It is now more than 140 years since archaeologists began dealing with the engraved Tridacna shells, whose distribution extended from Vulci in the west to Susa in the east, and from Memphis in the south to Gordion and Vulci in the north. Their number is growing constantly and is now approaching 100. This increase is the result not only of the publication of new finds or old museum material, which until now escaped the scholar's eyes, but also of the reclassification of four items, in the past said to be imitations made of various stones, as authentic Tridacna shells.

In this article I want to show that this is true not only with the complete Tridacna shells, but also of a sub-group of Tridacna shells cut into the shape of discs. I will try to prove that the items in this sub-group are indeed Tridacna shells by describing them and discussing their motives and distribution. I will not deal with questions such as the centre of manufacture, distributors, style etc. important as they are. These aspects will be discussed by me in detail in a separate publication which will treat the Tridacna shell group as a whole.

The first fragments of the Epicurean inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda were discovered by M. Holleaux and P. Paris one hundred years ago, in December 1884, and it is particularly satisfying to be able to mark the centenary of this significant event by publishing three new fragments of Diogenes' work.

The fragments were discovered by members of a British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara team, which spent two weeks at Oenoanda in the summer of 1983 (17th–31st August) carrying forward the epigraphical and topographical survey of the site begun in 1974–7 and continued in 1981.

The members of the team were A. S. Hall (Director), J. J. Coulton, A. Farrington and R. R. R. Smith. The representative of the Turkish Government was Bay İbrahim Malkoç. A heavy debt of gratitude is owed, and warmly acknowledged, to the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Ankara, from which the permit was derived.

The past few years have witnessed a surge of interest in the development of ancient metallurgy in the Near East, and in particular, in Anatolia. Most of the work done in this field however, with the exception of analytical studies conducted in laboratories and geological surveys, hardly goes beyond the re-examination of known historical, archaeological and geological data. The results, as can be expected, are derived mainly from the re-evaluation of previous conclusions on the development of early technologies and the emergence of major production centres in the Aegean, Anatolia and Eastern Mediterranean.

Until a few years ago the origins of southeast European metallurgy were thought to be in northwest Anatolia. This traditional thesis of diffusion from the Troad to the Aegean and into the Balkans had rested on the chronological argument that the Chalcolithic cultures of Old Europe were contemporary with the EB I in Anatolia and the Aegean. The “diffusionists” lost substantial support for their theory when the chronological priority of Old European cultures based on tree-ring calibrated C-14 dates over the more traditional Near Eastern chronology was generally accepted.

The study of Anatolian kilims has much in common with Anatolian archaeology of the second millennium B.C. In both cases we have the evidence from the texts; place names in the Hittite texts, tribal and place names in the Ottoman ones. Whereas the bulk of the Hittite place names can not yet be securely located, but with certain exceptions belong to settled population groups, those from the Ottoman records refer to nomadic or semi-nomadic elements that can sometimes be pinpointed, but more often are vague and imprecise. Further information of relevance is sometimes supplied, but more often not. Neither set of records is perfect, nor answers such to us essential questions of dates, ancestry, arrival, affinity with others, subdivisions, size of country or territory inhabited etc. Most of the Hittite texts are religious or political; most of the Ottoman records dealing with tribal groups deal with taxation, or later with military service.

The basic prerequisite both for Hittite and Ottoman tribal studies is the reconstruction of a map or better still of a series of maps for various successive periods on which the events recorded in the texts and the material evidence derived from archaeology or textile production can be plotted. Here the aims are the same and so are the methods; basically fieldwork.

LÚAGRIG, Akkadian abarakku, rendered usually as “major domo”, “steward”, “overseer”, “administrator”, or an office of a similar nature, is attested in the oldest of Hittite documents. In addition to late copies of texts belonging to the Old Kingdom (the Palace Chronicle and the Telipinu Decree) the AGRIG is also found in an original Old Hittite document, the Inandik Tablet, which is probably to be dated to Hattušili I. However, the vast majority of the references are found in later texts or copies.

The Hittite reading of AGRIG is not known. It must be an a- stem as shown by the complemented forms: sg. nom. LUAGRIG-aš (KUB XI 28 III 5′), acc.

Some painted pottery recently purchased by the East Anatolian museums is of considerable interest from the point of view of second millennium cultures in the Van and Urmia Basins. Taking into account the suggestion that a cultural break occurred around Lake Van in the second millennium B.C., the importance of these painted vessels increases.

Excavations outside Eastern Anatolia, particularly in North-West Iran, have produced painted pottery in considerable quantities dating to the second millennium B.C. Haftavan Tepe and Geoy Tepe are two of the main sites which supply detailed information about this painted pottery, and suggestions have been made previously by M. R. Edwards about their distribution.

The painted pottery in the East Anatolian museums clearly demonstrates that such vessels are not restricted to the region of Lake Urmia. The occurrence of a painted pottery tradition around Lake Van may well indicate that this region was not culturally isolated in the second millennium B.C.

In Antiquity 57 David Traill claims to have exposed Schliemann's discovery of “Priam's Treasure” as a fraud (Traill, 1983). By this he means that it was not a single find as Schliemann represents, but an artificial collection put together from several different sources. The collection was formed around a group of bronzes (not identified exactly, but presumably including some of the spearheads, daggers, and flat axes) which was genuinely found on the site of Troy near the end of the 1873 season, but whose precise findspot and date of discovery Schliemann falsified. To this were added more valuable items which Schliemann had been setting aside from his excavations for just such a purpose over a period of months “or even years”. This theory was first put forward in outline in a BBC Chronicle programme on 20th January, 1982 and at that time included the further suggestion that some items were not even excavated at Troy but were bought from dealers in Constantinople or Athens. It is not clear how far Traill still holds to this notion: he acknowledges that all the pieces contained in the Treasure are appropriate to the Early Bronze Age at Troy, but at the same time hints that the purchase-theory would be a legitimate speculation (Traill, 1983, 185).

The highlands of Eastern Anatolia cannot have seemed to be a particularly attractive or accessible area to the Assyrians. The E. Taurus—the range of mountains separating the plain of Upper Mesopotamia from the highlands to the north—was rarely breached by the Assyrians: in the Middle-Assyrian period, Tiglath-pileser I claims that he went to the Nairi lands (then around Lake Van) three times; Shalmaneser III penetrated E. Anatolia through the E. Taurus in his 3rd, 7th and 15th palûs, and from N.W. Iran in his accession year and 30th and 31st palûs. Thereafter, the region lay in the hands of the Urartians and, except for the raid on Ṭurušpa carried out by Tiglath-pileser III pursuing the remnants of the army of Sarduri II after the defeat of the anti-Assyrian coalition in Kummuh in 743, was never penetrated by the Assyrian army again.

Shalmaneser's campaign of 856 began with the completion of the conquest of the Aramaean state of Bit-Adini, lying on the Euphrates to the south of Carchemish. After leaving Bit-Adini, Shalmaneser made his way to Bit-Zamani, the Diyarbakır area, and thence began his long campaign through Eastern Anatolia to Western Iran and back to Assyria.