The Hittites Part 4

The interest of Boghaz Keui centres in the sculptures which have been carved with so much care on the rocky walls of the mountains. Here advantage has been taken of two narrow recesses, the sides and floors of which have been artificially shaped and levelled. The first and largest recess may be described as of rectangular shape. Along either side of it, as along the dado of a room, run two long lines of figures in relief, which eventually meet at the end opposite the entrance. On the left-hand side we see a line of men, almost all clad alike in the short tunic, peaked tiara, and boots with upturned ends that characterise Hitt.i.te art. At times, however, they are interrupted by other figures in the long Syrian robe, who may perhaps be intended for women. Among them are two dwarf-like creatures upholding the crescent disk of the moon, and after a while the procession becomes that of a number of deities, each with his name written in Hitt.i.te hieroglyphs at his side. After turning the corner of the recess, the procession consists of three G.o.ds, two of whom stand on mountain-peaks, while the foremost (with a goat beside him) is supported on the heads of two adoring priests.

Facing him is the foremost figure of the other procession, which starts from the eastern side of the recess, and finally meets the first on its northern wall. This figure is that of the great Asiatic G.o.ddess, who wears on her head the mural crown and stands upon a panther, while beside her, as beside the G.o.d she is greeting, is the portraiture of a goat. Behind her a youthful G.o.d, with the double-headed battle-axe in his hand, stands upon a panther, and behind him again are two priestesses with mural crowns, whose feet rest upon the heads and wings of a double-headed eagle. This eagle, whose form is but a reproduction of that sculptured at Eyuk, closes the series of designs represented on the northern wall. The eastern wall is occupied with a long line, first of G.o.ddesses and then of priestesses. Where the line breaks off at last we come upon a solitary piece of sculpture. This is the image of an eunuch-priest, who stands on a mountain and holds in one hand a curved augural wand, in the other a strange symbol representing a priest with embroidered robes, who stands upon a shoe with upturned ends, and supports a winged solar disk, the two extremities of which rest upon baseless columns.

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

The entrance to the second recess is guarded on either side by two winged monsters, with human bodies and the heads of dogs. It leads into an artificially excavated pa.s.sage of rectangular shape, on the rocky walls of which detached groups of figures and emblems are engraved. On the western wall is a row of twelve priests or soldiers, each of whom bears a scythe upon his shoulder; facing them on the eastern wall are two reliefs of strange character. One of them depicts the youthful G.o.d, whose name perhaps was Attys, embracing with his left arm the eunuch-priest, above whose head is engraved the strange symbol that has been already described. The other represents a G.o.d's head crowned with the peaked tiara, and supported on a double-headed lion, which again stands on the hinder feet of two other lions, whose heads rest on a column or stem. All these sculptures were once covered with stucco, and thus preserved from the action of the weather.

It is evident that in these two mountain recesses we have a sanctuary, the forms and symbols of whose deities were sculptured on its walls of living rock. It was a sanctuary too holy to be confined within the walls of the city, and the supreme deities to whom it was dedicated were a G.o.d and a G.o.ddess, served by a mult.i.tude of male and female priests. In fact, as Prof. Perrot remarks, Boghaz Keui must have been a sacred city like Komana, whose citizens were consecrated to the chief divinities adored by the Hitt.i.tes, and were governed by a high-priest. It was as much a 'Kadesh' or 'Hierapolis,' as much a 'holy city,' as Carchemish itself.

It is not its sculptures only which prove to us that it was a city of the Hitt.i.tes. The figures of the deities have attached to them, as at Eyuk, the same hieroglyphs as those which meet us in the inscriptions of Hamath and Aleppo, of Carchemish and Merash, and within its walls, southward of the ruins of its palace, Prof. Perrot discovered a long text of nine or ten lines cut out of the rock, and though worn and disfigured by time and weather, still showing the forms of many Hitt.i.te characters. So far as can be judged from a photograph of it he has published, the forms are the same as those which are found on the Hitt.i.te monuments of Syria.

