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. The script tells how a united fleet of kingdoms from western Asia Minor raided coastal cities on the eastern Mediterranean. It suggests they were part of a marauding seafaring confederation, which historians believe played a part in the collapse of those nascent Bronze Age civilisations. Researchers believe the inscriptions were commissioned in 1190 BC by Kupanta-Kurunta, the king of a late Bronze Age state known as Mira. The text suggests the kingdom and other Anatolian states