119 / 500
119
Schliemann’s journey to Italy, Egypt and the Near East in
the winter of 1858-1859: the A3 diary
Christo S. I. Thanos
We know Henry Schliemann as the most famous and most talked-about archae-
ologist of the 19th century. Much has been written in the last fifty years about
Schliemann, in particular about his excavations, his marriages and his relation-
ships with family members. But he had also been a trader and an inveterate travel-
ler. Surprisingly, relatively little has been written about the many journeys that he
made. A large part of these travels has been recorded in his diaries, but these have
hardly been made available to the general public, let alone been published. In this
article
1
I will briefly go into the first results of the examination of Schliemann’s
third diary, his journey to Italy, Egypt and the Near East. This diary not only de-
scribes what he saw during that journey but also provides us with more insight into
Schliemann as a person.
Schliemann was a polyglot and ultimately mastered about 18 languages. He also
wrote his letters and diaries in various languages and this diary is no exception.
A large part was written in Italian, New Greek and Arabic, some pages are in
English, French and Swedish. The Greek, French, English and Swedish texts have
been translated in the meantime.
To this day very little has been published about Schliemann’s journey in 1858.
I could only find two publications which intrinsically say something about that
journey. The first publication concerns a summary of outlines of the journey by
Ernst Meyer in 1969
2
. The second publication concerns surprisingly a complete
transcription of over three pages of Schliemann’s visit to Petra
3
. In the literature on
Schliemann there are otherwise only sporadic references. Perhaps though the diary
was barely accessible because of the use of many different languages.
The diary is part of a huge archive in Athens and is not a separate entity. I will
therefore briefly touch upon the place of this diary within the archive. Next with the
1
This article is based on my presentation at the 11. Internationales Kolloquium:
Archäologie und
Archäologen im 19. Jahrhundert
, held at Ankershagen and Neubrandenburg from September 3- 6,
2015. Translation by Mrs drs. K. Fennema, the Netherlands.
2
Meyer 1969: 165-174
.
3
Stephan G. Schmid, 2007. I would like to thank dr. Rolf. A. Stucky for this literature reference.