The Hittites Part 3

In 1876, two years after the publication of Dr. Wright's article, of which I had never heard at the time, I read a Paper on the Hamathite inscriptions before the Society of Biblical Archaeology. In this I put forward a number of conjectures, one of them being that the Hamathite hieroglyphs were the source of the curious syllabary used for several centuries in the island of Cyprus, and another that the hieroglyphs were not an invention of the early inhabitants of Hamath, but represented the system of writing employed by the Hitt.i.tes. We know from the Egyptian records that the Hitt.i.tes could write, and that a cla.s.s of scribes existed among them, and, since Hamath lay close to the borders of the Hitt.i.te kingdoms, it seemed reasonable to suppose that the unknown form of script discovered on its site was. .h.i.tt.i.te rather than Hamathite. The conjecture was confirmed almost immediately afterwards by the discovery of the site of Carchemish, the great Hitt.i.te capital, and of inscriptions there in the same system of writing as that found on the stones of Hamah.

It was not long, therefore, before the learned world began to recognise that the newly-discovered script was the peculiar possession of the Hitt.i.te race. Dr. Hayes Ward was one of the first to do so, and the Trustees of the British Museum determined to inst.i.tute excavations among the ruins of Carchemish. Meanwhile notice was drawn to a fact which showed that the Hitt.i.te characters, as we shall now call them, were employed, not only at Hamath and Carchemish, but in Asia Minor as well.

More than a century ago a German traveller had observed two figures carved on a wall of rock near Ibreez, or Ivris, in the territory of the ancient Lykaonia. One of them was a G.o.d, who carried in his hand a stalk of corn and a bunch of grapes, the other was a man, who stood before the G.o.d in an att.i.tude of adoration. Both figures were shod with boots with upturned ends, and the deity wore a tunic that reached to his knees, while on his head was a peaked cap ornamented with horn-like ribbons. A century elapsed before the sculpture was again visited by an European traveller, and it was again a German who found his way to the spot. On this occasion a drawing was made of the figures, which was published by Ritter in his great work on the geography of the world. But the drawing was poor and imperfect, and the first attempt to do adequate justice to the original was made by the Rev. E. J. Davis in 1875. He published his copy, and an account of the monument, in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_ the following year. He had noticed that the figures were accompanied by what were known at the time as Hamathite characters. Three lines of these were inserted between the face of the G.o.d and his uplifted left arm, four lines more were engraved behind his wors.h.i.+pper, while below, on a level with an aqueduct which fed a mill, were yet other lines of half-obliterated hieroglyphs. It was plain that in Lykaonia also, where the old language of the country still lingered in the days of St. Paul, the Hitt.i.te system of writing had once been used.

Another stone inscribed with Hitt.i.te characters had come to light at Aleppo. Like those of Hamath, it was of black basalt, and had been built into a modern wall. The characters upon it were worn by frequent attrition, the people of Aleppo believing that whoever rubbed his eyes upon it would be immediately cured of ophthalmia. More than one copy of the inscription was taken, but the difficulty of distinguis.h.i.+ng the half-obliterated characters rendered the copies of little service, and a cast of the stone was about to be made when news arrived that the fanatics of Aleppo had destroyed it. Rather than allow its virtue to go out of it--to be stolen, as they fancied, by the Europeans--they preferred to break it in pieces. It is one of the many monuments that have perished at the very moment when their importance first became known.

This, then, was the state of our knowledge in the summer of 1879. We knew that the Hitt.i.tes, with whom Hebrews and Egyptians and a.s.syrians had once been in contact, possessed a hieroglyphic system of writing, and that this system of writing was found on monuments in Hamath, Aleppo, Carchemish, and Lykaonia. We knew, too, that in Lykaonia it accompanied figures carved out of the rock in a peculiar style of art, and represented as wearing a peculiar kind of dress.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SLABS WITH HITt.i.tE SCULPTURES.

