The archaeological excavations at Milas and Gencik Tepe, 1938 In 1938, Axel W. Persson, professor of Classical archaeology and Ancient history in Uppsala 1925-1951, started excavations at Milas in south-western Turkey. He had spent many summers in Greece during the 1920's and 1930's, excavating in the Argolid at the Bronze Age sites of Asine, Dendra and Berbati. After having found at Asine what looked like a Cretan Linear B inscription, he became deeply involved in the problems connected with the deciphering of Linear B. According to ancient tradition, there had been a connexion between Bronze Age Crete and Caria. Ancient sources, reported by Herodotos, maintained that the Carians once lived in the Aegean islands, being subjects of King Minos on Crete. Later on, they had been forced away to south-western Anatolia, to the mountainous region south of the river Maeander (Menderes) and west of Lycia. Since the name of the Carian sanctuary of Labraunda, near Milas, appeared to be etymologically connected with the word labyrinthos, viz. the Minoan palace at Knossos, and since the Carians' own alphabetic script had not been deciphered, Persson believed that this site could hide archives with not only Carian but also Minoan Linear B texts. In 1935, Axel Persson made a reconnaissance tour of Caria, looking for possible excavation sites. It appears that Gustaf Adolf, the Crown Prince (the future king Gustaf VI Adolf), during a visit to Turkey in 1934, had exerted some influence on the Turkish authorities to issue an authorisation exceptionelle for Persson to visit this military zone. Labraunda was, of course, the optimal choice for an excavation site. A permit to work there was, however, probably not feasible, since the Carian mountains were of high strategic importance, the Italian Dodecanese islands being so close. From Milas, ancient Mylasa, once capital of Caria, where Persson's tour ended, the mountain site of Labraunda was visible in the distance. In the plain, ca 2 km to the south-east of Milas, another site, however, caught Persson's eye. This was an isolated hillock, called Gencik Tepe, with remains of terrace walls built of ashlars. A trial trench was dug, and in a single day, a depth of a metre and a half was reached. The pottery finds indicated to Persson that there existed Bronze Age layers at the site, as he had hoped. Three years later, in 1938, Persson received a permit to excavate at Gencik Tepe, and he returned to Milas in the spring with a small team of students. Selâhittin Kantar, the director of the Izmir archaeological museum, acted as the representative of the Turkish government. The students were Mogens Gjødesen, future director of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek at Copenhagen, Arthur Hald, Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, who was later to become professor of Egyptology at Uppsala, and Bo Svensson. They arrived on 19 March, but before the excavations could start there were lengthy discussions concerning the ownership and purchase of the land. At the end, Persson deposited the sum of 100 pounds in the local bank for whoever could prove to be the rightful owner. In the meantime, twelve Hellenistic and Roman chamber tombs were excavated by Säve-Söderbergh to the north of the well-known Roman mausoleum, Gümü_kesen, in the western outskirts of the town. On 26 March, the excavations at Gencik Tepe started with some 50 workmen. Work went on until 2 May, but the weather was terrible and many days were spoiled by heavy rains. At the site, three consecutive retaining walls were discovered, encircling a rectangular terrace, ca 60x 55 m in size. On the terrace, the foundations were found of a small Hellenistic temple, facing west, and of another small structure, which may have been a building for sacrificial meals. The remains of a small byzantine chapel and a number of Christian tombs marked the latest period at the site. In the bottom layers, potsherds occurred with decoration reminiscent of Greek Bronze Age pottery. At the end of the campaign, the finds were taken to the archaeological museum at Izmir. They mainly consisted in pottery fragments, of which the earliest can now be seen to date to the beginning of the 7th century BC. In the spring of 1939, the following year, when the team returned for a new campaign, the tense political situation due to the approaching war made it impossible to receive a permit to continue work at Milas. After having spent a few weeks at the museum in Izmir, working on the finds from 1938, the team went to Greece instead, to continue the excavations in the Argolid.