A number of visitors to the prehistoric collections at Ankara have noticed with interest a large bowl-like vessel decorated with horned knobs, and seeming to be a portable hearth or altar. Investigating further, they find that it has companion pieces, some smaller, some differently shaped, no less odd; that all come from Karaz near Erzerum; and there are many remarkable vases, metal implements and other antiquities from the same site. The preliminary account of Karaz, by its excavator Dr. Hamit Koşay, is available for consultation in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Turkish Historical Foundation. A fuller report, by the same writer, is in preparation.

In this article it is argued once more that the Egyptian Keftiu was situated in Cilicia Tracheia, and not in Crete as has generally been supposed. For this there has already been adduced evidence drawn from many sources, and here still more, mainly cultural and historical, is added to the sum total. Some of this new evidence shows that certain features of the culture with which it deals are at home in Cilicia Tracheia and its neighbourhood, and that they have continued to exist there from ancient times right up to the present day. The thread that leads us onward is the story of an elaborate design.

Less than two thousand years ago Western Cilicia, the Cilicia Aspera of the Romans, supported a large population. Settlements in the interior were comparatively few, for the rugged character of the country forbids agriculture on any considerable scale, and communications are exceedingly difficult. On the sea-coast, however, those bays and natural anchorages which had been first the ports, and later the refuge of the pirate fleets that terrorised the Mediterranean until Pompey's campaign of 67 B.C., were thriving centres of seaborne commerce. Among the most famous of these were Corycus and Elaeusa (later Sebaste).

The discovery of new tablets of Ludlul bêl nêmeqi, which was announced in Anatolian Studies, II, p. 28, comes as a very welcome supplement to the extant Akkadian Wisdom literature, a field which has been singularly barren in new finds for several decades now, as a recent writer has commented. There are parts of two tablets: the lower portion of a well-preserved copy of tablet I, and a copy of tablet II made up from several fragments, the lower quarter of which is badly damaged. The first is particularly valuable as this tablet has been known previously only from a few small fragments and some odd lines quoted in a native commentary. Of the second tablet quite a number of sizeable pieces are already published. The new text offers the customary scribal variants, one of which is clearly superior to the reading of an Assurbanipal tablet (l. 17), and restores some of the lacuna which exists in the middle of the tablet. It is at this place, however, that the new tablet is defective, and so some half dozen lines are still only half preserved.

In a preliminary report (Anatolian Studies, Vol. II, p. 14) we have already referred to the “Pergamene” pottery, which constituted by far the most distinctive ware both in the Hellenistic and the Roman levels at Sultantepe. This pottery was also found in large quantities at sites in North Syria and Cilicia such as Gözlü Kule at Tarsus, Dura Europos and Antioch-on-the-Orontes, and is discussed and analysed with particular thoroughness in the publication of the latter (Antioch, Vol. IV, Part I, pp. 18 ff.). We are now able to illustrate from Sultantepè examples of these wares, for which parallels can easily be found at the sites mentioned above. Such parallels are in fact indicated in the Catalogue of shapes in our Fig. 1. Features of the Hellenistic Pergamene which are more easily recognisable in photographs (Plate VII, 2) are, for instance, the rouletted or grooved circles on the floor of open dishes and the combination of the rouletted circle with imprinted leaves (cf. Antioch, Fig. 2). Fragments of Hellenistic “moulded bowls” in Pl. VII, 1 should also be compared to those from Tarsus (Tarsus, Figs. 9 ff.).

The recent discovery of a number of new milestones in Galatia proper prompts a re-examination of the road system of that area, important as it was as a centre of communications from early times. The importance of Ancyra in particular as a road-junction is well illustrated by a large number of milestones dating to the first and second centuries A.D.; perhaps the rapid development of that city at this time is to be attributed in part to a realisation of its strategic importance.

The survey, the results of which are detailed below, was conducted by the writer as Fellow of the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara in company with the Misses du Plat Taylor and Munn-Rankin, Dr. J. Waechter and J. Mellaart, with the approval of the Director-General of Antiquities, Bay Hayrullah Örs and with the aid of a grant from the British Academy. The primary object was to examine and record the pre-classical sites in the Plain of Cilicia and round the Gulf of Iskenderun and to determine as far as possible the periods of their occupation, but many later settlements, usually under modern villages, were discovered and recorded. The survey was carried out during June and July, 1951, the best season for travel in this swampy area, but even so much time was lost owing to thunderstorms and heavy rains making the roads impassable for days.

During the Autumn of 1951 and from April to November, 1952, a survey of pre-classical remains in still mostly unknown areas of Southern Turkey was undertaken with the grant of a scholarship from the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (for the session 1951–2). A renewal of this scholarship in 1953 will make the continuation and completion of the survey possible in 1953–4.

A vast amount of new material, some of which is of great importance for Anatolian prehistory, having been collected, it was considered advisable to write a preliminary report dealing with the pottery in order to make preliminary results immediately available rather than postpone it until the end of the survey. Hence the sketchy nature of this report which deals with pottery groups only, and the unavoidable omission of the description of the sites, size, period and distribution maps and general conclusions.