Three stones (101, 102, 103) found in the fill above Megaron 2 are also included in the present discussion. All appear to be the same soft poros stone that was used in the construction of Megaron 2, and are likely to be fragments of the stone from the megaron that were churned up in the destruction or subsequent cleaning and rebuilding in the area. Two of them, 101 and 102, bear drawings on the finished outer surface of the block and were probably incised under circumstances very similar to those of the other drawings found on actual building blocks (as discussed in Section 4). The third, 103, is a smaller fragment and its incised surface is quite rough and blackened; this suggests that the drawing was incised on the stone after the destruction of Megaron 2, during the process of clearing out the rubble.
A few remarks are in order about the two incised stones in the Early Phrygian Citadel Gateway. One is located on the interior east wall of the north courtyard room of the Gateway complex, approximately ten courses above current ground level. The drawings on this block include several subjects, among them a bird, a horse, a maze pattern, and random scratches, that are very similar to those found on some of the Megaron 2 blocks, suggesting that these drawings were part of the same effort. The other incised block is located on the third course above present ground level of the south tower of the Early Phrygian Citadel Gateway, facing the ramp that forms the entrance into the Citadel. The drawing on this block, a series of irregular zigzag lines, could have been done during the construction of the gate tower or at some point afterwards, before the destruction of the Early Phrygian Citadel Gateway.
11. The Early Phrygian Destruction Level corresponds to Voigt’s YHSS Level 6A; see Voigt 1994 and Voigt 2005. A good description of the Early Phrygian Destruction Level is given by Sams 1994a:2–7, although Sams’ chronology for the destruction should be revised in light of more recent information on the chronology of the Early Phrygian period.
12. Young 1957:322–23, pls. 88–89, figs. 7–12. The West Phrygian House, later Megaron 2, was also called the Mosaic Building in some preliminary reports, e.g., Young 1963:352–54, because of the well-preserved pebble mosaics found inside it. This should not be confused with another building that was also designated the Mosaic Building, a structure of the 4th century BCE; Young 1953:11–14.
13. The term Megaron 2 (abbreviated M 2) first appears on the plans of the Destruction Level published in DeVries 1990: figs. 4 and 7.
14. As can be seen on the plan of the Destruction Level, Figure 3, Megaron 2, like all the buildings on the east side of the courtyard in the Early Phrygian Citadel, was oriented with its front towards the northeast. Thus the wall that I here call the east wall actually extends from northeast to southwest; similarly, the south, or back, wall of the building extends from southeast to northwest, and the southeast corner is actually oriented to the south. This circumstance, however, creates very cumbersome language in the description of the building, and thus I have simplified the description by calling the left side of the building, as one faces its front, the east side; the back wall then becomes the south side, and the right side becomes the west wall. In doing so, I am following the same system of nomenclature used by R. S. Young in his publications.
15. No complete plan of Megaron 2 was ever made, nor were the full external dimensions of the building recorded. The plan and dimensions of the building can be ascertained from the two site plans of the Destruction Level drawn by J. S. Last in 1956 and 1957, here Figures 5 and 6.
16. The longest extant block, 59, is 0.76 m in length. Other blocks of which the full length is preserved range in size from 0.45 to 0.61 m. The height and thickness of the blocks are similarly variable.
17. Young 1958:143; Young 1969a:270–71.
18. The Terrace Buildings functioned as space for storage and for concentrated activities involving food preparation and textile production; see the discussion in Sams 1994a:2–3, and Burke 2005.
19. Sams 1994a:3.
20. Young 1956a: pl. 92, figs. 42, 43 (lions); Young 1956a: pl. 93, fig. 41; Sams 1994b: fig. 20.2, 20.3.4 (akroterion); Mellink 1983:357.
21. Young 1957:322; Young 1965b:10–12; Salzmann 1982:6-7, nos. 47–48, pls. 2/2, 3/1, 4–5.
22. Sams 1994a:3. The coarseware jar, Sams 1994a: no. 1009; the trefoil jug, Sams 1994a: no. 741; the storage jar, Sams 1994a: no. 987. Two other vessels were found nearby, a spouted jar (Sams 1994a: no. 415) from the pavement in front of the building, and a body sherd of another closed vessel (Sams 1994a: no. 1015), found behind the building. Compared to the large quantities of vessels found in the storage rooms behind Megaron 1, Megarons 3 and 4, and the Terrace and CC Buildings, the contents of Megaron 2 were extremely minimal.
23. Gordion inventory number ILS 235, unpublished. I owe this information to Gareth Darbyshire.
24. Suggested identification as a temple, see Mellink 1983:357–59; Sams 1995:1156–57; Sams 1997:241; Prayon 2004:612. Mellink, Sams, and Prayon all cite the existence of the “doodles,” the incised drawings, as evidence for the temple interpretation, but as the discussion in this volume will make clear, the drawings represent a variety of styles and purposes and cannot by themselves be used to support a cult function.
25. On Midas and the Kimmerian destruction, see Strabo 1.3.21. For a discussion of other ancient sources on Midas, see Roller 1983.
26. The ancient sources on the chronology of Midas are analyzed by Berndt-Ersöz 2008.
27. Voigt 1994:274–75; Voigt 2005:32–35; Voigt 2007.
28. DeVries, Kuniholm, Sams, and Voigt 2003; DeVries, Sams, and Voigt 2005; DeVries 2007.
29. Young (1969a:271–72) estimated two generations or sixty years of use for Megaron 2 and Houses X and Y. Any estimate of the exact length of time when Megaron 2 was in use, however, should be considered a plausible guess.
30. The incised drawings on the stone courses in the southeast corner of Megaron 2 were photographed (see Fig. 9) and then recorded in a drawing by D. H. Cox; see Young 1958: pl. 21, fig. 3; Young 1969a:271; Prayon 1987:172, fig. 27a; Prayon 2004:619, fig. 1; here Figure 10. All but two of the incised blocks in Cox’s drawing, 50 and 53, are no longer extant. There are significant problems with Cox’s drawing: the surviving part of the incised face of 50, the upper left block below the horizontal beam, exhibits significant differences from this drawing, and the photographs of the incised stones taken in 1957 also reveal numerous details that are inconsistent with the Cox drawing. These circumstances indicate that Cox’s reconstruction of this group of incised stones is not fully reliable. This situation is discussed further in the Catalogue in conjunction with entries 50–57, where updated descriptions and drawings based on the excavation photographs are given.
31. For the excavation of the south/back wall of Megaron 2, see Young 1958:142–43; 1962:160. Young (1958:143) reports that the position of this horizontal timber was approximately 0.75 m above ground level.
32. Young 1958:143. More recent investigation has shown that this was true of many of the Destruction Level buildings; in rebuilding the Citadel area, the standard practice seems to have been to leave two stone courses standing and pile the rest of the stone into the center of the building; see Voigt 1994:272.
33. A comment by R. S. Young (1969a:271), “the walls of the sheds themselves became space for more doodles,” implies that several stones on both storage sheds had incised drawings, but apart from 99 and 100, none was recorded or preserved.
34. Most of the incised stones from the east wall were removed at the time of their excavation, in 1956 or 1957. The stones from the south wall of the building were removed in 1961, four years after they were first excavated; see Young 1962:160. The final inventoried stone to be removed was 50, from the southeast corner; this was brought to the Gordion storage depot in 1983. At that point its condition had deteriorated noticeably from the time of its finding.
35. Young 1962:160.
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Technique and Subject Matter