Ancient symbols on a 3,200-year-old stone slab have been deciphered by researchers who say they could solve "one of the greatest puzzles of Mediterranean archaeology".
The 29-metre limestone frieze, found in 1878, in what is now modern Turkey, bears the longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age. Only a handful of scholars worldwide, can read its ancient Luwian language.
The first translation has offered an explanation for the collapse of the Bronze Age's powerful and advanced civilizations.
'Luwians', whose origins can only be guessed at by scholars, lived in Anatolia mostly, also north-western Levant, during the Bronze and Iron ages. Then, it is said, their states were destroyed by, or incorporated into, 'the Neo-Assyrian Empire' because they completely vanished.
If these mysterious hieroglyphs are right, the Luwians and fellow-Anatolians were first-rate seafarers and presumably not bad on land either
The text suggests the kingdom and other Anatolian states invaded ancient Egypt and other regions of the east Mediterranean before and during the fall of the Bronze Age.
There is a bit of a problem though because it doesn't seem to be the original after all
The 35cm-tall, 10-metre-long limestone slab was found 1878 in the village of Beyköy, 34 kilometres north of Afyonkarahisar in modern Turkey. French archaeologist George Perrot copied the inscription before the stone was used by villagers as building material for the foundation of a mosque.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 92141.html
This copy was apparently kept under wraps by none other than James Mellaart.
The copy was rediscovered in the estate of English prehistorian James Mellaart after his death in 2012 and was handed over by his son to Dr Eberhard Zangger, president of the Luwian Studies foundation, to study.
Mellaart was famous for discovering Catalhoyuk but perhaps not always entirely trustworthy; as Wiki puts it
James Mellaart FBA was a British archaeologist and author who is noted for his discovery of the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. He was expelled from Turkey when he was suspected of involvement with the antiquities black market.