When the expedition reached Ankara, a sleepy provincial town decades away from becoming the capital of the Turkish Republic, they set to work on its greatest Roman monument, the Temple of Augustus, on which was displayed a monumental account of the deeds of the deified emperor. No squeeze had ever been taken of this "Queen of Inscriptions." The job took over two weeks, and the 92 sheets made it safely back to Cornell. They have now been digitized and are available to scholars on the Internet as part of the Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences. Still, the travelers reserved their greatest enthusiasm for the much older inscriptions of the Hittite kingdoms. Their first major achievement came at the Hattusha, site of the Hittite capital, where they set to work on a hieroglyphic inscription of six feet in height and over twenty feet in length, known in Turkish as "Nişantaş" (the marked stone).

When the expedition reached Ankara, a sleepy provincial town decades away from becoming the capital of the Turkish Republic, they set to work on its greatest Roman monument, the Temple of Augustus, on which was displayed a monumental account of the deeds of the deified emperor. No squeeze had ever been taken of this "Queen of Inscriptions." The job took over two weeks, and the 92 sheets made it safely back to Cornell. They have now been digitized and are available to scholars on the Internet as part of the Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences. Still, the travelers reserved their greatest enthusiasm for the much older inscriptions of the Hittite kingdoms. Their first major achievement came at the Hattusha, site of the Hittite capital, where they set to work on a hieroglyphic inscription of six feet in height and over twenty feet in length, known in Turkish as "Nişantaş" (the marked stone).

For Sterrett, the expedition of 1907-08 was only the first step in an ambitious long-term plan for archaeological research in the Eastern Mediterranean. To launch his plan, Sterrett selected three recent Cornell alums. Their leader, Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead, already projects a serious, scholarly air in his yearbook photo of 1902, whose caption jokingly alludes to his freshman ambition "of teaching Armenian history to Professor Schmidt." In 1907, just before crossing to Europe, Olmstead received his Ph.D. Cornell with a dissertation on Assyrian history. Olmstead's two younger companions, Benson Charles and Jesse Wrench, were both members of the class of 1906. They had spent 1904-05 traveling in Syria and Palestine, where they rowed the Dead Sea and practiced making the "squeezes," replicas of inscriptions made by pounding wet paper onto the stone surface and letting it dry, that would form one the expedition's primary occupations. Olmstead, Wrench, and Charles made their separate ways to Athens, whence they sailed together for Istanbul.

It was early afternoon on November 6th, 1907, before Charles found a villager who could show him the site of the inscribed statue. It was the last night of Ramadan, and on the next morning the villagers celebrated with their guests. The expedition beat the worst of the snows and was in the lowlands of northern Mesopotamia by December. As they made their way to the regional center, Diyarbakır, they heard that the city was in revolt: the local worthies had occupied the telegraph office to protest the depredations enacted by a local chieftain. The travellers were a day's march behind the imperial troops who had been sent in to quell the rebellion, and who frequently left the roadside inns in a deplorable state. Wrench supplemented his notes on the "first Babylonian dynasty" with a clutch of pressed flowers. Drawing of the early medieval Deyrulzafaran, "the saffron monastery," located outside of Mardin.

For Sterrett, the expedition of 1907-08 was only the first step in an ambitious long-term plan for archaeological research in the Eastern Mediterranean. To launch his plan, Sterrett selected three recent Cornell alums. Their leader, Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead, already projects a serious, scholarly air in his yearbook photo of 1902,  If you have any kind of questions relating to where and ways to use https://Senioredu.net/bbs/board.php?bo_table=free&wr_id=198992">escort diyarbakıR, you could contact us at our own web-site. whose caption jokingly alludes to his freshman ambition "of teaching Armenian history to Professor Schmidt." In 1907, just before crossing to Europe, Olmstead received his Ph.D. Cornell with a dissertation on Assyrian history. Olmstead's two younger companions, Benson Charles and Jesse Wrench, were both members of the class of 1906. They had spent 1904-05 traveling in Syria and Palestine, where they rowed the Dead Sea and practiced making the "squeezes," replicas of inscriptions made by pounding wet paper onto the stone surface and letting it dry, that would form one the expedition's primary occupations. Olmstead, Wrench, and Charles made their separate ways to Athens, whence they sailed together for Istanbul.

As the expedition moved out of the Hittite heartlands, we begin to see in Wrench's fieldbooks the beginnings of a new interest in the medieval architecture of the Syriac-speaking Christian communities. The first drawing to appear in his notes is a hastily-sketched plan of the early medieval Deyrulzafaran, "the saffron monastery," located outside of Mardin. Underneath he has copied the Syriac inscription that he found above the door. A few days later and a few pages further, we find a drawing of the late antique church of Mar Yakub in Nusaybin. When, in the following year, Wrench made his way back to Istanbul, he took a long detour through the Tur Abdin, the heartland of Syriac monasticism. The expedition frequently visited American missionaries along their route, celebrating Christmas in Mardin with the local mission of the American Board in Turkey. But as they pressed on across the steppes that today form the far northeastern corner of Syria, the strains of six months' steady travel began to show.