The two authors of this brief note together made a tour of Hittite monuments in Turkey in the summer of 1978. RLA arrived in İzmir from abroad a few days earlier than HGG, who was detained in İstanbul by other obligations. While waiting for him, RLA revisited the Karabel and Mt. Sipylus and thus was the first of us to notice the inscription. Since it had not been mentioned in recent years and neither of us had seen it on previous visits to the site we believed that this was a discovery. In fact it is a rediscovery, as we learned from David Hawkins, who reminded us (in correspondence) of the fact that it is included in L. Messerschmidt, CIH 1–2 (MVAG 5, 1900, 4–5 ) as Pl. XXXVIII no. 3. Messerschmidt's source was an article by Eduard Gollob published in 1882.
About three metres to the right of the recess containing the well-known seated goddess, a smaller, partly worked niche contains a large boss (Pl. IXa, arrow). Although the boss has suffered a major fracture, which perhaps led to its abandonment for relief sculpture, it has a plain surface on the side toward the goddess (Pl. IXb). The hieroglyphs are inscribed here, approximately on a level with the torso of the goddess (Pl. Xa, b, Fig. 1). The inscription is arranged in two columns; the right column, with four signs, measures 65 cm., the left one consists of three (or four? see below) signs.