Eearly Reports On The Kerkenes Dag

This section of the Web Site contains copies of early reports concerning the Kerkenes Dað that are now very difficult to find outside a few major libraries. The project has generously been granted permission to reproduce these here by the Institutions that own copyright, and permission to reproduce any portion of the material, by any means whatsoever, should be sought from copyright holder.

Schmidt 1929
Schmidt, Erich, F. 1929 "Test Excavations in the city on Kekenes Dagh"
The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatues XLV.4, 221-274.
We are most grateful to the Oriental Institute (OI) of the University of Chicago for permission to reproduce this Report. Erich Schmidt wrote the report directly from his field notes, which are held in the archives of the OI, and from which there is little deviation. The OI archive does not contain any additional information concerning the results of these test excavations beyond a small number of photographs, none of which appear to contain additional information.
All of the Test Trenches can still be located. Numbers 4 and 5 are incorrectly located on Figure 4. Numbers 4-7, 8 and 10 were cleaned in 1996. In the process of cleaning it was possible to add minor details to Schmidt's account but, as was to be expected, nothing that altered his highly perceptive interpretation was recovered.
By 1994 it was becoming clear that the entire city had been destroyed by fire, a conclusion that was missing from Schmidt's account. Cleaning of Schmidt's Trenches 4 and 5 did reveal some slight traces of this final destruction, but Schmidt can hardly be blamed for not recognising these traces for what they were given the large amount of burnt material associated with the large oven and the hearth in Trench 4 and the scant evidence in Trench 5. In the other trenches along the western side, 6-11, 13 and 14, and also towards the centre of the lower part of the city in Trench 9 (and in many other parts of the city), it has become apparent that the burnt debris has very largely eroded away down the slopes with the result that, in many areas, only the stone foundations of walls and patches of stone paving remain in situ.