY HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN, Heinrich facing 1/2 right.
Artifacts from Troy: Headdress left, pottery right.
Edge Lettering:
73 P

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Heinrich Schliemann (6 January 1822 – 26 December 1890) was a German businessman and pioneer in the field of archaeology. He was an advocate of the historicity of places mentioned in the works of Homer and an archaeological excavator of Hisarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns. His work lent weight to the idea that Homer’s Iliad reflects historical events. Schliemann’s excavation of nine levels of archaeological remains with dynamite has been criticized as destructive of significant historical artifacts, including the level that is believed to be the historical Troy.

Schliemann’s first interest of a classical nature seems to have been the location of Troy. At the time he began excavating in Turkey, the site commonly believed to be Troy was at Pınarbaşı, a hilltop at the south end of the Trojan Plain. The site had been previously excavated by English amateur archaeologist and local expert Frank Calvert. Schliemann performed soundings at Pınarbaşı but was disappointed by his findings. It was Calvert who identified Hissarlik as Troy and suggested Schliemann dig there on land owned by Calvert’s family.

Schliemann was at first skeptical about the identification of Hissarlik with Troy but was persuaded by Calvert. In 1870, Schliemann began digging at Hissarlik, and by 1873 had discovered nine buried cities.

The day before digging was to stop on 15 June 1873, was the day he discovered gold, which he took to be Priam’s Treasure trove. Recent research has confirmed several settlements on the site spanning 3,600 years. The layer that Schliemann referred to as “the Burnt City” and believed to be Troy is now thought to be from 3,000–2,000 BCE, too early to be the location of the Trojan War as Homer describes it.

He later wrote that he had seen the gold glinting in the dirt and dismissed the workmen so that he and Sophia could excavate it themselves; they removed it in her shawl. However, Schliemann’s oft-repeated story of the treasure’s being carried by Sophia in her shawl was untrue. Schliemann later admitted fabricating it; at the time of the discovery Sophia was in fact with her family in Athens, following the death of her father. Sophia later wore “the Jewels of Helen” for the public.

Schliemann smuggled the treasure out of Turkey into Greece. The Turkish government sued Schliemann in a Greek court, and Schliemann was forced to pay a 10,000 gold franc indemnity. Schliemann ended up sending 50,000 gold francs to the Constantinople Imperial Museum, and some of the artifacts. In 1874 Schliemann published Troy and Its Remains. Schliemann at first offered his collections, which included Priam’s Gold, to the Greek government, then the French, and finally the Russians. In 1881, his collections ended up in Berlin, housed first in the Ethnographic Museum, and then the Museum for Pre- and Early History, until the start of WWII. In 1939, all exhibits were packed and stored in the museum basement, then moved to the Prussian State Bank vault in January 1941. In 1941, the treasure was moved to the Flakturm located at the Berlin Zoological Garden, called the Zoo Tower. Dr. Wilhelm Unverzagt protected the three crates containing the Trojan gold when the Battle for Berlin commenced, right up until SMERSH forces took control of the tower on 1 May. On 26 May 1945, Soviet forces, led by Lt. Gen. Nikolai Antipenko, Andre Konstantinov, deputy head of the Arts Committee, Viktor Lazarev, and Serafim Druzhinin, took the three crates away on trucks. The crates were then flown to Moscow on 30 June 1945, and taken to the Pushkin Museum ten days later. In 1994, the museum admitted the collection was in their possession.

In 1876, he began digging at Mycenae. There, he discovered the Shaft Graves, with their skeletons and more regal gold, including the so-called Mask of Agamemnon. These findings were published in Mycenae in 1878. ^{57–58  226–252, 385}

Although he had received permission in 1876 to continue excavation, Schliemann did not reopen the dig site at Troy until 1878–1879, after another excavation in Ithaca designed to locate a site mentioned in the Odyssey. This was his second excavation at Troy. Emile Burnouf and Rudolf Virchow joined him there in 1879.

In 1880 Schliemann began excavation of the Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenus (Boeotia).

From 1882–1883 Schliemann made a third excavation at Troy, in 1884 an excavation of Tiryns with Wilhelm Dörpfeld (who emphasized the importance of strata), and from 1888–1890 a fourth excavation at Troy, also with Dörpfeld.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km²), the United States is the world’s third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe’s 3.9 million square miles (10.1 million km²). With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital’s federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, and the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776. The war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, and gradually admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848.

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