Heinrich Schliemann at the Ancient Orient Museum

In 2012, when I visited Tokyo’s Ancient Orient Museum (古代オリエント博物館 Kodai Oriento Hakubutsukan) for the first time, I found it to be a small but well-designed museum housing many small artifacts and a few larger replicas. Well, it seems I’m back in Japan, and now that I live much closer I had definitely intended to visit the museum again sometime, but that “sometime” turned to “right away” when I learned they were hosting a special exhibit about everyone’s favourite action hero, Heinrich Schliemann.

Although the exhibit – titled ギリシア考古学の父シュリーマン　初公開！ティリンス遺跡原画の全貌 (translated by the museum as “Father of Greek Archaeology, Heinrich Schliemann; The First Exhibition of Tiryns Original Paintings”) – featured many small items from countries Schliemann visited and excavated in, the focus was 28 original pages from Schliemann and Wilhelm Dörpfeld’s report on the excavations at Tiryns. The pages belong to the Tenri University Sankokan Museum in Nara, which not too long ago announced that they’d confirmed that many of the penciled notes in the margins were written by Schliemann. In all honesty, I found these pages to be a strange thing to build a museum exhibit around and I’m baffled that they’re being sent around the country. These are pages that have been published and are not all that difficult to obtain. I admit I was impressed by the fact that I was standing mere inches from pieces of paper that Heinrich Schliemann himself wrote on (in English! so I could read it and everything!!), but that’s after many hours spent reading about him/watching documentaries about him/watching ridiculous action movies about him. I’m not sure how much interest this exhibit really holds for the more casual Schliemann fan.

Actually, the way the Ancient Orient Museum presented Schliemann was perhaps more interesting to me than the items on display. WOW they are in love with him. The first room of the exhibition showed three short videos on a loop, and in one of them a university professor from Nagoya raves about Schliemann’s genius. Schliemann’s trench is mentioned, but only because it shows his legacy still lives on at Troy; there is no mention of the artifacts it surely destroyed. This is especially odd when a corner of the museum is currently dedicated to tracking the ongoing destruction at Palmyra, accompanied by an upsetting message about how the residents of the 21st Century have failed in our duty to protect it.

A sign near the end of the exhibit started to talk about how not everyone thinks well of Schliemann, but only mentioned that the famous story of his first encounter with the Trojan War might be fiction before veering back to talk about what an amazing man he was. In the whole exhibit there was not a single mention of Frank Calvert, but there was a comic strip near the entrance that told Schliemann’s life story in a colourful manga style (understandably but still strangely focused on his trip to Japan that one time) (I was so upset that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of it). It was bizarre to visit this exhibit after reading David A. Traill’s Schliemann of Troy, which presents Schliemann as very much less than perfect as both a person and an archaeologist.

Another odd sign was the one stating that the Trojan Horse appears in the Iliad. Come on guys, that’s a rookie mistake.

One other thing I feel I must mention is that this exhibit felt less like a special exhibit and more like an overlay. Every other special exhibit I’ve visited has been in its own part of the museum, separate from the regular exhibits, but maybe the Ancient Orient Museum doesn’t have the space for that? The Schliemann exhibit was mixed right in with their regular exhibit. Their recreation of Schliemann’s hut, for instance, was the same as their recreation of an ancient house, just with different furniture, and their stela and Rosetta Stone replicas were still in their usual spots. My favourite part of all this was the Egypt room, which maybe wasn’t changed at all from its usual arrangement except for the addition of a sign at the entrance that more or less said, “What did Schliemann think of Egypt during his travels there? Let’s look at these artifacts and imagine what he might have thought.”

Overall I found it to be a very strange exhibit and I’m not sure I would recommend it unless you already have a strong interest in the subject. According to the video in this article, the pages will be travelling to Yokohama and Nagoya next year, so keep an eye out if you’re in the area. I admit I’m tempted to visit them in Yokohama just to see how differently they’re presented there.

