Steinby, Christa

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240 Arctos 56 (2022)Umberto Pappalardo (Hrsg.): Heinrich Schliemanns Reisen: Tagebücher und Briefe aus Ägypten und dem Vorderen Orient. Mit einem Beitrag von Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan. Bearbeitung Anemone Zschätzsch. Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie – Sonderbände der Antiken Welt. wbg (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), Darmstadt 2021. ISBN 978-3-8053-5319-9. 180 S. EUR 50.Heinrich Schliemann travelled throughout his life, first making business trips, then making a world tour, as he wanted to see the world with his own eyes. These trips then developed into study trips in which he was especially keen on visiting Egypt as well as other sites belonging to the ancient past of the Mediterranean. Schliemann’s diaries and letters are preserved in the Gennadius Library at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, where the material has been digitized and made accessible online. This publication shows excerpts from diaries and letters connected to different journeys between 1858 and 1888. Schliemann was a polyglot who always wanted to learn more languages and to improve his skills; he wrote his diaries in different languages and would often use the language of the country he was visiting. The actual translation and editing process of this volume has followed the rule that first all the Arabic texts would be translated into Italian by Ezzazia Souilmi and the Greek texts into Italian by Kostantinos Tziampasis. These texts and all the other texts in Italian, French and English would then be translated into German. The contemporary way of speaking and use of language as well as Schliemann’s style in writing have been preserved without unnecessary editing or modernizing.The editors have omitted the illegible parts, marking those where the reading is uncertain and adding explanations. To give some examples, Schliemann sometimes mentions a place that no longer exists or now has a different name. In those parts of the diaries where he wrote in Greek, he gives two dates for the same day, the first date according to the Gregorian calendar, the second according to the Julian calendar. As for his handwriting, reading Schliemann’s texts written in European languages is relatively easy, but the Greek letters offer some problems and reading Schliemann’s Arabic texts has proved to be difficult even for language experts. It is also interesting to learn that Schliemann had adapted different expressions from Tunisian, Egyptian and Syrian dialects of Arabic – again a testimony to his facility with languages. These difficulties also go some way to explain why this material has not been published before. Schliemann was interested in many different topics: in history, peoples, habits and customs, educational systems and many other matters. He wrote about the landscape, its flora and fauna, technical innovations, and the acquisition of commodities such as saltpetre, indigo and sugar. The last category obviously interested him as he made his money trading in these commodities. It is also 241De novis libris iudicianoteworthy that starting from his first journey, Schliemann was interested in ancient monuments, which he carefully described. He wrote down inscriptions and cartouches as well as making sketches of buildings. He also makes it clear that he bought artefacts in places he visited and donated them to museums. As to the travel routes he chose, it seems that they were carefully planned in order to avoid unnecessary risks. He bought and consulted guidebooks to know which places to visit; he journeyed with other tourists that he met on the road, both for safety and to lower the costs when, for instance, renting a boat. He travelled using steamboats and railroads – the modern inventions of his time – but he also used horses, donkeys, camels and sailing boats.  The routes of the four journeys discussed are carefully explained in maps. Most material presented in this book come from Schliemann’s first trip in 1858/1859. He started in St. Petersburg, where he then worked and lived. From there he sailed to Stockholm and then travelled through Sweden, Denmark, the western part of Germany and Switzerland to Italy and Sicily, where he boarded a ship in Syracuse and sailed to Alexandria. In Egypt, he travelled all the way to Wadi Halfa in the south. On his way back, he travelled by land, seeing Jerusalem, Petra, Damascus and other places in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as visiting Rhodes, Smyrna, Athens and Constantinople that were all, except for Athens, part of the Ottoman