What Else Did Schliemann Found In Troy?

Saturday Stories

September 22, 2018

A symbol has power. A sign, or even a person, can unite people to the same cause. There is a relic in A.J. Hartley's "The Mask of Atreus" that could transform the world by unleashing the forces of chaos. But can a mere object actually do that? It sounds incredible, but it is possible given our human tendency to strive for what we believe in – even if it means mass genocide to reach our goal.

The archeologist Deborah Miller found a priceless collection of ancient Greek treasures that no one else knew about, so it could only have been kept hidden from the public all these years – but one piece is missing. How could it so valuable that the precious antiquities were left untouched? When the police saw what was left behind, they also found a dead body.

It began with Homer centuries ago. His epic poem "The Iliad" chronicles the siege of Ilium, or Troy. The walled city fell because the enemies went hiding in a large statue of a horse left outside the gates – the Trojan Horse. King Agamemnon of Greece led the attack to take back Helen, the wife of his brother, King Menelaus of Sparta. She had been taken by Paris, the Prince of Troy who killed the demigod Achilles by shooting an arrow in his only vulnerable part – his heel. Helen, as the Bread song goes, was "The face that launched a thousand ships."

Homer's story inspired the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann to find the legendary city of Troy. He was said to have unearthed Troy in 1870 in what is now Turkey. Then Deborah discovers that Schliemann may have found things other than Priam's treasures – yet never told anyone. Who was Atreus? He was the King of Mycenae, the city founded by Perseus, the son of Zeus and the slayer of Medusa. But Atreus' Death Mask is something else. It was also in Mycenae, in the present day, that Deborah came face to face with a mysterious young man whose mission was to protect the secret.

Photo courtesy of JauntingJen.com