Though we continue to employ the old materials, however, we see them now in a clearer light. Just as the time has passed by when the word ‘Hittite’ must be written in inverted commas, or qualified with the adjective ‘so-called,’ so now we are not content any longer to regard the older monuments of the interior together in general as pre-Hellenic, much less pre-historic, without distinction as to period or locality. The references to the Hittites in Babylonian, Egyptian, and Assyrian history alone, it is true, would not be sufficient to establish an historical basis for this phase of our inquiry, though giving us a range of dates that covers broadly the whole of the second millennium down to the eighth century B.C.,[131] but these allusions are now supplemented, and in great measure made intelligible, by the evidence of the Hittite archives recently discovered at Boghaz-Keui, which establish chronological relationships of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C.,[132] together with a series of contemporary Hittite works. This date now becomes the basis for all inquiry, bringing into line several points previously problematical and much disputed, just as the intrinsic evidence of these archives throws a new flood of light over the disposition and constitution of the Hittites at the very period when they figure most prominently in the pages of Egyptian history. [Illustration: PLATE XXXI ANGORA: REMAINS OF THE TEMPLE OF ROME AND AUGUSTUS] Other researches have contributed towards broadening this basis of investigation. At Sakje-Geuzi recent excavations[133] have established the fact previously in doubt, that the settlements of Hittite peoples had begun there at any rate many centuries, possibly several thousand years, previous to the age marked by the oncoming and ultimately overwhelming tide of Assyrian influence early in the first millennium B.C. The relation of the later phase of local arts to Assyrian chronology is given by the results of excavations made on the great mound at Sinjerli, distant about a day’s journey in the same valley towards the south.[134] Here certain palace buildings and sculptures, some of which betray Assyrian feeling, may be dated, by help of inscribed monuments that were unearthed, to the eighth century B.C., when this principality became tributary to Tiglath Pileser III. The reign of Esarhaddon, the conqueror of Egypt, brought even this nominal independence to an end about 680 B.C. [Illustration: PLATE XXXII NIGDEH: PORTAL OR THE ‘WHITE MIDRESSEH’ Built by Ala-ed-din the Great, _circa_ 1223 A.D. An early example of Seljûk art. (_See p. 73._)]