Date:Mar 5, 2006;

Section:Arts and Life;

Page Number:D4

P.V. author’s new novel digs into archaeology

BOOK ENDS

For years Paradise Valley novelist Nancy Joaquim has been fascinated with the story of Sophia Schliemann, wife of Heinrich Schliemann, the archaeologist who claimed to have discovered the ruins and treasures of Troy.

“The Schliemanns are tailor-made for historical fiction because so much of their life story is almost like fiction itself,” says Joaquim. “Before the two discovered the ruins, most scholars believed that Homer’s ‘Iliad’ was simply fiction written for entertainment, but Schliemann’s discoveries proved that Troy really did exist and that the ‘Iliad’ was, to some extent, a historical document.”

Many authors — Daniel Boorstin and Will Durant among them — have written the story of Heinrich Schliemann’s finds, but until Joaquim’s book, no one has really delved into the contributions made by Sophia Schliemann.

“She was 30 years younger than her husband and did not want to marry him, but her mother thought it would be a good match,” Joaquim says. “And as it turned out, her mother was right. Even at her young age, Sophia was already developing into a historian, and she quickly became enthralled with Schliemann’s work. I became aware of her when I was reading a book about Troy that had beautiful color plate after color plate of the golden treasures Schliemann dug up, then saw this small black-and-white photograph of a woman wearing what was labeled as ‘the diadem (crown) of Helen of Troy.’ That woman was Sophia.”

To research and write her book, Joaquim traveled to Turkey, where the ruins of Troy are located.

“It’s still an important archaeological site, and digs are still going on,” she says. “Yes, there has been much criticism about Schliemann’s methods of working, and he was a very controversial person, but we have to keep in mind that in 1871, when he began searching for Troy in earnest, archaeology was even less than an infant science. It was little more than treasure-hunting. But I believe that Schliemann gave it credibility.”

Heinrich Schliemann died in 1890, but Sophia — the once-reluctant bride — continued his work.

“She dug in Mycenae, which proved to be a classical Greek site,” Joaquim says. “There she discovered the circular burial place with five graves and more gold than was even found in Tutankhamen’s tomb. The finds verified the existence of the Trojan War and tied Troy to Greece. So Sophia was a great woman in her own right.”

Joaquim discusses and signs “Sophia: A Woman’s Search for Troy” 7 p.m. Tuesday at Changing Hands Bookstore, 6428 S. McClintock Drive, Tempe. Information: (480) 730-0205.