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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lady Lurksalot who wrote (38188)	7/22/2005 11:09:38 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 90947

Reading "Finding The Walls Of Troy" by Susan Allen. In it she mentions "The Jewels Of Helen" have reappeared, which I didn't know about. Last I had heard, they had disappeared at the end of WW2 and were believed to have been taken by the Russians. Schliemann excavated Hissarlik, believed to be the site of Troy, in the 1870s. During the excavation he happened on a large cache of jewelry. (It has been suggested, and is quite possible, that he planted them himself.) He decided this to have been Helen of Troy's jewelry- -with no real evidence to back that interpretation. (Fact is, it isn't even known that Helen ever really existed or was a narrative device for Homer's predecessors who made up the poem called the Iliad.) He had pictures taken of his wife wearing them which were published in newspapers worldwide (Schliemann was nothing if not a publicity hound) and then sent the jewelry to Berlin for display in the Berlin Museum. Berlin, including the Museum, was bombed to and shelled to rubble during WW2. The Russians were given the honor of taking Berlin, then the Allies moved in to occupy their sectors. The Museum was in the Allied sector. The jewels were missing. One of the museum employees claimed he had turned them over to the Russians. His credibility was questioned because he was connected with the archaeological branch of the SS (??!!). (I didn't know they had one.) It was thought escaping Nazis may have abscounded with them. Some believed him; some didn't. Until 1996, when they went on display at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art in Moscow. So after 51 years, they have reappeared.