The excavations of the north side of the field belonging to Mr. Calvert, which I opened to discover other sculptures, have been stopped for some time, as I can no longer come to terms with him. At present, I have only two foremen, for I was obliged to dismiss Georgios Photidas, three weeks ago, for urgent reasons.
In conclusion, I have to mention that, during the Greek Easter festival, accompanied by my esteemed friend, Judge Schells of Ratisbon, and my wife, I visited Bunarbashi and the neighbouring heights. In their presence, I made some small excavations, and I have proved that even in the village the accumulation of _débris_ amounts only to 1¾ foot in the court-yards of the buildings, and that upon and beside the street there is nothing but the virgin earth; further, that upon the small site of Gergis, at the end of the heights, which was formerly regarded as identical with Troy, the naked rock projects everywhere; and besides, in the accumulation of _débris_, which nowhere amounts to 1¾ foot in the town itself, and to only a little more in the Acropolis, I found nothing but fragments of pottery from the Hellenic period, that is, from the third and fifth centuries B.C.
I must also add that I now positively retract my former opinion, that Ilium was inhabited up to the ninth century after Christ, and I must distinctly maintain that its site has been desolate and uninhabited since the end of the fourth century. I had allowed myself to be deceived by the statements of my esteemed friend, Mr. Frank Calvert, of the Dardanelles, who maintained that there were documents to prove that the place had been inhabited up to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries after Christ. Such documents, if they really do exist, must necessarily refer to Alexandria Troas, which is always, as for instance in the New Testament, simply called Troas; for on its site quantities of Byzantine antiquities are found even on the surface, which seem to prove that the city was inhabited up to the fourteenth century, or still longer. Here in Ilium, on the other hand, there is no trace of Byzantine architecture, of Byzantine sculpture, of Byzantine pottery, or of Byzantine coins. Altogether I found only two copper medals of Byzantine monasteries, which may have been lost by shepherds. I found hundreds of coins belonging to the time of Constantine the Great, Constans II., but no medals whatever of the later emperors.