Visitors to the museum aren’t allowed to take pictures, but you can find a few photos on the exhibit’s official page and the museum’s official Facebook page. Or you can look below the jump for three useless pictures I took of posters!

Mini-Reviews #1

All three of the books in this post are worthy of having a big long rambling post to themselves. Alas, I have been terrible at staying on top of my reviews this year, with the result that I have forgotten much of what I wanted to ramble about! So, with apologies to my readers and to the authors below, I present my first (hopefully of very few) post of mini-reviews.

~*~

Hilary Bailey: Cassandra, Princess of Troy

Novel
Pages: 325
First Published: 1993

My Thoughts: I reread this book in January and put off posting about it forever because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to properly express how much I love it. The first time I read it, I declared it to be my favourite Trojan War novel. Now I would perhaps say it is my second favourite (after The Song of Achilles, which chewed up my emotions and spat them back out), but it is a very close second.

The novel is narrated by Cassandra, who has survived the war and is living in Greece. The chapters alternate between her present life and her memories of the war, although later in the book there are also chapters from Clytemnestra’s point of view. Occasionally, there are also one-shot chapters narrated by other characters, which actually might be my least favourite part of the book because it’s never explained how these chapters ended up in what is supposed to be Cassandra’s memoir.

Ignoring those questionable one-shot chapters, one of the things I love most about this book is how realistic it feels. Bailey’s Troy is smaller and less imposing than it’s usually portrayed, the lives of the princes not as glamorous (Hector works on a farm!), and the focus on the royal family not as tight. Regular citizens are mentioned frequently, which helps the city feel more populated and alive. Some of the novel’s most haunting images are of regular people struggling to survive a war. Bailey’s depiction of the city under siege is fantastic – she considers even the smallest details and uses them to ground her story in reality. We see characters going hungry, turning on each other, facing danger every time they leave the city. I also like how committed Bailey is to keeping Cassandra’s viewpoint realistic. Well that probably doesn’t at all say what I want it to, but what I mean is I really like how some of the most famous events of the Trojan War are described in just one sentence, because Cassandra wasn’t there to witness them.

I also really like Paris in this book, which is something I rarely get to say! I think Bailey builds him up just enough as a good older brother in the beginning that I was able to feel sympathy for him later.

Cassandra, Princess of Troy is a book I recommend without reserve.

Buy it at: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca

~*~

Simon Goldhill: How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today

Non-fiction
Pages: 248
First Published: 2007

My Thoughts: The title of this book might lead you to think it’s a strict step-by-step guide, but it isn’t at all. The book is divided into six chapters, each covering a major issue that must be considered by anyone staging a modern production of a Greek tragedy. As listed on the back of the book, these six issues are: “the staging space and concept of the play; the use of the chorus; the actor’s role in an unfamiliar style of performance; the place of politics in tragedy; the question of translation; and the treatment of gods, monsters, and other strange characters of the ancient world.” Goldhill discusses how each of these would have been handled in their original context, then analyzes the approaches taken by a variety of recent productions in the U.S. and western Europe. He pretty plainly states which productions he thinks were successful and which he thinks failed, but I really liked reading about all of them – it definitely made me want to watch more Greek tragedy!

This book’s writing style is a bit of an odd mix of ~fairly casual~ and ~so academic I had to put effort into understanding it~, but it still grabbed me enough that I finished it in a weekend. Goldhill brings up a lot of points that I had never considered before, and I think I learned just as much about how Greek tragedy was originally performed as I did about how it might be performed today. The chapter that surprised me the most was the one about translation; I had never even realized that a translation style might be chosen based on the director’s overall goals for the production. Goldhill shows us three different translations of Cassandra’s speech from Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon,” and I was kind of fascinated by the three completely different styles. I never thought there could be so many different possibilities in the translation alone!

I also liked that Goldhill interviewed people who have been involved in modern productions of Greek tragedy. He quotes two different actresses talking about how sick they were after finishing a run as the title character in Sophocles’ “Electra”! Another thing I never realized is how intense that role must be.

