A final season of excavating at Beycesultan was arranged in the autumn of 1959 and lasted from 15th September to 28th October. The work was once more in charge of the Director, who was accompanied by Mrs. Seton Lloyd and a staff consisting of Mr. Martin Harrison (Institute Scholar for 1958–59) and Mrs. Harrison, Mr. Harry Smith of Christ's College, Cambridge, Miss Carol Cruikshank, Mr. Michael Brett as architect and Bay Osman Aksoy as Turkish Government representative. The Assistant Director and Miss Clare Goff also took part in the excavations during the second half of the season.

It had been decided on this occasion to concentrate the entire resources of the expedition on the continued clearance of the Middle Bronze Age palace on the eastern summit of the mound, partly excavated in the seasons of 1954 and 1955, in the hope of recovering as much of the plan as possible before the excavations finally closed down. This was accomplished with considerable success. Two large new areas of the building were cleared and a point reached where any further extension would have met with serious practical difficulties.

I pass now to the eastern side of the central mountain range, to the ancient sites lying east and west of the main Burdur–Antalya road.

In the little plain of Çineovası, 13 km. from Burdur, about 300 yards east of the main road, just opposite the 110th kilometre-stone from Antalya, is a rocky hill some 40 m. high carrying a small fortified site that seems hitherto to have escaped observation. The top of the hill has been levelled to form an area some 25 by 15 m., surrounded on all four sides by a wall of excellent coursed polygonal masonry 1·20 m. thick (Pl. Va). On the west this wall merely supplements the precipitous rock-face; on the other sides it still stands to a height of some 5 m., and was originally much higher, as beds for polygonal blocks can be seen in several places in the rock-surface on the summit, and great quantities of these blocks are lying on the slopes below. In the interior are traces of four or five walls up to 1 m. thick, now flush with the ground, and a large rock-cut cistern some 5 by 4 m. and over 2 m. deep. At the south-east corner are the collapsed ruins of an ornamented building, the blocks carefully cut, with mouldings and clamp-holes; one of these blocks forms a shallow anta. Two architectural blocks apparently belonging to this building are lying in the cistern.

A third season of excavations at Hacılar, carried out under the auspices of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, lasted from 10th August to 11th September, 1959.

The Assistant Director was in charge of the excavations, ably assisted by Mrs. Mellaart, Miss Clare Goff (surveyor), Mr. David Stronach (field assistant and photographer) and Mr. David French (pottery expert). Mr. David French also kindly provided the transport for the expedition. The Turkish Department of Antiquities was again represented by Bay Osman Aksoy, whose efficiency relieved the Director of much administrative anxiety.

Once again we record our gratitude to Mr. Seton Lloyd for his help and advice, to the Department of Antiquities and to the local authorities in Burdur.

Among the visitors to the Hacılar excavations, we must mention Mr. and Mrs. Seton Lloyd, the Vali of Burdur and a party of local dignitaries from Burdur, Mr. Charles Burney and Miss Burney, who kindly drew our figurines, Professor Machteld Mellink, Bay Burhan Tezcan, Mrs. I. D. Stronach and Mr. and Mrs. J. Lanfear.

The myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal has long been known to Assyriologists from a Middle Babylonian tablet found among the diplomatic archives of Tell El Amarna. The tablet had apparently been imported into Egypt, perhaps from Syria, together with a similar one inscribed with the myth of Adapa, as a school-text for the training of scribes. It was only in 1951 that fragments of a late Assyrian version of the tale were unearthed at Sultantepe. In 1953, after the numerous fragments had been baked and joined, the text was identified by the present writer and a preliminary account of it was given by him in a lecture delivered early in 1955. The cuneiform text was published in 1957 and a full edition was promised for this journal. The present article is intended to fulfil that promise. The Sultantepe tablet remains the sole authority for the late Assyrian version of the tale, not a single fragment having come to light from any other source.

The two stones described below were discovered by the writer during journeys in Pontus made in the summer of 1958, as joint-scholar of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. It is hoped to publish shortly the remainder of the material recorded in that and in the following year. 1. Zile, lying inside the castle. Milestone, much weathered.

H. c. 1·50; letters 0·03 to 0·08; between lines c. 0·03.

For two other milestones of Severus Alexander from the Zela–Sebastopolis road see F. Cumont in CRAI. 1905, p. 347 f. One of these was found 2 km. to the south-east of Zile and its text bears a strong similarity to that published here; a comparison of the two is illuminating for both. I shall refer to the stone published by Cumont as “the Ağbaba stone”, as it was evidently found close to Ağbaba Tepesi, and to the stone published here as “the Zile stone”.

The material in this article was collected during a three-month stay in Trebizond (now Trabzon) in the summer of 1958, financed by the Henry L. Florence bursary awarded by the R.I.B.A., to whom I am most grateful not only for the bursary but for permission to publish the material collected.

My especial thanks are due to Mr. David Winfield, leader of the Russell Trust Expedition which is cleaning the wall-paintings in St. Sophia, Trebizond, for immense help and encouragement and for introductions both to churches and to officials; to the officials, especially the Director of Education and the Mufti, for their courtesy and assistance; to Bayan Aliye Aşurbay; and to the many tapeholders, both Turkish and British, who were pressed into service.

This article comprises descriptive and explanatory notes on a number of plans made during a plane-table survey carried out by the authors in the Van region in the summer of 1957. In addition to the plans and photographs, there are two details, one being an elevation. The form of publication is partly determined by the appearance of sketch-plans of most of these Urartian fortresses in a preliminary article. Apart from correction of certain errors in that article, the general information given therein will not be repeated. For the position of the various fortresses reference should be made to the map published in that preliminary report. To the sites marked thereon should be added two more, Aznavur and Kancıklı, both near Patnos, on the road north-west from Erciş. to Karaköse and thus some way north of Lake Van. Both are of major importance: Aznavur lies one mile north-west of Patnos and Kancıklı some nine miles south-east.

Ottoman town houses of the later 19th century still exist in considerable numbers throughout the bounds of the Empire, and a number of them have received the attention of students. Remains of houses of an earlier date are much less common, and the development of the country house or konak in the years succeeding the age of castles is as yet imperfectly understood.

Although the rich and fertile lands of the Empire of Trebizond had been firmly under Ottoman control since the end of the 15th century, many castles were still inhabited in the 19th century. The majority of the many country houses that remain along the shore of the Black Sea near Trebizond (Trabzon) axe no more than seventy-five years old. Not far from Trebizond itself are the foundations and slight ruins of a 16th or 17th century konak, the proper study of which would entail excavation. The members of the 1958 Walker Trust Expedition had, however, the opportunity of visiting a konak older than most of the rest, built at about three miles east of Sürmene in the village of Sürmene Kastıl. (Kastıl is not a word of Turkish origin, and is perhaps derived from “castello”, a memorial of Genoese and Venetian trading interests in the middle ages.) The exact history of the konak is unknown, but the villagers agree that it was built by a member of the family of Yakupoğlu (a surname borne by the present occupants, and by many others in the area) about 150 years ago.

Anzaf lies approximately north-east of the modern town of Van, and rather less than ten miles from it by road; it is just off, and south-east of, the main road which leads from Van to Erçek and beyond in the direction of the modern frontier between Turkey and Iran and of the high mountains west of Khoi. Three published Urartian inscriptions, all of Menua, are described as having come from Anzaf; and there are, in the neighbourhood of the village, remains of two anciently walled places; one is on an eminence (from which Lake Erçek is visible) above, and close to, the village, which it conceals from the main road; the other is on the other side of the main road, about a mile distant from the village on the way to Van.