We have already described the situation of the neighbouring site of Sakje-Geuzi, and the nature of some of its surface monuments. There are several prominent mounds in this locality: the sculptures mentioned and the palace ruins lately discovered[682] are connected with the smallest of these. Soundings made in the other mounds have made it clear that their nature is similar, and their growth collateral: in all probability they contain inscribed and sculptured monuments, the careful uncovering of which would contribute new pages, if not volumes, to our knowledge of oriental history. So far as excavation has proceeded on this site, it has been sufficient to determine the nature of the main fortifications, and to disclose within the walls the portico of a palace decorated with a frieze of sculptured slabs in their original positions and in fresh unweathered state. It is also demonstrated that here, at any rate, long ages of local development preceded the period which these striking monuments have rendered more conspicuous, though historically not more important. In the story of the decline and fall of the Hittite power, however, nothing could be more interesting than these sculptured monuments, with the increasing signs of Assyrian influence upon them, and the study of them becomes endowed with wider significance by comparison with those elsewhere. Not only can we measure, by the local differences and similarities to be seen in the works of Sinjerli and Sakje-Geuzi, the depth to which Assyrian feeling had already permeated the Hittite arts in the early centuries of the first millennium B.C.; but by comparing these again with those of Eyuk, we may realise how far certain features of architecture and religious symbolism were originally Hittite, and though here modified by close contact with the all-absorbing Assyrian power, remained on the farther side of the Taurus free from recognisable intrusion to the end.