The Hittite cylinder seal discussed here (Figs. 1–4) was purchased by Sir Max Mallowan in the 'thirties while he was working in northern Syria. In the division of his collections it was allotted to the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge, which received it in 1966. Extensive use has severely worn the engraved surface, and even the two large old chips have been smoothed over. Despite the loss of all details, such as facial features, each element of the composition can be recognized or restored. In the chipped area are fragments of the main figure, the Storm-god raising a mace and standing on the shoulders of two Mountain-gods. Before the Storm-god and facing him is the Sun-god, winged disk overhead, two kneeling animal-headed supporting figures below. The Storm-god is followed by a deity in walking position, over a bull. A many-branched tree, repeated in the impression, closes the three-part composition, and a cross with approximately equal arms occupies a place between the tree and the upraised mace. Simple incised lines mark the top and bottom edges of the engraved surface. There seems to be no form that can unquestionably be called a Hittite hieroglyph.

Since 1968 Oinoanda in northern Lycia has been the scene of investigations by members of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. A major objective of the work has been the discovery and rediscovery of pieces of the Greek inscription set up, probably in the first half of the second century AD, by the Epicurean philosopher Diogenes. In 1997, with the generous permission and support of the Directorate-General of Monuments and Museums and with the welcome collaboration of Ibrahim Malkoç, Director of the Fethiye Museum, and his colleagues, excavation was possible for the first time. The season, though very short and on a very small scale, brought to light 10 new fragments of the inscription (see Smith 1998) — finds which raised the total of new fragments recovered since 1968 to 135 and the total of known fragments (88 were discovered late in the 19th century) to 223.

It was a great privilege in the early stages of a connection with archaeological field work to be asked by Seton Lloyd to return to the British Institute in Ankara to take charge of the architectural recording of the excavations planned for Beycesultan in July 1954. Several years previously I had assisted Seton Lloyd as field architect at Sultan Tepe and in the interim had been concerned (inter alia) with Byzantine buildings (in Cyprus). Thus it was at the very beginning of the excavations at Beycesultan when some ornamented Byzantine blocks were seen lying around on the surface of the mound and others were recovered in the initial clearances, Seton Lloyd suggested that I occupy any available time by recording this material with a view to working it up for eventual publication. This I did to the best of my limited knowledge and abilities. However the matter proceeded no more directly to a final outcome than a great deal of other archaeological publication. After 1956 duties took me elsewhere and in subsequent seasons the pressure of work on the extensive Bronze Age site was so great that the Byzantine fragments no longer came into the reckoning. Then at several junctures after the excavations were concluded the material was discussed, but no convenient opportunities were forthcoming for its proper publication. Therefore it is now encouraging to be allowed to give some illustrated account of these interesting pieces in Anatolian Studies.

This article stems from the writer's discovery in 1955 of an inscribed sarcophagus at Prymnessus, the modern Süğlün, 8 km. south-east of Afyon. It had been intended to follow this up by a reexamination of the stone itself and by an intensive survey, on the ground, of the ancient topography of the valley of the Phrygian Caÿster. But the necessary field-work has been prevented by various considerations, both inside and outside Turkey, and it seems only fair to others interested in this part of Phrygia to publish the inscription and draw at least preliminary conclusions from it.

Süğlün; reused as a horse-trough in a fountain, Güvercinlik Çeşmesi, at the south end of the village. Pink trachyte sarcophagus, moulded above, buried below, with tabula ansata. Height 0·57 m. plus, width 2·07 m., thickness 0·83 m., letters 0·03–0·04 m.

In the small collection of antiquities in the Municipality building (Belediye) of Taşköprü, in the vilayet of Kastamonu, there is a Latin inscription which is said to have been recently brought from the Karasayit Cami (formerly the Kurşunlu Mektep) in Taşköprü itself. It was declared on the authority of the Belediye Reisi, Bay Mustafa Yılmaz to whom I am greatly indebted for his help and assistance, that the stone had been recovered from the foundations of the old school. The stone was carried, it may be presumed, from the site of Pompeiopolis, situated across the river, immediately above the Ottoman bridge. I saw the inscription on 4th October, 1976, in company with Bay Nurettin Çakir, Assistant at the Antiquities Museum of Kastamonu, while carrying out, on behalf of the RECAM project, that section of the programme which concerns Kastamonu and Taşköprü.