Buy it at: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca

~*~

David A. Traill: Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit

Non-fiction
Pages: 365
First Published: 1995

My Thoughts: This is a biography of Heinrich Schliemann, and somehow I think it’s the first proper Schliemann biography I’ve actually read?! How did that happen??

I would not be surprised if this book is a controversial one, seeing as how it takes one of the most famous archaeologists in history and shows him in a less than flattering light. Having said that, however, I really think Traill is careful to treat Schliemann as fairly as possible, and I don’t think his goal in writing this book was to tarnish Schliemann’s name. He provides sources for everything he says, most of them from Schliemann’s own writings. One thing I really liked about this book is how frequently Traill quotes primary sources. He is constantly examining and comparing Schliemann’s diary, his letters, his published books, and the writings of his friends, family, and colleagues in an attempt to figure out where Schliemann was telling the truth and where he was fudging or fabricating. The book includes large portions of these primary sources so readers can examine them as well. I can’t claim to be an expert on Schliemann, but I found Traill’s interpretations very thorough and convincing. I can’t recommend this book if you want to like Schliemann, but I got a lot out of it and enjoyed reading it.

Buy it at: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca

Dror Zahavi: “The Hunt for Troy”

  

TV Movie
Original Title: Der geheimnisvolle Schatz von Troja
First Released: 2007
Run Time: 180 minutes
Starring: Heino Ferch (Heinrich Schliemann), Mélanie Doutey (Sophia), Kostja Ullmann (Demetrios)

Synopsis: True story about how famous German businessman and archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann located the ruins of the mythical ancient city of Troy in Turkey in 1868.

My Thoughts: To best understand my feelings about this movie (or maybe it is a two-part miniseries, I’m not even sure), you perhaps have to know how I was introduced to it. I was scanning the adventure movies shelf of the rental shop in the tiny city just north of the tiny town where I lived in northern Japan when I caught sight of the word トロイ (Troy) on a DVD spine. Looking at the cover (included above on the right), I was amazed both because I had never heard of the movie before and also because look at that cover. It is majestic. An awkwardly Photoshopped Indiana Jones-type hero posing in front of what may well be the horse from Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy. I would like to believe this cover is the reason photo editing was invented. Obviously I took the DVD home, expecting a cheap rip-off of Indiana Jones that was sure to be both hilarious and terrible.

I should probably insert a disclaimer here letting you know that the DVD I rented offered audio in the original German or the Japanese dub. I chose the latter and understood, I would say, about 85%; I must admit there was an entire subplot where I pretty much just had to guess what was going on. However, what I did understand was much less cheap, terrible, or Indiana Jones-y than I had been anticipating. In all honesty, I actually found it to be a fairly compelling mix of adventure story and love story and a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon.

It … was still kind of hilarious, though. Where IMDb gets off calling it a “true story,” I have no idea. Only in the most general details does this movie bear any resemblance to the historical Heinrich Schliemann’s search for Troy; it has no compunctions about adding chase scenes, gunfights or love triangles anywhere it feels they are necessary. (I never ever in my whole life thought I would ever watch a movie featuring a Heinrich Schliemann/Sophia Schliemann ~fade to black~ implied sex scene. I suppose we never can predict where life will take us.) Some of the artifacts they find at Troy are pretty fantastic as well, to the point that I would not have been surprised if the characters had unearthed an autographed photo of Achilles. And the last few scenes are way more dramatic than they have any right to be, especially when a lot of people believe that the real Heinrich Schliemann’s reports on Troy involved a not small amount of lying.

I have no idea how to end this post except to say that although I continue to be baffled that this movie exists, I really enjoyed it. If you get the chance you should totally watch it.

Watch: the trailer (in English), the garden scene (in German), the wedding scene (in German)

Buy it at: The existence of an English trailer might lead you to believe that an English language release exists, but so far I have not found that to be the case. In the meantime, those with the ability to watch Region 2 DVDs can order the German release from Amazon.de or the Japanese release from Amazon.co.jp, noting, of course, that neither release includes English subtitles.