Modern Description:
Kursunlu Tepe is a large isolated dome-shaped hill which commands the approach to the upper Scamander valley and looks down the widening sleeve to the plain at Bayramiç. It rises 200-300 m. above the bend of the river. On the south side, where the ancient city seems to have extended furthest, there are traces of houses on the slope; and a long terrace can also be seen on the north side. But it is a desolate site. Less than 200 years ago there were evidently handsome ruins visible. But in the last years of the eighteenth century Osman Hadimoglu, the feudal ruler of Bayramiç, removed almost all that remained above ground for use in public and private edifices of the modern town; and in general the nineteenth-century travellers found the site bare. Only E.D. Clarke in 1801 arrived before the destruction was complete and saw enough on the spot to merit a serious description. He remarked a great marble temple in the Doric order, of which the workmen had removed 100 huge blocks, and other substantial buildings which included a temple and baths, as well as a wall 14 ft. high; and in Bayramiç he was also able to obtain marble statues from the site. Some minor observations were later made by Pullan, who noted foundations, apparently of a small temple, on the north side and two fragments of the Doric temple, and Schliemann, who remarked a piece of circuit wall 2.80 m. thick, traces of edifices at various points, and marbles in the village.1 On his second visit on 2 July 1882 he spent the afternoon excavating but reached the rock at depths of 15-30 cm. In 1896 Judeich remarked that even the little that Schliemann saw had disappeared; but he speaks of a still visible road to the hill top, Turkish wells built of ancient marble slabs (including inscriptions) on the south-east slope, and column drums, entablature blocks, and other ancient material built into houses in the village. The site was not, however, exhausted. J.A.R. Munro remarked in 1899 that a fire in Bayramiç had created a fresh demand for building material, and the site was again being quarried; and he saw two inscriptions in the village that had been brought from the hill top. These documents (the letter of Antigonus and the Scepsian reply) were to be set up in the sanctuary of Athena, which must therefore have been on the hill top, as it was in Dercylidas' time. (Cook Troad, p.345)
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScepsisWikidata ID: Q2292038Trismegistos Geo: 3680
Info: Cook 1973 
J.M. Cook, The Troad : An Archaeological and Topographical Study (OUP 1973)