(_Photographed in situ at Keller, near Aintab._)]

Suddenly the truth flashed upon me. This peculiar style of art, this peculiar kind of dress, was the same as that which distinguished the sculptures of Karabel, of Ghiaur-kalessi, and of Kappadokia. In all alike we had the same characteristic features, the same head-dresses and shoes, the same tunics, the same clumsy ma.s.siveness of design and characteristic att.i.tude. The figures carved upon the rocks of Karabel and Kappadokia must be memorials of Hitt.i.te art. The clue to their origin and history was at last discovered; the birthplace of the strange art which had produced them was made manifest. A little further research made the fact doubly sure. The photographs Professor Perrot had taken of the monuments of Boghaz Keui in Kappadokia included one of an inscription in ten or eleven lines. The characters of this inscription were worn and almost illegible, but not only were they in relief, like the characters of all other Hitt.i.te inscriptions known at the time, among them two or three hieroglyphs stood out clearly, which were identical with those on the stones of Hamath and Carchemish. All that was needed to complete the verification of my discovery was to visit the Pa.s.s of Karabel, and see whether the hieroglyphs Texier and others had found there likewise belonged to the Hitt.i.te script.

More than three hours did I spend in the niche wherein the figure is carved which Herodotos believed was a likeness of the Egyptian Sesostris. It was necessary to take 'squeezes' as well as copies, if I would recover the characters of the inscription and ascertain their exact forms. My joy was great at finding that they were Hitt.i.te, and that the conclusion I had arrived at in my study at home was confirmed by the monument itself. The Sesostris of Herodotos turned out to be, not the great Pharaoh who contended with the Hitt.i.tes of Kadesh, but a symbol of the far-reaching power and influence of his mighty opponents.

Hitt.i.te art and Hitt.i.te writing, if not the Hitt.i.te name, were proved to have been known from the banks of the Euphrates to the sh.o.r.es of the aegean Sea.

The stone warrior of Karabel stands in his niche in the cliff at a considerable height above the path, and the direction in which he is marching is that which would have led him to Ephesos and the Maeander.

His companion lies below, the block of stone out of which the second figure has been carved having been apparently shaken by an earthquake from the rocks above. This second figure is a duplicate of the first.

Both stand in the same position, both are shod with the same snow-shoes, and both are armed with spear and bow. But the second figure has suffered much from the ill-usage of man. The upper part has been purposely chipped away, and it is not many years ago since a Yuruk's tent was pitched against the block of stone out of which it is carved, the niche in which the old warrior stands conveniently serving as the fire-place of the family. No trace of inscription remains, if indeed it ever existed. At any rate, it could not have run across the breast, as Herodotos a.s.serts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PSEUDO-SESOSTRIS, CARVED ON THE ROCK IN THE Pa.s.s OF KARABEL.]

The account, indeed, given by Herodotos of these two figures can hardly have been that of an eye-witness. Instead of being little over three feet in height, they are more than life-size, and they hold their spears not in the right but in the left hand. Their accoutrement, moreover, is as unlike that of an 'Egyptian and Ethiopian' as it well could be, while the inscription is not traced across the breast, but between the face and the arm. Nor was the Greek historian correct in saying that the pa.s.s which the two warriors seem to guard leads not only from Ephesos to Phokaea, but also from Sardes to Smyrna. It is not until the pa.s.s is cleared at its northern end that the road which runs through it--the _Karabel-dere_, as the Turks now call it--joins the _Belkaive_, or road from Sardes to Smyrna. It is evident that Herodotos must have received his account of the figures from another authority, though his identification of them with the Egyptian Sesostris is his own.

Not far from Karabel another monument of Hitt.i.te art has been discovered. Hard by the town of Magnesia, on the lofty cliffs of Sipylos, a strange figure has been carved out of the rock. It represents a woman with long locks of hair streaming down her shoulders, and a jewel like a lotus-flower upon the head, who sits on a throne in a deep artificial niche. Lydian historians narrate that it was the image of the daughter of a.s.saon, who had sought death by casting herself down from a precipice; but Greek legend preferred to see in it the figure of 'weeping Niobe' turned to stone. Already Homer told how Niobe, when her twelve children had been slain by the G.o.ds, 'now changed to stone, broods over the woes the G.o.ds had brought, there among the rocks, in lonely mountains, even in Sipylos, where they say are the couches of the nymphs who dance on the banks of the Akheloios.' But it was only after the settlement of the Greeks in Lydia that the old monument on Mount Sipylos was held to be the image of Niobe. The limestone rock out of which it was carved dripped with moisture after rain, and as the water flowed over the face of the figure, disintegrating and disfiguring the stone as it ran, the pious Greek beheld in it the Niobe of his own mythology. The figure was originally that of the great G.o.ddess of Asia Minor, known sometimes as Atergatis or Derketo, sometimes as Kybele, sometimes by other names. It is difficult for one who has seen the image of Nofert-ari, the favourite wife of Ramses II., seated in the niche of rock on the cliffs of Abu-simbel, not to believe that the artist who carved the image on Mount Sipylos had visited the Nile. At a little distance both have the same appearance, and a nearer examination shows that, although the Egyptian work is finer than the Lydian, it resembles it in a striking manner. We now know, however, that the 'Niobe' of Sipylos owes its origin to Hitt.i.te art. On the wall of rock out of which the niche is cut wherein the G.o.ddess sits Dr. Dennis discovered a cartouche containing Hitt.i.te characters. By tying some ladders together he and I succeeded in ascending to it, and taking paper impressions of the hieroglyphs. Among them is a character which has the meaning of 'king'[8].