Tedious as all these details may seem to be, it has been necessary to give them, since they tell us what was the appearance and construction of a Hitt.i.te city, a Hitt.i.te palace, and the interior of a Hitt.i.te temple. The discoveries recently made in the Hitt.i.te districts south of the Taurus, show us that here too the palaces and temples were like those of Eyuk and Boghaz Keui. Here too we find the same dados sculptured with the same figures dressed in the same costume; here too we meet with the same lions, and the same winged deities standing on the backs of animals. A photograph of a piece of sculpture on a block of basalt at Carchemish, taken by Dr. Gwyther, might have been taken at Boghaz Keui. The art, the forms, and the symbolism are all the same.

The high-road from Boghaz Keui to Merash must have pa.s.sed through the defile of Ghurun, where Sir Charles Wilson discovered Hitt.i.te inscriptions carved upon the cliff. But there may have been a second road which led through Kaisariyeh, the modern capital of Kappadokia, southward to Bor or Tyana, where Prof. Ramsay found a Hitt.i.te text, and from thence to the silver mines of the Bulgar Dagh. The bas-reliefs of Ibreez are not far distant from the famous Cilician gates which led the traveller from the great central plateau of Asia Minor to Tarsus and the sea.

It would seem that the silver mines of the Bulgar Dagh were first worked by Hitt.i.te miners. Silver had a special attraction for the Hitt.i.te race.

The material on which the Hitt.i.te version of the treaty between the Hitt.i.te king of Kadesh and the Egyptian Pharaoh was written was a tablet of that metal. That such tablets were in frequent use, results from the fact that nearly all the Hitt.i.te inscriptions known to us are not incised, but cut in relief upon the stone. It is therefore obvious that the Hitt.i.tes must have first inscribed their hieroglyphs upon metal, rather than upon wood or stone or clay; it is only in the case of metal that it is less laborious to hammer or cast in relief than to cut the metal with a graving tool, and nothing can prove more clearly how long accustomed the Hitt.i.te scribes must have been to doing so, than their imitation of this work in relief when they came to write upon stone. It is possible that most of the silver of which they made use came from the Bulgar Dagh. The Hitt.i.te inscription found near the old mines of these mountains by Mr. Davis, proves that they had once occupied the locality.

It is even possible that their settlement for a time in Lydia was also connected with their pa.s.sion for 'the bright metal.' At all events the Gumush Dagh, or 'Silver Mountains,' lie to the south of the Pa.s.s of Karabel, and traces of old workings can still be detected in them.

However this may be, the Hitt.i.te monuments of Asia Minor confirm in a striking way the evidence of the Egyptian inscriptions. They show us that the Hitt.i.tes worked for silver in the mountains which looked down upon the Cilician plain, from whence the influence of their art and writing extended into the plain itself. They further show that the central point of Hitt.i.te power was a square on either side of the Taurus range, which included Carchemish and Komagene in the south, the district eastwards of the Halys on the north, and the country of which Malatiyeh was the capital in the east. The Hitt.i.te tribes, in fact, were mountaineers from the plateau of Kappadokia who had spread themselves out in all directions. A time came when, under the leaders.h.i.+p of powerful princes, they marched along the two high-roads of Asia Minor and established their supremacy over the coast-tribes of the far west.

The age to which this military empire belongs is indicated by the Egyptian character of the so-called image of Niobe on the cliff of Sipylos, as well as by the sphinxes which guarded the entrance to the palace of Eyuk. It goes back to the days when the rulers of Kadesh could summon to their aid the va.s.sal-chieftains of the aegean coast. The monuments the Hitt.i.tes have left behind them in Asia Minor thus bear the same testimony as the records of Egypt. The people to whom Uriah, and it may be Bath-sheba, belonged, not only had contended on equal terms with one of the greatest of Egyptian kings; they had carried their arms through the whole length of Asia Minor, they had set up satraps in the cities of Lydia, and had brought the civilisation of the East to the barbarous tribes of the distant West.

CHAPTER V.

THE HITt.i.tE CITIES AND RACE.

