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David Traill’s important, painstakingly researched, warts-and-all study of
Heinrich Schliemann, Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit
(John Murray,
£19.99, ISBN 0 7195 5082 3), is a timely summary of a slippery and
mendacious scholar. Years after his death, he has been much in the news this
year as his treasure from Troy has gone on show for a year in Moscow. The
Schliemann story is thoroughly documented. But it remains certain
that—despite his indisputable greatness in some domains of
archaeology—he was a liar, a fraud, a cheat and a thief who smuggled the
treasure out of Turkey. So Turkey has the only valid claim to these
objects.