[8] A copy of the inscription made from the squeeze is given in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, VII.

Pt. 3, Pl. v. An eye-copy, made from the ground by Dr. Dennis, on the occasion of his discovery of the cartouche, was published in the _Proceedings_ of the same Society for January 1881, and is necessarily imperfect.

How came these characters and these creations of Hitt.i.te art in a region so remote from that in which the Hitt.i.te kingdoms rose and flourished?

How comes it that we find figures of Hitt.i.te warriors in the Pa.s.s of Karabel and on the rocks of Ghiaur-kalessi, and the image of a Hitt.i.te G.o.ddess on the cliffs of Sipylos? Whose was the hand that engraved the characters that accompany them,--characters which are the same as those which meet us on the stones of Hamath and Carchemish? We have now to learn what answers can be given to these questions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONUMENT OF A HITt.i.tE KING FOUND AT CARCHEMISH.]

CHAPTER IV.

THE HITt.i.tE EMPIRE.

We have seen that the Egyptian monuments bear witness to an extension of Hitt.i.te power into the distant regions of Asia Minor. When the kings of Kadesh contended with the great Pharaoh of the Oppression they were able to summon to their aid allies from the Troad, as well as from Lydia and the sh.o.r.es of the Cilician sea. A century later Egypt was again invaded by a confederacy, consisting partly of the Hitt.i.te rulers of Carchemish and Aleppo, partly of Libyans and Teukrians, and other populations of Asia Minor. If any trust can be placed in the identifications proposed by Egyptian scholars for the countries from whence the va.s.sals and allies of the Hitt.i.tes came it is clear that memorials of Hitt.i.te power and conquest ought to be found in Asia Minor.

And they were found as soon as it was recognised that the curious monuments of Asia Minor, of which the warriors of Karabel and the sculptures of Ibreez are examples, were actually inspired by Hitt.i.te art. As soon as it was known that the art these monuments represented, and the peculiar form of writing which accompanied them, had their earliest home in the Syrian cities of the Hitt.i.te tribes, a new light broke over the prehistoric past of Asia Minor. These Hitt.i.te monuments can be traced in two continuous lines from Northern Syria and Kappadokia to the western extremity of the peninsula. They follow the two highways which once led out of Asia to Sardes and the sh.o.r.es of the aegean. In the south they form as it were a series of stations at Ibreez and Bulgar Maden in Lykaonia, at Fa.s.siler and Tyriaion between Ikonion and the Lake of Beyshehr, and finally in the Pa.s.s of Karabel. Northwards the line runs through the Taurus by Merash, and carries us first to the defile of Ghurun, and then to the great Kappadokian ruins of Boghaz Keui and Eyuk, from whence we pa.s.s by Ghiaur-kalessi and the burial-place of the old Phrygian kings, until we again reach the Lydian capital and the Pa.s.s of Karabel.

Westward of the Halys and Kappadokia they are marked by certain peculiarities. They are found either in the vicinity of silver mines, like those of Lykaonia, or else on the line of the ancient roads, which finally converged in Lydia. None have been discovered in the central plateau of Asia Minor, in the mountains of Lykia in the south, or the wide-reaching coast-lands of the north. They mark the sites of small colonies, or else the lines of road that connected them. Moreover, with the exception of the image of the G.o.ddess who sits on her throne in Mount Sipylos, the western monuments represent the figures of warriors who are in the act of marching forward. This is the case at Karabel; it is also the case at Ghiaur-kalessi, where the rock on which the two Hitt.i.te warriors are carved lies close below the remains of a pre-historic fortress.

Such facts admit of only one explanation. The Hitt.i.te monuments of Western Asia Minor must be memorials of military conquest and supremacy.

