Word: mounded
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...starting on a plain in southern Turkey promised to open a door onto the most ancient reaches of human civilization. Mellaart treated every crum bling bit of dirt as a hard-to-read book, and after three years of diligent scratching through the 32-acre mound called Qatal Hiiyiik, he is now piecing together the story of a city that flourished at least 3,000 years before the first Pharaoh ruled in Egypt...
...Lydian alphabet at that date appears in a repeated monogram, translated a "Gugu," along a wall. This was the name given the notorious Lydian king, Gyges, in Assyrian annals, according to George M.A. Hanfmann, professor of Fine Arts and field director of the expedition. The structure was the burial mound of Gyges, founder of the great Lydian Kingdom...
...burial mound was found in the center of the vast Royal Cemetary, 10 miles from Sardis. It is a small artificial mountain of clay, earth, and limestone, some 700 feet in diameter and 120 feet high. Hidden within the great mound was found an earlier mound 300 feet in diameter. Circling the base of the inner mound is a six-foot-high wall of beautiful masonry crowned by a large circular bolster...
Gyges, Professor Hanfmann explains, "probably started building his own burial mound during his lifetime, as other Lydian kings are known to have done. Gyges died at Sardis while fighting the Kimmerians, Crimean horsemen who invaded Asia Minor. After the invaders were driven out, Gyges' successor decided to magnify the memory of the late king by enlarging his burial mound to its present colossal dimensions...
...puzzling feature of the mound is the network of ancient tunnels encountered. The excavators believe the tunnels were dug several centuries later by Romans in search of the Lydian royal treasure buried with the king. In the southern half of the mound these ancient tunnels stopped without reaching their goal. But there may be others in the northern, as yet unexplored, part. Next summen the expedition hopes to reach the final resting place of King Gyges...