Can archaeology unearth evidence that proves Bible stories and ancient legends are true? From the earliest days of this new science, its practitioners have been fired by the desire to know what evidence could be uncovered for the great books of Western culture, such as the ancient Greek poet Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, with their stories of the Trojan war, or the New Testament of the Bible and its account of the life of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. But is it possible to find proof of events that have been passed down the centuries as myths and stories? After all, the chances of discovering evidence of Jesus, a poor itinerant preacher, are extremely small: only one mention has survived of Pontius Pilate, despite the fact that he was the most powerful man in the region at the time. Yet such odds have not prevented people from undertaking the quest. The following sections show how some of the most famous personalities in archaeology – from Heinrich Schliemann (the original Indiana Jones) to Flinders Petrie (who dug up much of ancient Palestine) – hunted for the actual sites of some of the most famous happenings in the history of the world.
	1871 SCHLIEMANN and TROY The German scholar Heinrich Schliemann arrives in western Turkey. It is his first field trip and he is searching for the legendary city of Troy, which has fascinated him since he read about it in Homer's poems. Although nobody knows where Troy stood, Schliemann listens to the stories told by local people and gets lucky while excavating a mound called Hissarlik. Schliemann finds precious artefacts – including golden and silver treasure which captures the imagination of the world – and makes precise measurements of the numerous layers of habitation. But, despite his scholarship, Schliemann gets into trouble with the Turkish government, which sues him for exporting his findings. After settling with the Turkish government, Schliemann returns to Troy with a team of German archaeologists. Gradually, they realise that what they had at first thought was the legendary Trojan King Priam’s treasure actually belongs to an earlier civilisation. Although this site is still called Homer’s Troy, modern archaeologists agree that there is no concrete proof of the existence of heroes such as Achilles and Hector. The events so vividly described by Homer happened solely in his imagination.
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	1874 SCHLIEMANN and MYCENAE According to legend, the ancient walled city of Mycenae was the home of Agamemnon, who led the Greek forces in the war against Troy. Schliemann turns his attention to Mycenae in Greece and discovers six tombs of priceless treasure which he thinks may once have belonged to the heroes of legend. His excavations show that the ancient Mycenaeans were a wealthy and powerful people. One skeleton is found laden with five kilograms of gold. Rich goblets and armour are also found. In one grave, Schliemann discovers a gold face mask of a bearded man. It becomes known as the ‘Mask of Agamemnon’, but there is no actual evidence that a man called Agamemnon existed. Slowly, Schliemann realises that the events of Homer’s poems cannot be substantiated by archaeology. By excavating the past, he gradually becomes a more systematic archaeologist and changes his views to suit the evidence instead of bending the evidence to suit his ideas. When he realises that none of the everyday artefacts of Mycenae is the same as those of Troy, and that the two ancient cities probably had nothing to do with each other, he begins to doubt whether Homer is a reliable guide to the past.
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	1890 PETRIE and ISRAEL A young British archaeologist, Flinders Petrie, is invited by the Palestine Excavation Fund to come and excavate in Palestine. This Christian body wants him to establish a framework for the history of the Bible lands. At Tell el Hesi, Petrie finds an exposed riverbank and makes a time chart for all the strata of sediment, which go back hundreds of years BC. This is the first scientific dating of the Biblical era. Later, in Thebes (modern-day Luxor), Petrie discovers by chance a mention of an ancient tribe called Israel which has been conquered by an Egyptian pharaoh. For the first time, there is proof that the ancient Israelites existed and were not just a figment of a Bible writer’s imagination.
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	1920s-30s GARSTANG and PALESTINE Following the First World War, Palestine is governed by the British, and a Department of Antiquities is established, whose director, John Garstang, is one of Petrie's pupils. He calls a meeting with three other eminent archaeologists, a French Dominican priest, an American professor and an English vicar, and they decide that the archaeology of the Holy Land should adopt the terminology used in Europe – Iron, Bronze and Stone Age – rather than any Biblical names for past epochs. But after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, control over archaeology in the Holy Land passes to Israel, whose archaeologists want a more Biblical naming of the past. A system is proposed in which the Bronze Age becomes the Canaanite Age, and the Iron Age is renamed the Israelite Age: this is accepted by those sympathetic to modern Israel, but rejected by those more sympathetic to the Palestinians.
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	1922 WOOLLEY and TELL MUKAYYER A British archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley, grabs headlines while excavating golden treasures from Tell Mukayyer in Iraq. In strata dating to the 3rd millennium BC, Woolley finds the remains of a noble lady and her attendants in a mass grave. Christened the Death Pit, the haul of treasure is extraordinarily rich. To get more funding, Woolley says that Tell Mukayyer had been one of the greatest cities of ancient Mesopotamia, one of the centres of Sumerian culture. He names it Ur, the city in which Abraham was born, and from where he started his long Biblical journey to Egypt and Canaan. Woolley finds a house of the same period and calls it 'House of the time of Abraham', which soon becomes known as the 'House of Abraham'. In later excavations, at the deepest levels of human habitation at Tell Mukayyer, Woolley comes across a band of silt in the strata, and claims that this is evidence of the flood which features in the Biblical story of Noah. The truth, however, remains that neither Abraham nor Noah's flood can be located at Tell Mukayyer beyond reasonable scientific doubt.
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	1951 ST ANNE'S, JERUSALEM Archaeologists from the Dominican Bible School begin excavations beside the crusader church of St Anne at Jerusalem. This is the traditional site of the birthplace of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and stands near the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross. Under the present church, the Dominican fathers discover the ruins of a 5th-century Byzantine basilica, and the remains of a 2nd-century ancient temple. Beneath the temple floor, they find the ruins of an older shrine. There is speculation that this may be the site of Bethesda, where, says the gospel of St John, Jesus healed the sick. Other excavations in Nazareth, Galilee, Bethlehem and Jerusalem confirm the extraordinary accuracy of detail in the New Testament's description of early 1st-century Palestine. But although much of the New Testament's background detail is confirmed by archaeology, no evidence of Jesus or of his miracles has yet been unearthed.
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