Of the history of the 'White Syrians' or Hitt.i.tes who lived in the land of Pteria, near the Halys, we know nothing at present beyond what we can gather from the ruins of their stronghold at Boghaz Keui and their palace at Eyuk. The same is the case with the Hitt.i.te tribes of Malatiyeh and Komagene. When the inscription which adorns the body of a stone lion found at Merash can be deciphered, it will doubtless cast light on the early history of the city; at present we do not know even its ancient name. It is not until we leave the mountainous region originally occupied by the Hitt.i.te race, and descend into the valleys of Syria, that the annals of their neighbours begin to tell us something about their fortunes and achievements. The history of their two southern capitals, Carchemish and Kadesh, broken and imperfect though it may be, is not an utter blank.

The site of Carchemish had long been looked for in vain. At one time it was identified with the Kirkesion or Circesium of cla.s.sical geography, built at the confluence of the Khabour and the Euphrates. But the a.s.syrian name of Kirkesion was Sirki, and its position did not agree with that a.s.signed to 'Gargamis' or Carchemish in the a.s.syrian texts.

Professor Maspero subsequently placed the latter at Membij, the ancient Mabog or Hierapolis, on the strength of the evidence furnished by cla.s.sical authors and the Egyptian monuments; but the ruins of Membij contain nothing earlier than the Greek period, and their position on a rocky plateau at a distance from the Euphrates, is inconsistent with the fact known to us from the a.s.syrian inscriptions, that Carchemish commanded the fords over the Euphrates.

To Mr. Skene, for many years the English consul at Aleppo, is due the credit of first discovering the true site of the old Hitt.i.te capital. On the western bank of the Euphrates, midway between Birejik and the mouth of the Sajur, rises an artificial mound of earth, under which ruins and sculptured blocks of stone had been found from time to time. It was known as Jerabls, or Kalaat Jerabls, 'the fortress of Jerabls,'

sometimes wrongly written Jerabis; and in the name of Jerabls Mr. Skene had no difficulty in recognising an Arab corruption of Hierapolis. In the Roman age the name of Hierapolis or 'Holy City' had been transferred to its neighbour Membij, which inherited the traditions and religious fame of the older Carchemish; but when the triumph of Christianity in Syria brought with it the fall of the great temple of Membij, the name disappeared from the later city, and was remembered only in connection with the ruins of the ancient Carchemish.

Two years after Mr. Skene's discovery, Mr. George Smith visited Carchemish on his last ill-fated journey from which he never returned, and recognised at once that Mr. Skene's identification was right. The position of Jerabls suited the requirements of the a.s.syrian texts, it lay on the high-road which formerly led from east to west, and among its ruins was an inscription in Hitt.i.te characters. Not long afterwards there were brought to the British Museum the bronze bands which once adorned the gates of an a.s.syrian temple, and on one of these is a picture in relief of Carchemish as it looked in the days of Jehu of Israel. The Euphrates is represented as running past its walls, thus conclusively showing that Jerabls, and not Membij, must be the site on which it stood.

The site was bought by Mr. Henderson, Mr. Skene's successor at Aleppo, and the money was invested by the former owner in the purchase of a cow.

The mighty were fallen indeed, when the Hitt.i.te capital which had resisted the armies of Egypt and a.s.syria was judged to be worth no more than the price of a beast of the field. In 1878 Mr. Henderson was employed by the Trustees of the British Museum in excavating on the spot; but no sufficient supervision was exercised over the workmen, and though a few remains of Hitt.i.te sculpture and writing found their way to London, much was left to be burned into lime by the natives or employed in the construction of a mill.

The ancient city was defended on two sides by the Euphrates, and was exposed only on the north and west. Here, however, an artificial ca.n.a.l had been cut, on either side of which was a fortified wall. The mound which had first attracted Mr. Skene's attention marks the site of the royal palace, where the excavators found the remains of a dado like that of Eyuk, the face of the stones having been sculptured into the likeness of G.o.ds and men. The men were shod with boots with upturned ends, that unfailing characteristic of Hitt.i.te art.

Carchemish enjoyed a long history. When first we hear of it in the Egyptian records it was already in Hitt.i.te hands. Thothmes III. fought beneath its walls, and his bravest warriors plunged into the Euphrates in their eagerness to capture the foe. Tiglath-pileser I. had seen its walls from the opposite sh.o.r.e of the Euphrates, but had not ventured to approach them. a.s.sur-natsir-pal and his son Shalmaneser had received tribute from its king, and when it finally surrendered to the armies of Sargon it was made the seat of an a.s.syrian satrap. The trade which had flowed through it continued to pour wealth into the hands of its merchants, and the 'maneh of Carchemish' remained a standard of value.

