Such places are few indeed; but our knowledge of them is chiefly the result of recent scientific expeditions, and is therefore the surer and more precise.[463] The published accounts enable us to select four sites, which happily afford material for a comparative study. Two of these, Eyuk and Boghaz-Keui, are towards the north of Asia Minor,[464] within the wide circuit of the Halys; while the other two are found below the Taurus at Sinjerli and Sakje-Geuzi in the north of Syria.[465] Three of these, moreover, are sites superficially similar, being small walled towns placed on considerable mounds, which contain also the remains of palace buildings decorated with peculiar sculptures. The fourth, which covers the hilltop above the village of Boghaz-Keui, is of vastly greater extent, and includes in its remains many peculiarities not represented by the others. It has with some certainty been identified[466] with the Pteria (or Ptara) across the Halys which, according to Herodotus,[467] fell about 550 B.C. before Crœsus of Lydia, who found it in possession of a ‘Syro-Cappadocian’ population whom he reduced to servitude.[468] It has also for some time been linked with the Hittites in the minds of scholars, both by the nature of the art its ruins illustrate, and by the doubtful hieroglyphic inscription on the rock called Nishan Tash,[469] and more particularly by the clear hieroglyphs associated with the neighbouring sculptures of Iasily Kaya. Recently Dr. Winckler has added to these links two building-stones decorated with sculptures and with hieroglyphs[470] in the familiar Hittite style; and has finally riveted the chain of evidence by the discovery in the ruins of an early palace of numerous inscribed tablets of brick inscribed in cuneiform characters, which prove to be from the archives of Hatti kings, including fragments of diplomatic correspondence with the Pharaohs of Egypt and other Oriental potentates in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. It seems clear, then, that for several centuries at least the ancient city of this place was the centre of Hittite power and civilisation. In an earlier chapter[471] we have shown reason to believe that the decline of this power is traceable to an early movement of a people akin to the Phrygians, in the twelfth century B.C. We do not know as yet to what extent the city suffered at their hands, if at all, or indeed during the later struggles with Assyria. The palace of the fourteenth century B.C., however, would seem to have been in ruins some two or three hundred years later when it was rebuilt.[472] The visible remains of the city, some of which possibly belong to this period of revival, present no evidence of any striking changes in the art they typify, and we may assume that they represent to us the Hittite handiwork, or at least the direct survival of Hittite art, down to the period of Phrygian domination in the eighth century B.C., if not to the final overthrow and depopulation of the city