The inscription is well cut and the lettering is good. The stone is chipped at the front on both the left and the right edges but the top and sides have not been broken. The lower part of the inscription, however, is lost. The space and, therefore, the number of letters to be restored on each edge can be estimated by extrapolating a line from the two sides of the block.

In the winter of 1974 farmers working in their fields near the village of Selimiye about fifteen kilometres south-east of Ceyhan uncovered a small round limestone altar bearing an image in relief of the goddess Athena (Pl. XVII a). The form and attributes of the figure—left hand on shield, left leg slightly bent, Nike on right hand, aegis on breast—clearly indicate that the relief owes much to Pheidias' great chryselephantine statue in Athens. It may thus be added to a considerable number of representations dating back to Hellenistic times that show the interest in Pheidias' masterpiece in southeastern Asia Minor. In itself it is important as an addition to the handful of reliefs depicting one of the most famous monuments of antiquity.

The altar joins a number of other similar monuments, mostly funerary in nature, of varying dimensions in the Adana regional museum. Its height is 0·64 m., its diameter at the base 0·38 m. It consists of a flat round base supporting a series of mouldings (torus, cyma reversa, fillet—Fig. 1a), a central drum divided unequally into a lower and a slightly projecting upper section, a further series of mouldings (fillet, ovolo—Fig. 1b) above which rises a biconical rim with flattened edge, a short continuation of the drum and finally a capping moulding (much mutilated in our specimen). The top is slightly convex with a shallow, rough depression in the middle 0·011 m. deep and 0·11 m. in diameter. Except for the relief and surrounding area the whole stone is dressed down with a claw chisel. There is some entasis apparent in the central portion of the drum.

The funerary banquet, a frequent theme in ancient sculpture and painting, has been thoroughly studied in recent years. The addition to the corpus of a newly discovered grave stele from Sardis (Pl. XIIIa) is of particular interest because it is a demonstrably local piece of work, with a Lydian inscription carved above a figured relief.

The piece was found in the summer of 1977 by villagers and was reportedly discovered in the east bank of the Pactolus river bed, to the south of the area “Pactolus Cliff”. The slab, which is of local whitish marble, tapers slightly toward the top. Its height is 0·41 m., its width at the bottom is 0·30 m., and its approximate original width at the top was 0·26 m. There is no border at the edge of the stone, but a small ledge protrudes at the bottom of the relief stone. The back has been left rough and unfinished.

Bereits F. W. Hasluck fand bei seinem survey über Kyzikos in den Jahren 1902–1906 drei archaische Kapitellfragmente, die zeigen, dass der Ort auch in diesem Bereich eigenständige Leistungen hervorgebracht hat, und deren Marmormaterial einen gewissen Reichtum der Stadt schon in früher Zeit im Vergleich etwa zu Larisa und Neandria zum Ausdruck brachte.

Die beiden leider verschollenen Fragmente eines kleinen ionischen Kapitells mit wenigen breiten, konvexen Volutengängen, ein fachem Rundstab und schalenförmigem Auge, gehörten wegen des geringen Echinusdurchmessers (36 cm.) wohl zu einer Votivsäule.

The Hittites used the seeds of a particular plant, now known to have been called marashanha, in a ritual for cursing a conquered city to ensure its desolation. Other parts of the same plant provided food and medicine. We have combined textual, botanical, linguistic and herbalist evidence to propose that marashanha denoted at least one species of fennel. This plant readily colonises deserted habitation sites and possesses properties in common with marashanha. We further propose that the Anatolian word ‘marashanha’ has a common origin with the Greek word for fennel, ‘marath(r)o-’, and that the impact of folk etymology on the latter reflects the use of fennel as a female contraceptive. Fennel's ability to inhibit conception accords with the barrenness which the Hittite ritual sought to impose upon a conquered city.

In Autumn 1997 a small team led by the Director of Fethiye Museum İbrahim Malkoç and Professor Martin F. Smith began excavations in the Upper Agora of Oinoanda. This area, long known as the ‘Esplanade’, following Cousin (1892: 56–58), is shown below to have been the Hellenistic and early Imperial agora of the city. A sondage was opened on the west side of the Upper Agora, and in so doing soil was removed around the lower half of a circular base which had appeared to be in situ (figs 1,2, and fig 3 where the base has the inventory number YÇ 1200). A previously unsuspected inscription was discovered upside down and located towards the present bottom of the base, from which it is apparent that the base had been re-used upside down, perhaps already in Antiquity.