When Egypt made her final struggle for supremacy in Asia, it was under the walls of Carchemish that the decisive struggle was fought. The battle of Carchemish in B.C. 604 drove Necho out of Syria and Palestine, and placed the destinies of the chosen people in the hands of the Babylonian king. It is possible that the ruin of Carchemish dates from the battle. However that may be, long before the beginning of the Christian era it had been supplanted by Mabog or Membij, and the great sanctuary which had made it a 'holy city' was transferred to its rival and successor.

Like Carchemish, Kadesh on the Orontes, the most southern capital the Hitt.i.tes possessed, was also a 'holy city.' Pictures of it have been preserved on the monuments of Ramses II. We gather from them that it stood on the sh.o.r.e of the Lake of Horns, still called the 'Lake of Kadesh,' at the point where the Orontes flowed out of the lake. The river was conducted round the city in a double channel, across which a wide bridge was thrown, the s.p.a.ce between the two channels being apparently occupied by a wall.

Kadesh must have been one of the last conquests made by the Hitt.i.tes in Syria, and their retention of it was the visible sign of their supremacy over Western Asia. We do not know when they were forced to yield up its possession to others. As has been pointed out, the correct reading of 2 Sam. xxiv. 6 informs us that the northern limit of the kingdom of David was formed by 'the Hitt.i.tes of Kadesh,' 'the entering in of Hamath,' as it seems to be called elsewhere. In the age of David, accordingly, Kadesh must still have been in their hands, but it had already ceased to be so when the a.s.syrian king Shalmaneser III. led his armies to the west. No allusion to the city and its inhabitants occurs in the a.s.syrian inscriptions, and we may conjecture that it had been destroyed by the Syrians of Damascus. As Membij took the place of Carchemish, so Emesa or Homs took the place of Kadesh.

We have seen that the Hitt.i.tes were a northern race. Their primitive home probably lay on the northern side of the Taurus. What they were like we can learn both from their own sculptures and from the Egyptian monuments, which agree most remarkably in the delineation of their features. The extraordinary resemblance between the Hitt.i.te faces drawn by the Egyptian artists and those depicted by themselves in their bas-reliefs and their hieroglyphs, is a convincing proof of the faithfulness of the Egyptian representations, as well as of the ident.i.ty of the Hitt.i.tes of the Egyptian inscriptions with the Hitt.i.tes of Carchemish and Kappadokia.

It must be confessed that they were not a handsome people. They were short and thick of limb, and the front part of their faces was pushed forward in a curious and somewhat repulsive way. The forehead retreated, the cheek-bones were high, the nostrils were large, the upper lip protrusive. They had, in fact, according to the craniologists, the characteristics of a Mongoloid race. Like the Mongols, moreover, their skins were yellow and their eyes and hair were black. They arranged the hair in the form of a 'pig-tail,' which characterises them on their own and the Egyptian monuments quite as much as their snow-shoes with upturned toes.

In Syria they doubtless mixed with the Semitic race, and the further south they advanced the more likely they were to become absorbed into the native population. The Hitt.i.tes of Southern Judah have Semitic names, and probably spoke a Semitic language. Kadesh continued to bear to the last its Semitic t.i.tle, and among the Hitt.i.te names which occur further north there are several which display a Semitic stamp. In the neighbourhood of Carchemish Hitt.i.tes and Arameans were mingled together, and Pethor was at once a Hitt.i.te and an Aramean town. In short, the Hitt.i.tes in Syria were like a conquering race everywhere; they formed merely the governing and upper cla.s.s, which became smaller and smaller the further removed they were from their original seats. Like the Normans in Sicily or the Etruscans in ancient Italy, they tended gradually to disappear or else to be absorbed into the subject race. It was only in their primitive homes that they survived in their original strength and purity, and though even in Kappadokia they lost their old languages, adopting in place of them first Aramaic, then Greek, and lastly Turkish, we may still observe their features and characteristics in the modern inhabitants of the Taurus range. Even in certain districts of Kappadokia their descendants may still be met with. 'The type,' says Sir Charles Wilson, 'which is not a beautiful one, is still found in some parts of Kappadokia, especially amongst the people living in the extraordinary subterranean towns which I discovered beneath the great plain north-west of Nigdeh.' The characteristics of race, when once acquired, seem almost indelible; and it is possible that, when careful observations can be made, it will be found that the ancient Hitt.i.te race still survives, not only in Eastern Asia Minor, but even in the southern regions of Palestine.

