In the file of letters that I have been collecting and annotating for the last ten years or so, with a view to updating Welles' Royal Correspondence , I recorded the partial readings given by L. Robert in Le sanctuaire de Sinuri (1945), about a royal letter he sought in vain to read from the stamps P. Devambez had supplied him following his 1935 excavations at Kalınağıl near Milas in Caria, where Robert the year before had identified the sanctuary of the Carian god Sinuri. Thanks to the kindness of Mr. Bowersock, I have studied the documents relating to this letter in the L. Robert Fonds: the four stamps n° 2403-2406; Dossier n° 71 containing notes, copies and photos by P. Devambez; Carnets n° 34 and n° 39 relating to L. Robert's trips to Caria in 1934 and (with J. Robert) in 1946. Lately, I've also been able to access the digitized photos taken byMlle Adrienne Barroche from the original plates (discovered byMme Béatrice Meyer) of the photos of prints no. 2403, no. 2405, no. 2406.
I have read L. Robert's handwritten notes in Carnet no. 34 (1934) and Carnet no. 39 (1946), and presented the transcript of the letter in Carnet no. 39 (see L. Robert, Hellenica VII, 1949, p. 67: "In September 1946, my wife and I visited the sanctuary of Sinuri to see the few inscriptions that remained on site. We were unable to decipher the royal letter on the stone"). Based on the king's and Zeuxis's "policy" towards Carian sanctuaries, J. and L. Robert attributed the letter to Antiochios III(Fouilles d'Amyzon, 1983, p. 140 and 187).
