Previous preliminary reports in this journal have dealt with the results of excavations at Beycesultan conducted by our Institute in 1954 and 1955. Excavations in 1956 were on a slightly reduced scale, occupying the period of six weeks from the beginning of June until mid-July. During that time most of our energies were concentrated on a major sounding, whose purpose was to investigate the Early Bronze Age occupations of the site. By the end of the season's work, this sounding had not yet been completed. A level had been reached corresponding to one of the early sub-divisions of the Second Settlement at Troy; but at this point it was estimated that some 9 metres of occupational debris remained to be excavated, before the original virgin soil was likely to appear. Under these circumstances it has been considered that any report on our stratigraphical results would for the present be premature and should await the completion of the sounding during the course of the coming season. The notes which follow are concerned with a single isolated discovery, made in the fifteenth occupation level—the deepest to which we have yet penetrated—shortly before the temporary suspension of our work in July, 1956.

The text of Sargon's Eighth Campaign provides a challenge to the archaeologist to seek the towns which he mentions, though one must remember that many of his “towns” were hardly more than villages. For two months (mid-June till mid-August 1956) I worked on a survey of Urartian and earlier sites in the districts around Lake Van and eastward as far as the Persian frontier. Later I visited sites in the districts of Bulanık and Malazgirt (Manzikert), and two Urartian sites far to the west, at Palu and in the mountainous Dersim. Among the sites visited are several of which nothing has hitherto been published, whilst nearly all the rest are known only from the discovery of inscriptions. A few fragmentary cuneiform inscriptions were found, in addition to those already known, but the chief purpose of this survey was to discover the Urartian fortresses and towns in this region and to make sketch-plans, wherever possible, of the walls visible above the surface. Circumstances did not allow of the drawing of accurately measured plans: that is an important task, which should be carried out as soon as possible, if only because of the constant and increasing danger of stone-quarrying by local peasants. At remarkably many Urartian sites it is possible to trace the defensive wall for the greater part of its circuit.

Modern scientific excavation did not start in Turkey until the nineteen-thirties and it is therefore not surprising that Anatolian chronology has been somewhat neglected in the past.

Since the war, however, Anatolian archaeology has made rapid progress. New excavations, publication of old ones and systematic field-surveys have added a vast amount of new material, much of it stratified. These new results call for a reconsideration of Anatolian chronology, not as an adjunct to that of Syria and the Aegean, but in its own right. The recent excavations at Kültepe, near Kayseri, undertaken by T. and N. Özgüç for the Turkish Historical Society, have produced literary evidence for relating the Anatolian culture-sequences to those of Mesopotamia in and before the Hammurabi period. This new material has a direct bearing on the vexed problem of dating the Hammurabi period and the rise of the Hittite Old Kingdom and at last enables one to establish the chronology of the area, not only in relation to Mesopotamia, but also in absolute dates.

The following account of the origin, development and diffusion of certain metal types, which appear in Anatolia mainly before 2000 B.C., represents the first part of a larger study of Anatolian metalwork in the Bronze Age. The objects of this study are to bring the corpus of published material more up-to-date; to examine the typological development of the main types; to relate these types to local chronological and cultural divisions; and to indicate the wider relations of the Anatolian metal industry with other centres of production.

The need for such a study is illustrated by the fact that S. Przeworski's standard work on this subject, Die Metallindustrie Anatoliens in der Zeit von 1500–700 vor Chr., was published almost twenty years ago, at a time when modern excavation had only begun to lay the foundations of Anatolian archaeology.

More recently, Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop has included some of the Bronze Age metalwork from Anatolia in wider schemes of typological development. But as this treatment tends to compress certain details of local evolution, which are important in a study such as this, I have often had to introduce a fresh classification in order to clarify the development of the Anatolian material. To avoid confusion I have used the prefix “Western Asiatic” to distinguish Mrs. Maxwell-Hyslop's types from my own.