In the warriors whose figures stood on either side of the Pa.s.s of Karabel, the sculptor must have seen the visible symbols of Hitt.i.te power. They showed that the Hitt.i.te had won and kept the pa.s.s by force of arms. They are emblems of conquest, not creations of native art.

But it was inevitable that conquest should bring with it a civilising influence. The Hitt.i.tes could not carry with them the art and culture they had acquired in the East without influencing the barbarous populations over whom they claimed to rule. The va.s.sal chieftains of Lydia and the Troad could not lead their forces into Syria, or a.s.sist in the invasion of Egypt, without learning something of that ancient civilisation with which they had come in contact. The Hitt.i.tes, in fact, must be regarded as the first teachers of the rude populations of the West. They brought to them a culture the first elements of which had been inspired by Babylonia; they brought also a system of writing out of which, in all probability, the natives of Asia Minor afterwards developed a writing of their own.

It is possible, therefore, that some of the Hitt.i.te monuments of Asia Minor are the work, not of the Hitt.i.tes themselves, but of the native populations whom they had civilised and instructed. It may be that this is the case at Ibreez, where the faces of the G.o.d and his wors.h.i.+pper have Jewish features very unlike those found on monuments of purely Hitt.i.te origin. But apart from such instances, where the monument is due to Hitt.i.te influence rather than to Hitt.i.te artists, it is certain that most of the Hitt.i.te memorials of Asia Minor are the productions of the Hitt.i.tes themselves. This is proved by the hieroglyphs which are attached to them, as well as by the uniform type of feature and dress which prevails from Carchemish to the aegean. It is impossible to explain such an uniformity, and still more the extraordinary resemblance between the characters engraved at Karabel, or on Mount Sipylos, and those which meet us in the inscriptions of Hamath and Carchemish, except on the supposition that the monuments were executed by men who belonged to the same race and spoke the same language. Wherever Hitt.i.te inscriptions occur, we find in them the same combinations of hieroglyphs as well as the use of the same characters to denote grammatical suffixes.

We may, then, rest satisfied with the conclusion that the existence of a Hitt.i.te empire extending into Asia Minor is certified, not only by the records of ancient Egypt, but also by Hitt.i.te monuments which still exist. In the days of Ramses II., when the children of Israel were groaning under the tasks allotted to them, the enemies of their oppressors were already exercising a power and a domination which rivalled that of Egypt. The Egyptian monarch soon learned to his cost that the Hitt.i.te prince was as 'great' a king as himself, and could summon to his aid the inhabitants of the unknown north. Pharaoh's claim to sovereignty was disputed by adversaries as powerful as the ruler of Egypt, if indeed not more powerful, and there was always a refuge among them for those who were oppressed by the Egyptian king.

When, however, we speak of a Hitt.i.te empire we must understand clearly what that means. It was not an empire like that of Rome, where the subject provinces were consolidated together under a central authority, obeying the same laws and the same supreme head. It was not an empire like that of the Persians, or of the a.s.syrian successors of Tiglath-pileser III., which represented the organised union of numerous states and nations under a single ruler. Such a conception of empire was due to Tiglath-pileser III., and his successor Sargon; it was a new idea in the world, and had never been realised before. The first a.s.syrian empire, like the foreign empire of Egypt, was of an altogether different character. It depended on the military enterprise and strength of individual monarchs. As long as the a.s.syrian or Egyptian king could lead his armies into distant territories, and compel their inhabitants to pay him tribute and homage, his empire extended over them. But hardly had he returned home laden with spoil than we find the subject populations throwing off their allegiance and a.s.serting their independence, while the death of the conqueror brought with it almost invariably the general uprising of the tribes and cities his arms had subdued. Before the days of Tiglath-pileser, in fact, empire in Western Asia meant the power of a prince to force a foreign people to submit to his rule. The conquered provinces had to be subdued again and again; but as long as this could be done, as long as the native struggles for freedom could be crushed by a campaign, so long did the empire exist.