CHAPTER VI.

HITt.i.tE RELIGION AND ART.

Lucian, or some other Greek writer who has usurped his name, has left us a minute account of the great temple of Mabog as it existed in the second century of the Christian era. Mabog, as we have seen, was the successor of Carchemish; and there is little reason to doubt that the pagan temple of Mabog, with all the rites and ceremonies that were carried on in it, differed but little from the pagan temple of the older Carchemish.

It stood, we are told, in the very centre of the 'Holy City.' It consisted of an outer court and an inner sanctuary, which again contained a Holy of Holies, entered only by the high-priest and those of his companions who were 'nearest the G.o.ds.' The temple was erected on an artificial mound or platform, more than twelve feet in height, and its walls and ceiling within were brilliant with gold. Its doors were also gilded, but the Holy of Holies or innermost shrine was not provided with doors, being separated from the rest of the building, it would seem, like the Holy of Holies in the Jewish temple, by a curtain or veil. On either side of the entrance was a cone-like column of great height, a symbol of the G.o.ddess of fertility, and in the outer court a large altar of bra.s.s. To the left of the latter was an image of 'Semiramis,' and not far off a great 'sea' or 'lake,' containing sacred fish. Oxen, horses, eagles, bears, and lions were kept in the court, as being sacred to the deities wors.h.i.+pped within.

On entering the temple the visitor saw on his left the throne of the Sun-G.o.d, but no image, since the Sun and Moon alone of the G.o.ds had no images dedicated to them. Beyond, however, were the statues of various divinities, among others the wonder-working image of a G.o.d who was believed to deliver oracles and prophecies. At times, it was said, the image moved of its own accord, and if not lifted up at once by the priests, began to perspire. When the priests took it in their hands, it led them from one part of the temple to the other, until the high-priest, standing before it, asked it questions, which it answered by driving its bearers forward. The central objects of wors.h.i.+p, however, were the golden images of two deities, whom Lucian identifies with the Greek Hera and Zeus, another figure standing between them, on the head of which rested a golden dove. The G.o.ddess, who blazed with precious stones, bore in her hand a sceptre and on her head that turreted or mural crown which distinguishes the G.o.ddesses of Boghaz Keui. Like them, moreover, she was supported on lions, while her consort was carried by bulls. In him we may recognise the G.o.d who at Boghaz Keui is advancing to meet the supreme Hitt.i.te G.o.ddess.

In the Egyptian text of the treaty between Ramses and the king of Kadesh, the supreme Hitt.i.te G.o.d is called Sutekh, the G.o.ddess being Antarata, or perhaps Astarata. In later days, however, the G.o.ddess of Carchemish was known as Athar-'Ati, which the Greeks transformed into Atargatis and Derketo. Derketo was fabled to be the mother of Semiramis, in whom Greek legend saw an a.s.syrian queen; but Semiramis was really the G.o.ddess Istar, called Ashtoreth in Canaan, and Atthar or Athar by the Arameans, among whom Carchemish was built. Derketo was, therefore, but another form of Semiramis, or rather but another name under which the great Asiatic G.o.ddess was known. The dove was sacred to her, and this explains why an image of the dove was placed above the head of the third image in the divine triad of Mabog.

The temple was served by a mult.i.tude of priests. More than 300 took part in the sacrifices on the day when Lucian saw it. The priests were dressed in white, and wore the skull-cap which we find depicted on the Hitt.i.te monuments. The high-priest alone carried on his head the lofty tiara, which the sculptures indicate was a prerogative of G.o.ds and kings. Prominent among the priests were the Galli or eunuchs, who on the days of festival cut their arms and scourged themselves in honour of their deities. Such actions remind us of those priests of Baal who 'cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.'