The text here chosen for translation can hardly be compared as literature with that presented in the preceding volume of this journal; it is, however, in some ways even more remarkable. It is a fictitious letter, purporting to be addressed by none other than Gilgamesh, the famous hero of the epic and legendary king of Uruk (Erech), to the king of another city, the name of which is only partly legible and appears to be hitherto unknown. Gilgamesh, who introduces himself as king of Ur, requests his correspondent to go to a certain mountain (or country) and send him various animals, precious stones, metals and other commodities, in quantities which are completely fantastic and absurd. They are apparently to be floated down the river to Babylon. The text concludes with threats of dire retribution if he should fail to comply with this request.

No less than three copies of this strange document have been found at Sultantepe: no trace of it has been discovered at any other site. It contains a number of specifically Assyrian grammatical forms; and its inappropriate use of the phrase “from the horizon to the zenith” to indicate the extent of a king's dominions (l. 4) is paralleled only in the annals of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 B.C.).

The four tablets published here were found in room C II, on the western side of the Assyrian acropolis at Sultantepe, during the excavations of the British Institute and the Turkish Department of Antiquities in 1951. Two of these are more or less complete, while two are only fragmentary. It is only in these last two, however, that the dates are preserved; S.U. 51/43 being dated in the eponym of Sharru-nūri, 674 B.C., and S.U. 51/43A in the eponym of Mannu-zīrni, 684 B.C. S.U. 51/36 may have had an eponym date at the end of the first line of the left edge, but that part is now lost. S.U. 51/44, contrary to the usual practice with legal documents, is undated.

There is no clear indication from the Sultantepe tablets concerning the name of the site in Assyrian times. Although the city of Ḫuzir(i)na is mentioned in line 36 of 51/36 and in a number of colophons on the literary tablets from Sultantepe, it has already been pointed out by Gurney that Sultantepe, situated about fifteen miles north of Harran, could not be identical with the city of Ḫuzirina, familiar from the Assyrian royal annals, which was situated at a distance of not more than one day's march to the west of Nasibina (Nisibis); in other words, some 130 miles to the east of Sultantepe.

The question of the site of Derbe has for many years exercised the ingenuity of those who have studied the topography of ancient Lycaonia.

As long ago as 1824 Leake wrote that “of the cities, which the journey of St. Paul has made so interesting to us, the site of one only (Iconium) is yet certainly known. Perga, Antioch of Pisidia, Lystra, and Derbe, remain to be discovered”.

Leake's own conjecture as to the site of Perga was confirmed within thirty years; Antioch was fixed beyond reasonable doubt by Arundell in 1833; and fifty-two years later Sterrett confirmed Leake's suggestion that Lystra lay at Hatunsaray.

The following dedication by the council and people of Derbe, found by the writer in 1956 at Kerti Hüyük, twenty-two kilometres north-north-east of Karaman, provides an answer to the last of Leake's problems and shows that his own location of Derbe at Maden Şehir, based though it was on the slenderest of evidence, was probably closer to the truth than any of those proposed by his successors in the field.

The rock-cut church of Al Oda (the Red Room) does not seem to have been visited in the past by any European traveller. In September, 1953, on the advice of Bay Neşri Atlay, then headmaster of the Primary School at Mut, a party consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Gough, Mr. Michael Ballance and Mr. David Wilson visited the site and made a preliminary investigation. It was then decided to carry out a full examination at a later date, and this was done in August, 1955. The work was under the immediate charge of Mr. Martin Harrison of Lincoln College, Oxford, who also made reproductions in water-colour of some of the paintings and of the mosaics.

During the last century-and-a-half of the Osmanli Sultanate, the patrician families of the Court at Istanbul conformed to a social pattern no less complicated than that of their counterparts in England or France. At least three separate residences were deemed necessary, and fashion dictated a seasonal migration from one to another at fixed times in the year. The konak or town-house (often in Șișli) was occupied only from the end of November until early spring. At that season, since temperatures on the Bosphorus were still rather low, a movement was made towards the Marmara, where the family usually owned a house on the “Prince's Islands” or at one of the coastal resorts such as Erenköy, Çamlıca or Yakacık. It was the warmer months of the summer which were spent in the wooden palaces and fashionable waterside houses on the Bosphorus. Demolition, decay and above all the disastrous effects of fire have in time played havoc with these fine buildings; but a dozen or so, which still survive, testify to the elegance of a milieu which had no exact parallel elsewhere, and show a happy compromise between the contemporary architectural tastes of Europe and Asia.