On the west, however, the Mitannians found themselves confronted by another northern population, the Hittites, whose first home was in Cappadocia. The Hittites also had passed under the spell of Babylonian culture, and the cuneiform script had been carried to them at an early date. Thanks to recent discoveries, we can now trace in some measure the earlier fortunes of a race who made a profound impression, not only on the future history of Asia Minor and its relations with Greece, but also on the history of Palestine. As far back as about B.C. 2000, Babylonian or Assyrian troops had already made their way along the northern banks of the Tigris and Euphrates to the borders of Cappadocia and the neighbourhood of the Halys. I say Babylonian or Assyrian, for Assyria was at the time a province of Babylonia, though as the colonies which settled in the track of the invaders were distinctively Assyrian in their municipal customs and the names of their inhabitants, the troops were probably drafted from Assyria.[138] The mineral wealth of Cappadocia was doubtless the attraction which led them to such distant and semibarbarous lands; Dr. Gladstone’s analysis of the gold of the Sixth Egyptian dynasty, with its admixture of silver, has shown that it was imported from the north of Asia Minor,[139] and the silver itself was probably already worked. Further south, in the Taurus, were mines of copper. However this may be, the remains of one of these early Assyro-Babylonian colonies has been partially excavated a few miles (twenty-three kilometres) to the north-east of Kaisariyeh.[140] The site is now known as Kara Eyuk, “the Black Mound,” and numerous cuneiform tablets have come from it. It has obtained its present name from the marks of fire which are everywhere visible upon it, and bear eloquent testimony to its final fate. Established as an outpost of the Assyrian Empire in the distant west, a time came when, deserted by the Government at home, its strong walls were battered down by the besieging foe and the Assyrian settlers massacred among the ruins of their burning town. According to M. Chantre, its excavator (who, however, believes that it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption), the whole mound is a mass of charred and burnt remains.