Hissarlik, June 18, 1872. I had scarcely begun to extend a third cutting into the hill when I found a block of triglyphs of Parian marble, containing a sculpture in high relief which represents Phoebus Apollo, who, in a long woman’s robe with a girdle, is riding on the four immortal horses which pursue their career through the universe.  Nothing is to be seen of a chariot.  Above the head of the god is seen about two-thirds of the sun’s disc with twenty rays.  The face of the god is very expressive, and the folds of his robe are exquisitely sculptured; but my admiration is specially excited by the four horses, which, snorting and looking wildly forward, career through the universe with infinite power.  Their anatomy is so masterly that I confess I have never seen so masterly a work.

It is especially remarkable to find the sun-god here, for Homer knows nothing of a temple to the sun in Troy, and later history says not a word about the existence of such a temple.  However, the image of Phoebus Apollo does not prove that the sculpture must have belonged to a temple of the sun; in my opinion it may just as well have served as an ornament to any other temple.

I venture to express the opinion that the image of the sun, which I find represented here thousands and thousands of times upon the whorls of terra-cotta, must be regarded as the name or emblem of the town—­that is, Ilios.  In like manner, this sun-god shone in the form of a woman upon the propylaea of the temple of the Ilian Athena as a symbol of the sun-city.

This head of the sun-god appears to me to have so much of the Alexandrian style that I must adhere to history, and believe that this work of art belongs to the time of Lysimachus, who, according to Strabo, after the time of Alexander the Great, built here the new temple of the Ilian Athena, which Alexander had promised to the town of Ilium after the subjugation of the Persian Empire.

Were it not for the splendid terra-cottas which I find exclusively on the primary soil and as far as 6-1/2 feet above it, I could swear that at a depth of from 26 to 33 feet, I am among the ruins of the Homeric Troy. [The reader should bear in mind that Dr. Schliemann finally came back to this opinion.] For at this depth I have found a thousand wonderful objects; whereas I find little in the lowest stratum, the removal of which gives immense trouble.  We daily find some of the whorls of very fine terra-cotta, and it is curious that those which have no decorations at all are always of the ordinary shape, and of the size of small tops, or like the craters of volcanoes, while almost all those possessing decorations are flat, and in the form of a wheel.