On the Hill of Hissarlik, June 18th, 1872.
Since my report of the 23rd of last month I have been excavating, with the consent of my honoured friend, Mr. Frank Calvert, on that half of the hill which belongs to him, on condition that I share with him the objects I may find. Here, directly beside my large platform, and at a perpendicular depth of 40 feet below the plateau, I have laid out a third platform about 109 feet broad, with an upper terrace 112 feet broad, and I have seventy men digging there. Immediately beside the edge of the steep northern declivity I found a square depression in the ground about 112 feet long and 76 feet broad, which can only have been caused by excavations made by the Turks hundreds of years ago, when searching for pillars or other kinds of marble blocks suitable for tombstones: for all of the old Turkish cemeteries in the Plain of Troy and its vicinity, nay even as far as beyond Alexandria Troas, possess thousands of such marble blocks, taken from ancient buildings. The innumerable pieces of marble, which cover the whole of Mr. Frank Calvert’s part of the plateau, leave no doubt that the field, at least that part of it with the square depression, has been ransacked by marble-seeking Turks.
I had scarcely begun to extend this third platform horizontally into the hill, when I found a block of triglyphs of Parian marble, about 6½ feet long, nearly 2 feet 10 inches high, and nearly 22 inches thick at one end, and a little over 14 inches on the other. In the middle there is a piece of sculpture in high relief, a little above 2 feet 10 inches long and nearly the same height, which represents Phœbus Apollo, who, in a long woman’s robe with a girdle, is riding on the four immortal horses which pursue their career through the universe. Nothing is to be seen of a chariot. Above the splendid, flowing, unparted, but not long hair on the head of the god, there is seen about two-thirds of the sun’s disc with ten rays 2-1/3 inches long, and ten others 3½ inches long. The face of the god is very expressive, and the folds of his long robe are so exquisitely sculptured that they vividly remind one of the masterpieces in the temple of Νίκη ἄπτερος in the Acropolis of Athens. But my admiration is especially excited by the four horses, which, snorting and looking wildly forward, career through the universe with infinite power. Their anatomy is so accurately rendered that I frankly confess that I have never seen such a masterly work. On the right and left of this metopé are Doric triglyphs; there is a third triglyph on the left side of the marble block, which is nearly 22 inches thick, whereas the right side (14 inches thick) contains no sculpture. Above and below the block, iron clamps are fastened by means of lead; and from the triglyphs on the left side I presume that this metopé, together with another sculpture which has a Doric triglyph on the right side as well, adorned the propylæa of the temple. (_See Plate IV._, p. 32.)