Twice a year a solemn procession took place to a small chasm in the rock under the temple, where, it was alleged, the waters of the deluge had been swallowed up, and water from the sea was poured into it. It is to this pit that Melito, a Christian writer of Syria, alludes when he says that the G.o.ddess Simi, the daughter of the supreme G.o.d Hadad, put an end to the attacks of a demon by filling with sea water the pit in which he lived. But in Lucian's time the demon was regarded as the deluge, and the account of the deluge given to the Greek writer agrees so closely with that which we read in Genesis as to make it clear that it had been borrowed by the priests of Hierapolis from the Hebrew Scriptures. It is probable, however, that the tradition itself was of much older standing, and had originally been imported from Babylonia. At all events the hero of the deluge was called Sisythes, a modification of the name of the Chaldaean Noah, while Major Conder found a place in the close neighbourhood of Kadesh which is known as 'the Ark of the Prophet Noah,'

and close at hand a spring termed the Tannur or 'Oven,' out of which, according to Mohammedan belief, the waters of the flood gushed forth.

But there were many other festivals at Mabog besides that which commemorated the subsidence of the deluge. Pilgrims flocked to it from all parts--Arabia, Palestine, Kappadokia, Babylonia, even India. They were required to drink water only, and to sleep on the ground. Numerous and rich were the offerings which they brought to the shrine, and once arrived there were called upon to offer sacrifices. Goats and sheep were the most common victims, though oxen were also offered. The only animal whose flesh was forbidden to be either sacrificed or eaten was the swine; as among the Jews, it was regarded as unclean. After being dedicated in the court of the temple the animal was usually led to the house of the offerer, and there put to death; sometimes, however, it was killed by being thrown from the entrance to the temple. Even children were sacrificed by their parents in this way, after first being tied up in skins and told that they were 'not children but oxen.'

Different stories were current as to the foundation of the temple. There were some who affirmed that Sisythes had built it after the deluge over the spot where the waters of the flood had been swallowed up by the earth. It is possible that this was the legend originally believed in Mabog before the traditions of Carchemish had been transferred to it. It seems to be closely connected with the local peculiarities of the site.

The other legends had doubtless had their origin in the older Hierapolis. According to one of them, the temple had been founded by Semiramis in honour of her mother Derketo, half woman and half fish, to whom the fish in the neighbouring lake were sacred. Another account made Attys its founder, and the G.o.ddess to whom it was dedicated the divinity called Rhea by the Greeks.

Derketo and Rhea, however, are but different names of the same deity, who was known as Kybele or Kybebe in Phrygia, and honoured with the t.i.tle of 'the Great Mother.' Her images were covered with b.r.e.a.s.t.s, to symbolise that she was but mother-earth, from whom mankind derived their means of life. Her attributes were borrowed from those of the Babylonian Istar, the Ashtoreth of Canaan; even the form a.s.signed to her was that of the Babylonian Istar, as we learn from a bas-relief discovered at Carchemish, where she is represented as naked, a lofty tiara alone excepted, with the hands upon the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a wing rising behind each shoulder. She was, in fact, a striking ill.u.s.tration of the influence exerted upon the Hitt.i.tes, and through them upon the people of Asia Minor, by Babylonian religion and wors.h.i.+p. Even in Lydia a stone has been found on which her image is carved in a rude style of art, but similar in form to the representations of her in the bas-relief of Carchemish and the cylinders of ancient Chaldaea.

This stone, like the seated figure on Mount Sipylos, is a witness that her cult was carried westward by the Hitt.i.te armies. Later tradition preserved a reminiscence of the fact. The Lydian hero Kayster was said to have gone to Syria, and there had Derketo for his bride, while on the other hand it was a Lydian, Mopsos, who was believed to have drowned the G.o.ddess Derketo in the sacred lake of Ashkelon. We have here, it may be, recollections of the days when Lydian soldiers marched against Egypt under the leaders.h.i.+p of Hitt.i.te princes, and learnt to know the name and the character of Athar-'Ati, the G.o.ddess of Carchemish.