Empire at that time. He then returned through Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna and Prague, which all belonged to Austria-Hungary. Schliemann’s comments about Alexandria and Cairo are written in Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Italian, French and Arabic. Schliemann writes that he hired a teacher who teaches Arabic in order to improve his reading skills. The teacher accompanies him to Karnak, where they see the avenue of Sphinxes and Schliemann describes the Pylons built by Ptolemy III and the Coptic grave that he witnesses. In his second trip in 1864, Schliemann again started from St. Petersburg. He went to Tunis to see the ruins of Carthage and continued to Alexandria, but poor health forced him to interrupt his trip, and he returned to Italy to recover. There he visited Florence, Pompeii and Naples. He then started his actual tour around the world that took almost two years, visiting India, China and Japan, North America and Central America. Schliemann wrote a book on his experiences in China and Japan. The excerpts from his diary in this publication concern Alexandria, Cairo and Port Said, originally written in Arabic and Italian. Schliemann again writes about his interest in improving his Arabic and he sought out opportunities to use the language when meeting people. He saw the Suez Canal that was then under construction, and estimated that it would be finished in the next twenty years. In point of fact, it was opened in 1869. The third trip centred on Egypt and its many places of interest alongside the Nile. The journey started from Athens, and now the diary is all written in modern Greek, covering events in 1886/1887. The editor gives only some excerpts from the diary as a separate publication is underway 242 Arctos 56 (2022)with translations and comments by Christo Thanos. Since the previous visits in Egypt, Schliemann was now considerably more experienced in archaeology as he had excavated in Troy, Mycene and Tiryns, and written many publications; consequently, he has a different approach to the monuments in Egypt. The fourth trip in 1888 was also to Egypt, and this time Schliemann travelled with Rudolf Virchow. The diary from this journey is lost, but we can still learn a lot about his trip by reading Schliemann’s letters and Virchow’s letters and reports. This publication makes fascinating reading. The diaries and letters are full of interesting insights and the reader can also see actual pages from the diaries, for instance, a page written in Greek, where Schliemann has made a sketch of the Parthenon, as well as pages written in Arabic, where it is easy to discern how his writing skills improved over the years. The book is also packed with contemporary photos – a new media then – and contemporary drawings and paintings that have been chosen to show views and buildings as Schliemann might have seen them. The paintings of the Scotsman David Roberts have been used to a large extent; they show Egyptian buildings and architecture in detail as they were then, partly buried in sand. Among the photos are also those taken by Rudolf Virchow in Egypt. Christa SteinbyUniversity of HelsinkiAlfredo Sansone: Lucania romana: Ricerche di prosopografia e storia sociale. Vetera – Ricerche di storia epigrafia e antichità 23. Edizioni Quasar, Roma 2021. ISBN 978-88-5491-201-6. 390 pp. EUR 47.Nella prestigiosa collana “Vetera – Ricerche di storia epigrafia e antichità”, fondata dall’indimenticabile Silvio Panciera, con i tipi impeccabili della Quasar, è uscito da qualche mese (23° della serie) il volume di Alfredo Sansone sulla Lucania romana. Adeguatamente presentato da Heikki Solin e da Rita Scuderi, il volume si avvale di una dettagliata Introduzione dell’Autore, che esaudisce in modo completo e preciso il suo compito, dando subito dell’opera un’idea ben precisa. Vi viene specificato di primo acchito che, “per facilitare la consultazione del catalogo prosopografico e agevolare il dialogo fra i dati raccolti e le fonti di riferimento”, l’intero lavoro appare suddiviso in due parti, nella prima delle quali sono compresi i seguenti capitoli: Gli studi epigrafici in Lucania dopo il CIL (pp. 29–41)II. I confini della Lucania in età augustea (pp. 43–52)

Umberto Pappalardo (Hrsg.): Heinrich Schliemanns Reisen: Tagebücher und Briefe aus Ägypten und dem Vorderen Orient. Mit einem Beitrag von Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan. Bearbeitung Anemone Zschätzsch. Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie – Sonderbände der Antiken Welt. wbg (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), Darmstadt 2021

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