Émile-Louis Burnouf was a leading nineteenth-century Orientalist and racialist author of Aryanism. He was a professor at the faculté des lettres at Nancy University, then principal of the French School at Athens from 1867–1875. He was also the author of a Sanskrit-French dictionary.

Johann Ludwig Heinrich Julius Schliemann was a German businessman and an influential amateur archaeologist. He was an advocate of the historicity of places mentioned in the works of Homer and an archaeological excavator of Hisarlik, now presumed to be the site of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns. His work lent weight to the idea that Homer's Iliad reflects historical events. Schliemann's excavation of nine levels of archaeological remains has been criticized as destructive of significant historical artifacts, including the level that is believed to be the historical Troy.