It was an empire of this sort that the Hitt.i.tes established in Asia Minor. How long it lasted we cannot say. But so long as the distant races of the West answered the summons to war of the Hitt.i.te princes, it remained a reality. The fact that the tribes of the Troad and Lydia are found fighting under the command of the Hitt.i.te kings of Kadesh, proves that they acknowledged the supremacy of their Hitt.i.te lords, and followed them to battle like the va.s.sals of some feudal chief. If Hitt.i.te armies had not marched to the sh.o.r.es of the aegean, and Hitt.i.te princes been able from time to time to exact homage from the nations of the far west, Egypt would not have had to contend against the populations of Asia Minor in its wars with the Hitt.i.tes, and the figures of Hitt.i.te warriors would not have been sculptured on the rocks of Karabel. There was a time when the Hitt.i.te name was feared as far as the western extremity of Asia Minor, and when Hitt.i.te satraps had their seat in the future capital of Lydia.

Traditions of this period lingered on into cla.s.sical days. The older dynasty of Lydian kings traced its descent from Bel and Ninos, the Babylonian or a.s.syrian G.o.ds, whose names had been carried by the Hitt.i.tes into the remote west. The Lydian hero Kayster, who gave his name to the Kaystrian plain, was fabled to have wandered into Syria, and there, after wooing Semiramis, to have been the father of Derketo, the G.o.ddess of Carchemish. A Lydian was even said to have drowned Derketo in the sacred lake of Ashkelon; and Eusebius declares that Sardes, the Lydian capital, was captured for the first time in B. C. 1078, by a horde of invaders from the north-western regions of Asia.

But it is in the famous legend of the Amazons that we must look for the chief evidence preserved to us by cla.s.sical antiquity of the influence once exercised by the Hitt.i.tes in Asia Minor. The Amazons were imagined to be a nation of female warriors, whose primitive home lay in Kappadokia, on the banks of the Thermodon, not far from the ruins of Boghaz Keui. From hence they had issued forth to conquer the people of Asia Minor and to found an empire which reached to the aegean Sea. The building of many of the most famous cities on the aegean coast was ascribed to them,--Myrina and Kyme, Smyrna and Ephesos, where the wors.h.i.+p of the great Asiatic G.o.ddess was carried on with barbaric ceremonies into the later age of civilised Greece.

Now these Amazons are nothing more than the priestesses of the Asiatic G.o.ddess, whose cult spread from Carchemish along with the advance of the Hitt.i.te armies. She was served by a mult.i.tude of armed priestesses and eunuch priests; under her name of Ma, for instance, no less than six thousand of them waited on her at Komana in Kappadokia. Certain cities, in fact, like Komana and Ephesos, were dedicated to her service, and a large part of the population accordingly became the armed ministers of the mighty G.o.ddess. Generally these were women, as at Ephesos in early days, where they obeyed a high-priestess, who called herself 'the queen-bee.' When Ephesos pa.s.sed into Greek hands, the G.o.ddess wors.h.i.+pped there was identified with the Greek Artemis, and a high-priest took the place of the high-priestess. But the priestess of Artemis still continued to be called 'a bee,' reminding us that Deborah or 'Bee' was the name of one of the greatest of the prophetesses of ancient Israel; and the G.o.ddess herself continued to be depicted under the same form as that which had belonged to her in Hitt.i.te days. On her head was the so-called mural crown, the Hitt.i.te origin of which has now been placed beyond doubt by the sculptures of Boghaz Keui, while her chariot was drawn by lions. It was from the Hitt.i.tes, too, that Artemis received her sacred animal, the goat.

The 'spear-armed host' of the Amazons, which came from Kappadokia, which conquered Asia Minor, and was so closely connected with the wors.h.i.+p of the Ephesian Artemis, can be no other than the priestesses of the Hitt.i.te G.o.ddess, who danced in her honour armed with the s.h.i.+eld and bow.

In ancient art the Amazons are represented as clad in the Hitt.i.te tunic and brandis.h.i.+ng the same double-headed axe that is held in the hands of some of the Hitt.i.te deities on the rocks of Boghaz Keui, while the 'spear' lent to them by the Greek poet brings to our recollection the spear held by the warriors of Karabel. We cannot explain the myth of the Amazons except on the supposition that they represented the armed priestesses of the Hitt.i.te G.o.ddess, and that a tradition of the Hitt.i.te empire in Asia Minor has entwined itself around the story of their arrival in the West. The cities they are said to have founded must have been the seats of Hitt.i.te rule.

The Hitt.i.tes were intruders in Syria as well as in Western Asia Minor.

