Part 3 (1/2)

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.