Old Worlds to Conquer

GODS, GRAVES & SCHOLARS (426 pp.)--C. W. Ceram--Knopf ($5.75).

"Gold!" cried the grizzled German archeologist, clutching the arm of his beautiful young Greek wife. They stared down into the excavation. "Quick!" he whispered. "Send the men home at once . . . Tell them anything you want." A few minutes later the unsuspecting workmen were gone, and Heinrich Schliemann, a knife in his hand and a frenzy in his head, was digging gold bangles and diadems out of the foundations of Homeric Troy. Priam's treasure! The words roared in his ears. Staggering up, Schliemann looped a necklace 3,000 years old around the neck of his 20-year-old wife. "Helen!" he breathed.

The moment was a thought theatrical. Yet, as C. W. Ceram shows in Gods, Graves & Scholars, in archeology, the theatrical climax is commonplace. Ceram, a West German book editor who has made archeology his hobby, set out to do for his subject what Paul de Kruif did long ago for bacteriology in Microbe Hunters. The result is a highly readable series of biographical profiles: of the Frenchman, Jean Franc,ois Champollion, who unriddled the ancient babble of the Rosetta Stone; of Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, who dug up King Tut, and of several more. The biographical sketches carry the story of archeology nicely along, and if the atmosphere of the book is a bit dustier than that of Microbe Hunters, it is not so much Ceram's fault as the fault of his subject.

Dream & Fulfillment. The most resounding personality in Ceram's book is that of Heinrich Schliemann. His career began when he was only seven, with a prophecy: "When I am big," he told his father, "I shall go to Greece and find Troy and the King's treasure." Herr Schliemann laughed, but Heinrich never forgot his resolve. He did, however, take time to learn English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Latin, Greek and Arabic, and to become a millionaire in the dyestuffs business.

In 1868, at the age of 46, Schliemann set out for Asia Minor to make his boyish dream come true. In defiance of scholarly opinion, relying solely on Homer's descriptions, Schliemann chose the mound of Hissarlik as the place to start digging. And the digging proved the professionals wrong, the amateur right--almost too right, for instead of one city, Schliemann found nine within the mound, one on top of the other. Which one was Troy?

Schliemann was convinced that Troy was the third city from the bottom, because there he found the trove of golden ornaments which he believed to be Priam's treasure, but later scholars think he was wrong, and that Priam's city was the third from the top.

Triumph & Death. Scarcely pausing to taste his success, Schliemann rushed on to Mycenae, Agamemnon's city, and there unearthed the tombs of the Mycenaean kings with their treasures of gold and priceless antiquities, and on again to Orchomenus in the Peloponnesus, where he uncovered the legendary treasury of King Minyas, and to Tiryns, the birthplace of Hercules, where he revealed the largest citadel of the Grecian world. At last, at the age of 68, Schliemann committed the only anticlimax of his career--he died in Naples of a sudden infection in his ear.

In the 61 years since Schliemann's death, archeology has become an elaborate and meticulous science. Borrowing tools from physics, chemistry and half a dozen other sciences, it has gone on to fresh triumphs in Egypt, Crete, Mesopotamia and Central America. Biggest items of unfinished business: the Inca civilization of Peru and Bolivia, the Hittite culture of Syria and Asia Minor, and the stone remains of the Indus Valley.

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