Everything points to the conclusion that they had descended from the ranges of the Taurus. Their costume was that of the inhabitants of a cold and mountainous region, not of the warm valleys of the south. In place of the trailing robes of the Syrians, the national costume was a tunic which did not quite reach to the knees. It was only after their settlement in the Syrian cities that they adopted the dress of the country; the sculptured rocks of Asia Minor represent them with the same short tunic as that which distinguished the Dorians of Greece or the ancient inhabitants of Ararat. But the most characteristic portion of the Hitt.i.te garb were the shoes with upturned ends. Wherever the figure of a Hitt.i.te is portrayed, there we find this peculiar form of boot. It reappears among the hieroglyphs of the inscriptions, and the Egyptian artists who adorned the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes have placed it on the feet of the Hitt.i.te defenders of Kadesh. The boot is really a snow-shoe, admirably adapted for walking over snow, but ill-suited for the inhabitants of a level or cultivated country. The fact that it was still used by the Hitt.i.tes of Kadesh in the warm fertile valley of the Orontes proves better than any other argument that they must have come from the snow-clad mountains of the north. It is like the shoe of similar shape which the Turks have carried with them in their migrations from the north and introduced amongst the natives of Syria and Egypt. It indicates with unerring certainty the northern origin of the Turkish conqueror. He stands in the same relation to the modern population of Syria that the Hitt.i.tes stood to the Arameans of Kadesh three thousand years ago.

Equally significant is the long fingerless glove which is one of the most frequent of Hitt.i.te hieroglyphs. The thumb alone is detached from the rest of the bag in which the fingers were enclosed. Such a glove is an eloquent witness to the wintry cold of the regions from which its wearers came, and a similar glove is still used during the winter months by the peasants of modern Kappadokia.

We may find another evidence of the northern descent of the Hitt.i.te tribes in the hieroglyph which is used in the sense of 'country.' It represents two, or sometimes three, pointed mountains, whose forms, as was remarked some years ago, resemble those of the mountains about Kaisariyeh, the Kappadokian capital.

If we leave Kadesh and proceed northwards, the local names bear more and more the peculiar stamp of a Hitt.i.te origin. We leave Semitic names like Kadesh, 'the sanctuary,' behind us, and at length find ourselves in a district where the geographical names no longer admit of a Semitic etymology. It is just this district, moreover, in which Hitt.i.te inscriptions first become plentiful. The first met with to the south are the stones of Hamath and the lost inscription of Aleppo; but from Carchemish northwards we now know that numbers of them still exist. The territory covered by them is a square, the base of which is formed by a line running from Carchemish through Antioch into Lykaonia, while the remains at Boghaz Keui and Eyuk const.i.tute its northern limit. We must regard this region as having been the primeval home and starting-point of the Hitt.i.te race. They will have been a population which cl.u.s.tered round the two flanks of the Taurus range, extending far into Kappadokia on the north, and towards Armenia on the east.

They preserved their independence on the banks of the Halys in Kappadokia for nearly two hundred years after the fall of Carchemish. It was not long before the overthrow of Lydia by Cyrus that Kroesos, the Lydian king, destroyed the cities of Pteria, where the ruins of Boghaz Keui and Eyuk now stand, and enslaved their inhabitants, thus avenging upon them the conquest of his own country by their ancestors so many centuries before. Herodotos calls them 'Syrians,' a name which is qualified as 'White Syrians' by the Greek geographer Strabo. It was in this way that the Greek writer wished to distinguish them from the dark-coloured Syrians of Aramean or Jewish birth, with whom he was otherwise acquainted; and it reminds us that, whereas the Egyptian artists painted the Hitt.i.tes with yellow skins, they painted the Syrians with red. It is an interesting fact that the memory of their relations.h.i.+p to the population on the Syrian side of the Taurus should have been preserved so long among these Hitt.i.tes of Kappadokia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE OF EYUK.]

Boghaz Keui and Eyuk are situated in the district known as Pteria to the Greeks. At Eyuk there are remains of a vast palace, which stood on an artificial platform of earth, like the palaces of a.s.syria and Babylon.

