Incised Drawings from Early Phrygian Gordion. Lynn E. Roller

on the ground. Several of these blocks had pictures “scratched” (to use Young’s word) onto them, providing the first examples of stones with incised Phrygian drawings, or “doodle stones,” as they were informally called. Further clearing in the area revealed that other blocks with similar incised pictures were still in situ in the east wall of Megaron 2, the left wall as one faces the building.¹⁴ When the megaron was completely exposed in 1957, further examples of blocks with incised pictures were found in the upper part of the south, or back, wall of the building, and other examples were also noted in the west wall. In addition to these, incised stones were found on the walls of House Y, one of a pair of storage sheds behind Megaron 2, and at least three examples were recovered in the fill above the megaron. Thus, the great majority of the stones with incised drawings were associated with Megaron 2.

      While the architecture of the Gordion Destruction Level will receive fuller publication and analysis elsewhere, the construction of Megaron 2 and the circumstances of its destruction have important bearing on our understanding of the incised stones, and so it will be useful to examine the building’s construction and period of use in some detail here. Megaron 2 is a standard megaron, approximately 19 × 13 m¹⁵ (Figs. 5, 6). There are two principal rooms, a smaller front room, approximately 3 m deep, which opened onto the courtyard and an interior room behind this, 10.85 × 9.74 m, clearly the main room because of its larger size. Access to the main room was only through the front room. In the space between the front room and the main room of the building there were two small rooms that were entered through doorways on either side of a short passageway connecting the two principal rooms. These seem too small to be useful living spaces, and may have been used as storage areas, or closets.

      Megaron 2 did not have a stone front wall; instead the building’s front foundation was marked by a wooden beam, on which stood the base of a brick wall ca. 0.32 m wide, the width of a single brick. This suggests that the front wall was a light wall, perhaps one made of mud brick, or a wooden screen set into a mud brick base; alternatively the front room of the megaron could have been an open porch. In contrast, the two side walls and the rear wall of the building are quite substantial, over a meter thick, and were constructed from a combination of stone and timber (Figs. 4, 7). The outer and inner surfaces of these three walls were built of cut stone blocks inserted into a timber framework, with a rubble core in between. A soft off-white limestone, also known as poros, was used. The exposed faces of the blocks forming the exterior and interior surfaces of the building were smooth finished; the tops, bottoms, and ends of the blocks, i.e., the surfaces in contact with adjoining stones, were roughly finished; and the inner faces in contact with the rubble core were not finished at all. On many blocks even the exposed exterior surface is very uneven, with chisel marks still visible. Examples of complete or nearly complete blocks found in situ, such as the surviving stone courses in the south wall and southeast corner (Figs. 9, 12), indicate that while the stone blocks were all rectangular in shape, no standard size block was used.¹⁶ Instead, the blocks were of quite uneven dimensions, and many appear to have been cut as needed to fill the space available. The interior wall surfaces of the two main rooms were covered with thick lime plaster, but there is no evidence that the exterior walls were covered with plaster or any other finishing.

      In addition to stone, timber was extensively used in the megaron’s construction. Both the outer and inner wall faces were set on horizontal timber beds, and horizontal beams were placed in each wall at varying heights throughout the wall’s elevation; these were joined to vertical timbers placed at irregular intervals along the full length of each wall. The stone blocks were set in vertical piers between the timbers. This technique can be seen in the south/back wall of the megaron, the best preserved wall in the structure (Fig. 12). Here a horizontal wooden timber was set approximately 0.75 m above the building’s timber foundation. Below this, vertical timbers divided the stone wall into vertical piers with three or four stones in one horizontal course of each pier. Above the horizontal timber, the vertical timbers were placed more frequently, and the stone piers in between them are only the width of a single block. The extensive use of timber in the building’s construction contributed substantially to its destruction by fire, as will be discussed in greater detail below.