To offer Richard Barnett remarks about Assyrian reliefs is a matter of self-indulgence. I wanted to have the reaction of this scholar most likely to be interested in my ideas about the meaning of the two principal scenes of the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (858–24 B.C.); the role of the ziggurat in Assyria, on which I will touch only slightly; and a fragment from the reliefs of Sennacherib (704–681 B.C.). I have had to appeal for his aid for the classification of the latter since he is preparing the publication of the collected reliefs from the palace of Sennacherib with the help of Erica Bleibtreu.

Each of the two scenes at the top of Shalmaneser's obelisk, Plate I, a—b, shows a foreign prince kneeling before the Assyrian king with hands and beard touching the ground in the posture of the greatest humility. The lower scene is often reproduced alone because the foreign ruler is Jehu of Israel, whose biblical association is of interest to the general public. The similarity of the two scenes, is unique and invites a search into its meaning. Fortunately, the identity of both foreign rulers is indicated in the inscription above the scenes.

Since the first European visited Alaca Hüyük 150 years ago the site has been noted for its gateway dating from the Hittite empire, fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. Within a few decades of the discovery, excavations revealed a large number of sculptured orthostats flanking the entry, but the piers with sphinx protomes have always been above ground and have given the entrance its name, the Sphinx Gate. Nineteenth-century travellers noted on the inner face of the eastern sphinx pier the fragmentary representation of a figure above a two-headed eagle clutching two rabbits (Pl. XXXIX, a). The relief is visible to everyone entering the city through this gateway. The parallel figure on the other pier, the subject of this report, has rarely been mentioned.

The late morning sun highlights remnants of a female figure on the inner face of the western sphinx pier (Fig. 1, Pl. XXXVIII, a, b). The upper part, from a point below the waist, and the whole front are destroyed, but there is no doubt of the back contour of the long robe, its surface covered by a series of striations sweeping down and back into the train.

This article presents a body of architectural reliefs and two stelae from the ancient town of Cibyra in the Roman province of Asia and, in most cases, now kept in the provincial Burdur Museum. The pieces show different aspects of gladiatorial games, such as duels between gladiators and the hunting of animals. It is argued that the architectural reliefs once belonged to three different monumental tombs of munerarii, commemorating specific games sponsored by them, while the stelae were set up for single gladiators after their deaths. An analysis of the style of their execution indicates that the reliefs were produced in the second half of the second century AD. The iconography and composition of the gladiatorial combats depicted on these reliefs seem to have been influenced by a specific Hellenic view of the games, while the venatio scenes emphasise the richness of the show. In total, the material may contribute to a better understanding of the reception and transformation of the munera in the Greek East.

Volume XXII of Anatolian Studies which was dedicated to Prof. S. Lloyd contains (in pp. 87–114) a detailed study by J. D. Hawkins of the Hittite hieroglyphic monumental inscriptions and stone monuments from the area of the Lower Palace in Carchemish. It seems needless to stress the importance of this study which presents a reliable and up to date reading of the inscriptions. The data gathered from them can now be better used in attempts to solve the complex problems of the chronology and arrangement of the associated monuments. This was done by Hawkins who on the basis of the inscriptional evidence came to various conclusions concerning the monuments of the Long Wall of Sculpture and the Great Staircase. Some of his conclusions form the subject of this rejoinder.

Caria south of the Maeander (Büyük Menderes) river has fascinated travellers since antiquity. Mountainous in character and moderately populated today, the region served as a political and cultural frontier between the Greek mainland and the more ancient centres of civilization in the Near East. After a century of exploration, a wealth of data now illuminates the historic past of ancient Caria (von Diest 1909, Ramsay 1890, Paton and Meyers 1896, Winter 1887, Chamonard 1895, Fowler 1906, Hicks, 1892, Humann and Dörpfeld 1893, Miller 1916, Paton 1900, and Weber, 1904). Although informative, such scholarship has also had a negative impact. All too often, the view taken in the published literature is that previously identified sites offer little additional information. Scholars have tended to accept this view and the “authoritative research” of others without further examination of the region or its rich physical remains.