The walls of the palace, formed of huge blocks of cut stone, can still be traced in many places. It was approached by an avenue of sculptured slabs, on which lions were represented, some of them in the act of devouring a ram. The head and att.i.tude of one that is preserved remind us of the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes which led to the temple of Karnak at Thebes. The entrance of the palace was flanked on either side by two enormous monoliths of granite, on the external faces of which were carved in relief the images of a sphinx. But though the artist had clearly gone to Egypt for his model, it is also clear that he had modified the forms he imitated in accordance with national ideas. The head-dress, like the feet, of the sphinxes is non-Egyptian, the necklace pa.s.ses under the chin instead of falling across the breast, and the sphinx itself is erect, not rec.u.mbent, as in Egypt. On the right hand the same block of stone which bears the figure of the sphinx bears also, on the inner side, the figure of a double-headed eagle, with an animal which Professor Perrot believes to be a hare in either talon, and a man standing upon its twofold head. The same double-headed eagle, supporting the figure of a man or a G.o.d, is met with at Boghaz Keui, and must be regarded as one of the peculiarities of Hitt.i.te symbolism and art. The symbol was adopted in later days by the Turkoman princes, who had perhaps first seen it on the Hitt.i.te monuments of Kappodokia; and the Crusaders brought it to Europe with them in the 14th century. Here it became the emblem of the German Emperors, who have pa.s.sed it on to the modern kingdoms of Russia and Austria. It is not the only heirloom of Hitt.i.te art which has descended to us of to-day.

The lintel of the palace gate at Eyuk was of solid stone, and, if Professor Perrot is right, the huge stone lintel, adorned with a lion's head, still lies in fragments on the ground. The entrance was flanked with walls on which bas-reliefs were carved, as in the palaces which were built by the kings of a.s.syria. They formed, in fact, a dado, the rest of the wall above them being probably of brick covered with stucco and painted with bright colours. Many of the sculptured blocks still lie scattered on the ground. Here we have the picture of a priest before an altar, there of a sacred bull mounted on a pedestal. Hard by is the likeness of two men, one of whom carries a lyre, the other a goat; while on another stone a man is represented with little regard to perspective in the act of climbing a ladder. Another relief introduces to us three rams and a goat whose horn is grasped by a shepherd; elsewhere again we see a G.o.ddess seated in a chair of peculiar construction, with her feet upon a stool and objects like flowers in her hand. A similar piece of sculpture has been found at Merash, on the southern side of the Taurus, within the limits of the ancient Komagene, even such details as the form of the chair and stool being alike in the two cases. The two reliefs might have been executed by the same hand.

The sphinxes which guarded the entrance of the palace of Eyuk and the avenue which led up to them bear unmistakable testimony to the influence of Egyptian art upon its builders. They take us back to a period when the Hitt.i.tes of Kappadokia were in contact with the people of the Nile, and thus confirm the evidence of the Egyptian records. There must have been a time when the population of distant Kappadokia held intercourse with that of Egypt, and this time, as we learn from the Egyptian monuments, was the age of Ramses II. It is perhaps not going too far to a.s.sume that the palace of Eyuk was erected in the 13th century before our era, and is a relic of the period when the sway of the Hitt.i.te princes of Kadesh or Carchemish extended as far north as the neighbourhood of the Halys. It is indeed possible that the palace was originally the summer residence of the kings whose homes were in the south. The plateau on which Eyuk and Boghaz Keui stand is more than 2000 feet above the level of the sea, and the winters there are intensely cold. From December onwards the ground is piled high with snow. It is well known that the descendants of races which have originally come from a cold climate endure the heats of a southern summer with impatience; and the same causes which make the English rulers of India to-day retire during the summer to the mountain heights, may have made the Hitt.i.te lords of Syria build their summer palace in the Kappadokian highlands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCULPTURES AT BOGHAZ KEUI.]

The sculptures of Boghaz Keui belong to a somewhat later date than those of Eyuk. Boghaz Keui is five hours to the south-west of Eyuk, and marks the site of a once populous town. A stream that runs past it separates the ruins of the city from a remarkable series of sculptures carved on the rocks of the mountains which overlooked the city. The city was surrounded by a ma.s.sive wall of masonry, and within it were two citadels solidly built on the summits of two shafts of rock. The wall was without towers, but at its foot ran a moat cut partly through the rock, partly through the earth, the earth being coated with a smooth and slippery covering of masonry. The most important building in the city was the palace, a plan of which has been made by modern travellers. Like the palace of Eyuk, it was erected on an artificial mound or terrace of earth, and its ornamentation seems to have been similar to that of Eyuk.

But little is left of it save the foundations of the walls and the overturned throne of stone which once stood in the central court supported on the bodies of two lions. Lions' heads were also carved on the columns which formed the doorposts of the city-gate.