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The inscription was widely believed to be too worn to be read, but the expedition "recovered fully one half. "Their dedication is all the more remarkable as the script in which it is written, now known as "hieroglyphic Luwian," was not deciphered until over half a century later. We now know that Nişantaş celebrates the deeds of Shupiluliuma II, last of the Great Kings of Hattusha. As the expedition pushed eastwards, and the fall turned to winter, the Cornellians began to worry that the snows would prevent them from crossing the Taurus mountains, trapping them on the interior plateau. While Wrench and Olmstead pushed ahead with the carriages along the postal route, Charles led a small off-road party to document the monuments of the little-known region between Kayseri and Malatya. A grainy photograph taken at Arslan Taş, "the lion's stone," shows two figures bundled against the cold, doggedly waiting for a squeeze to dry. The backstory is recorded in the expedition's journal.

The inscription was widely believed to be too worn to be read, but the expedition "recovered fully one half. "Their dedication is all the more remarkable as the script in which it is written, now known as "hieroglyphic Luwian," was not deciphered until over half a century later. We now know that Nişantaş celebrates the deeds of Shupiluliuma II, last of the Great Kings of Hattusha. As the expedition pushed eastwards, and the fall turned to winter, the Cornellians began to worry that the snows would prevent them from crossing the Taurus mountains, trapping them on the interior plateau. While Wrench and Olmstead pushed ahead with the carriages along the postal route, Charles led a small off-road party to document the monuments of the little-known region between Kayseri and Malatya. A grainy photograph taken at Arslan Taş, "the lion's stone," shows two figures bundled against the cold, doggedly waiting for a squeeze to dry. The backstory is recorded in the expedition's journal.

Much of their time in the Ottoman capital was spent purchasing provisions and hiring porters. The trip's employees would do much more than carry the baggage. Solomon, an Armenian from Ankara, had a knack for quizzing villagers regarding the location of remote monuments. While preparing for the journey, the group made smaller trips in western Anatolia. At Binbirkilise, a Byzantine site on the Konya plain, they visited the veteran English researchers Gertrude Bell and William Ramsay. Like Bell, whose Byzantine interests set her at the vanguard of European scholarship, the Cornell researchers were less interested in ancient Greece and Rome than in what came before and after. Their particular focus was on the Hittites and the other peoples who ruled central Anatolia long before the rise of the Hellenistic kingdoms. When the expedition set off in mid-July, their starting point was not one of the classical cities of the coast, but a remote village in the heartland of the Phrygian kings.

The travellers gained one last burst of strength in the new year, as they visited the great Mesopotamian sites of Nimrud and Nineveh. Wrench supplemented his notes on the "first Babylonian dynasty" with a clutch of pressed flowers. But on the final stage, the carriage that carried their bedding tipped into the river, and it was a soaked and bedraggled company that arrived in Baghdad on February 7th of 1908. They had covered over 1,500 miles since setting out from Demirli 206 days before. Baghdad in the early twentieth century was a lively international city, and as the company recuperated they took advantage of its entertainments. On February 22nd they logged a long evening at the club, dancing and leading a round of the Cornell Yell. Their bar tab is preserved at Kroch Library. From Baghdad the travellers followed separate courses back to Istanbul, where they would reunite once more in June.

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.

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.

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