      When Megaron 2 was originally built, it was a free-standing building (Fig. 2). To its east stood Megaron 1 and to its west was a large enclosure wall that separated Megarons 1 and 2 and the courtyard in front of them from the inner section of the Citadel, in which stood Megaron 3 and several other buildings. At some point after the construction of Megaron 2, two small free-standing rectangular structures of timber and mud brick were built behind it (Fig. 11). Called Houses X and Y in the preliminary reports, these evidently served as storage sheds for the megaron.¹⁷ They were cleaned out and dismantled to their foundation level when a major new construction project forming the complex known as the Terrace Buildings to the southwest of Megaron 2 was started (Fig. 3).¹⁸ The units of the Terrace Buildings stood at a higher level than Megarons 1 and 2 and were supported by a large rubble fill that formed the terrace on which they stood (hence the name). The terrace extended up to the south (i.e., back) wall of Megaron 2 and along its west wall; here part of the enclosure wall between Megarons 2 and 3 was demolished to accommodate it, and the south and west walls of Megaron 2 were used as retaining walls for the terrace. At the same time, another wall was constructed extending from the southeast corner of Megaron 2 and running behind Megaron 1 to the southeast; this also served as a retaining wall for the Terrace Buildings. In addition, the space between Megarons 1 and 2 was partitioned into a series of small storage and work rooms, and a stone bench, ca. 0.70 m high and 0.80 m deep, was constructed along the east side of Megaron 2.¹⁹ The effect of these changes was to block off any access to the back of Megaron 2. The extensive changes to the area around Megaron 2 imply that the building remained in use over a period of several years, although the exact chronology of each phase of activity remains unknown.

      It is clear that Megaron 2 played some important role in the elite Phrygian community. It was one of the largest freestanding buildings in the pre-Terrace phase of the Gordion Citadel, exceeded in size only by Megaron 3. The exterior walls of rectangular poros blocks would have created an impressive appearance, particularly in comparison with the mud brick and timber construction used in the neighboring Megaron 1. In addition, the building may well have had architectural sculpture: a stone akroterion and two sculpted lion protomes (Figs. 16–18) found in the fill above Megaron 2 were probably attached to the building, and the presence of these and potentially other sculptural ornaments would have added to the building’s imposing appearance.²⁰ The building’s interior had received special treatment also; the floor surfaces of both rooms were covered with mosaics made of brightly colored pebbles.²¹ The mosaic in the outer room was badly damaged, but the floor of the main room was much better preserved. Here the entire floor, apart from a central circular space for a hearth and a small, slightly sunken rectangular space at the southeast corner, was covered with a pebble mosaic consisting of irregularly distributed geometric designs (Figs. 7, 8). Taken together, these features of construction and decoration indicate usage for a special purpose. What that purpose was, however, remains unknown. Little information can be gained from the contents of the building, since it was largely empty at the time of its destruction. A few pottery vessels were found inside: a fragment of a coarse storage jar, a large trefoil jug containing nearly three hundred astragals, and a large storage jar found in the sunken area in the southeast corner.²² Two iron shovels were also found in the hearth in the main room.²³ These circumstances suggest that the building was only in occasional use, perhaps as an audience or reception hall for a ruler, or perhaps for dining and the entertainment that often accompanies a banquet. Some have suggested that Megaron 2 was a temple, but this seems unlikely. The building’s plan and the interior arrangement of its rooms are similar to those of most of the other megara in the Gordion Destruction Level, and no cult installations or objects were found in the building that would support identification as a cult structure.²⁴ The lack of a sturdy front wall to enclose the building clearly implies that Megaron 2 was not used for any purpose in which security was an issue, but beyond that, its role in the Citadel complex is uncertain.

      Megaron 2 was destroyed by a major fire that devastated all the buildings on the western side of the Gordion Citadel complex, including Megarons 1 through 4 and the Terrace Building complex. The fire seems not to have crossed the courtyard in front of the