The excavations which have been made at Sakje-Geuzi have not as yet been rewarded by any documentary evidence. An effort was made to obtain some material basis for chronology by cutting a section of the mound down to the undisturbed ground upon which it had grown. It was found that the whole mound was artificial, being the accumulated rubbish of continuous or successive settlements. It began in remote antiquity with the middens and other traces of a primitive neolithic population, whose flint and obsidian fragments and black pottery formed a distinct deposit, in which the excavators thought they detected three strata. That age was succeeded by two others, during which the neolithic culture remained predominant. Towards the end of this phase a new style of painted pottery began to make its appearance, and thereafter for two long ages painted motives typify the Ceramic art of the locality. The main wall of the mound was built at the close of the last of these periods, and it seems to have been contemporary with the construction of the palace within. Subsequently painted pottery appears only sporadically, and such fragments as were found are more definitely related to late Ægean art, while the commoner pottery was the hard burnt brick-like ware familiar on Assyrian sites.[701] There can be no doubt that in this record of two thousand fragments of pottery in their original stratification, there is valuable material for future comparative study. For the present, however, that which prevents the immediate application of this material to the problem of chronology is the remarkable fact that nearly all the early painted fabrics,[702] which constitute by far the larger portion of objects found in the course of this section, seem to be local, or at any rate unlike any others upon record. In the course of future excavations in this and other localities, doubtless relations will be established which will enable archæologists to connect the growth of this site with the established chronology of some civilisation like that of Egypt or Assyria. For the present the only relations suggested, and these are not clearly established, are firstly, in regard to the black pottery, sometimes decorated with a white incised pattern, which resembles in general character that found sparsely in the Troad by Schliemann[703] and by Dr. Arthur Evans in the neolithic and earliest ‘Minoan’ strata of Crete;[704] secondly, a few fragments of a peculiar fabric with black pattern on yellow base, belonging at Sakje-Geuzi to the neolithic epoch, and corresponding closely to some of the age of Naram-Sin, found freely by M. de Morgan in his excavations at Susa;[705] and, thirdly, some general resemblance between individual fragments of the painted fabrics and those found by Dr. Pumpelly in Turkestan,[706] by Professor Petrie in the Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty at Abydos,[707] and more especially by Dr. Evans in the early