The Babylonian Istar was accompanied by her son and bridegroom Tammuz, the youthful Sun-G.o.d, the story of whose untimely death made a deep impression on the popular mind. Even in Jerusalem Ezekiel saw the women weeping for the death of Tammuz within the precincts of the temple itself; and for days together each year in the Phoenician cities the festival of his death and resurrection were observed with fanatic zeal.

In Syria he was called Hadad, and identified with the G.o.d Rimmon, so that Zechariah (xii. 11) speaks of the mourning for Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo. At Hierapolis and Aleppo also he was known as Hadad or Dadi, while throughout Asia Minor he was adored under the name of Attys, 'the shepherd of the bright stars.' The myth which told of his death underwent a slight change of form among the Hitt.i.tes, and through them among the tribes of Asia Minor. He is doubtless the young G.o.d who on the rocks of Boghaz Keui appears behind the mother-G.o.ddess, riding like her on the back of a panther or lion.

The people of Mabog did not forget that their temple was but the successor of an older one, and that Carchemish had once been the 'Holy City' of Northern Syria. The legends, therefore, which referred to the foundation of the sanctuary were said to relate to one which had formerly existed, but had long since fallen into decay. The origin of the temple visited by Lucian was ascribed to a certain 'Stratonike, the wife of the a.s.syrian king.' But Stratonike is merely a Greek transformation of some Semitic epithet of 'Ashtoreth,' and marks the time when the Phoenician Ashtoreth took the place of the earlier Athar-'Ati. A strange legend was told of the youthful Kombabos, who was sent from Babylon to take part in the building of the shrine. Kombabos was but Tammuz under another name, just as Stratonike was Istar, and the legend is chiefly interesting as testifying to the religious influence once exercised by the Babylonians upon the Hitt.i.te people.

Semiramis may turn out to have been the Hitt.i.te name of the G.o.ddess called Athar-'Ati by the Aramean inhabitants of Hierapolis. In this case the difficulty of accounting for the existence of the two names would have been solved in the old myths by making her the daughter of Derketo.

But while Derketo was a fish-G.o.ddess, Semiramis was a.s.sociated with the dove, like the Ashtoreth or Aphrodite who was wors.h.i.+pped in Cyprus. The symbol of the dove had been carried to the distant West at an early period. Among the objects found by Dr. Schliemann in the prehistoric tombs of Mykenae were figures in gold-leaf, two of which represented a naked G.o.ddess with the hands upon the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and doves above her, while the third has the form of a temple, on the two pinnacles of which are seated two doves. Considering how intimately the prehistoric art of Mykenae seems to have been connected with that of Asia Minor, it is hardly too much to suppose that the symbol of the dove had made its way across the aegean through the help of the Hitt.i.tes, and that in the pinnacled temple of Mykenae, with its two doves, we may see a picture of a Hitt.i.te temple in Lydia or Kappadokia.

The legends reported by Lucian about the foundation of the temple of Mabog all agreed that it was dedicated to a G.o.ddess. The 'Holy City' was under the protection, not of a male but of a female divinity, which explains why it was that it was served by eunuch priests. If Attys or Hadad was wors.h.i.+pped there, it was in right of his mother; the images of the other G.o.ds stood in the temple on sufferance only. The male deity whom the Greek author identified with Zeus must have been regarded as admitted by treaty or marriage to share in the honours paid to her. It must have been the same also at Boghaz Keui. Here, too, the most prominent figure in the divine procession is that of the Mother-G.o.ddess, who is followed by her son Attys, while the G.o.d, whose name may be read Tar or Tarku, 'the king,' and who is the Zeus of Lucian, advances to meet her.

In Cilicia and Lydia this latter G.o.d seems to have been known as Sandan.

He is called on coins the 'Baal of Tarsos,' and he carries in his hand a bunch of grapes and a stalk of corn. We may see his figure engraved on the rock of Ibreez. Here he wears on his head the pointed Hitt.i.te cap, ornamented with horn-like ribbons, besides the short tunic and boots with upturned ends. On his wrists are bracelets, and earrings hang from his ears.