Inscriptions and Monuments from Galatia

Extract

The war was responsible for my finding a number of interesting inscriptions and monuments in the heart of Asia Minor. I copied and sketched about two hundred, but as half of them have been previously published, I propose to deal only with the remainder here.

During the latter part of my three years' captivity, 1915–1918, with the Turks at Angora, the military authorities were hard pressed for fuel, and I was in worse straits myself for means of subsistence. Unaware of their actual predicament, I applied for work to the Commander of the Fifth Army Corps, at Angora, to enable me to earn enough wherewith to buy food. This resulted in Ismail Hakki Pasha, the Quartermaster-General at Constantinople, authorising the Commander to employ me. I was commissioned to make a geological report on the Angora Vilayet and to find coal for them. My work proved very successful; I found several outcrops of coal, copper, chrome, and indications of oil, and as a consequence received fairly liberal pay. This enabled me to save up sufficient money to escape via Samsoun to the Crimea a few months before the Armistice.

The first inscriptions seen by me were copied under restraint, but as time went on and supervision over my doings was relaxed, I was able to copy and sketch everything I came across, not only the numerous stelae at Angora, but those throughout the Vilayet, wherever I happened to be at the time.