Piety and Patriotism—Secularism and Skepticism: The Dual Problem of Archaeological Bias

It was the day before the excavation was scheduled to end. Heinrich Schliemann, the German archaeologist who discovered the site of Troy, had his crew of 80 workmen furiously digging through the tel’s various strata in quest of museum-worthy artifacts from the Homeric city (which he thought was at the bottom of the tel). Then, on June 14, 1873 an incomparable treasure of gold was found. That evening, after adorning his young Greek wife with the ancient jewelry, he reportedly told her: “You are wearing the treasure of Helen of Troy.” Today, scholars are agreed that Schliemann, in his enthusiasm to find a city worthy of Priam, had cut right through the city known to Homer’s heroes, and the gold he found belonged to a city 1000 years earlier.

Three years later Schliemann turned his attention to the ruins of Mycenae—where the expedition against Troy originated. Within a month he found royal graves, with the features of the dead exquisitely preserved on golden face-masks. Incurably romantic, Schliemann wired the King of Greece: “I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon.” Modern scholarship judges that he was again wrong, though this time by only 400 years.

These two instances illustrate the influence that romantic interest in the ancient world can have on the judgment of an archaeologist—the temptation to identify what we find with what we want to find. Perhaps the problem is intensified for the Biblical archaeologist, whose piety and patriotism often nurture and renew the romantic interest which first moved him or her to become an archaeologist.