Part 5 (1/2)

Sandan was identified with the Sun, and hence it happened that when a Semitic language came to prevail in Cilicia he was transformed into a supreme Baal. The same transformation had taken place centuries before in the Hitt.i.te cities of Syria. Beside the Syrian G.o.ddess Kes, who is represented as standing upon a lion, like the great G.o.ddess of Carchemish, the Egyptian monuments tell us of Sutekh, who stands in the same relation to his. .h.i.tt.i.te wors.h.i.+ppers as the Semitic Baal stood to the populations of Canaan. Sutekh was the supreme Hitt.i.te G.o.d, but at the same time he was localised in every city or state in which the Hitt.i.tes lived. Thus there was a Sutekh of Carchemish and a Sutekh of Kadesh, just as there was a Baal of Tyre and a Baal of Tarsos. The forms under which he was wors.h.i.+pped were manifold, but everywhere it was the same Sutekh, the same national G.o.d.

It would seem that the power of Sutekh began to wane after the age of Ramses, and that the G.o.ddess began to usurp the place once held by the G.o.d. It is possible that this was due to Babylonian and a.s.syrian influence. At any rate, whereas it is Sutekh who appears at the head of the Hitt.i.te states in the treaty with Ramses, in later days the chief cult of the 'Holy Cities' was paid to the Mother-G.o.ddess. His place was taken by the G.o.ddess at Carchemish as well as at Mabog, at Boghaz Keui as well as at Komana.

In the Kappadokian Komana the G.o.ddess went under the name of Ma. She was served by 6000 priests and priestesses, the whole city being dedicated to her service. The place of the king was occupied by the Abakles or high-priest. We have seen that the sculptures of Boghaz Keui give us reason to believe that the same was also the case in Pteria; we know that it was so in other 'Holy Cities' of Asia Minor. At Pessinus in Phrygia, where lions and panthers stood beside the G.o.ddess, the whole city was given up to her wors.h.i.+p, under the command of the chief Gallos or priest; and on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea the Amazonian priestesses of Kybele, who danced in armour in her honour, were imagined by the Greeks to const.i.tute the sole population of an entire country. At Ephesos, in spite of the Greek colony which had found its way there, the wors.h.i.+p of the Mother-G.o.ddess continued to absorb the life of the inhabitants, so that it still could be described in the time of St. Paul as a city which was 'a wors.h.i.+pper of the great G.o.ddess.' Here, as at Pessinus, she was wors.h.i.+pped under the form of a meteoric stone 'which had fallen from heaven.'

We may regard these 'Holy Cities,' placed under the protection of a G.o.ddess and wholly devoted to her wors.h.i.+p, as peculiarly characteristic of the Hitt.i.te race. Their two southern capitals, Kadesh and Carchemish, were cities of this kind, and their stronghold at Boghaz Keui was presumably also a consecrated place. Their progress through Asia Minor was characterised by the rise of priestly cities and the growth of a cla.s.s of armed priestesses. Komana in Kappadokia, and Ephesos on the sh.o.r.es of the aegean, are typical examples of such holy towns. The entire population ministered to the divinity to whom the city was dedicated, the sanctuary of the deity stood in its centre, and the chief authority was wielded by a high-priest. If a king existed by the side of the priest, he came in course of time to fill a merely subordinate position.

These 'Holy Cities' were also 'Asyla' or Cities of Refuge. The homicide could escape to them, and be safe from his pursuers. Once within the precincts of the city and the protection of its deity, he could not be injured or slain. But it was not only the man who had slain another by accident who could thus claim an 'asylum' from his enemies. The debtor and the political refugee were equally safe. Doubtless the right of asylum was frequently abused, and real criminals took advantage of regulations which were intended to protect the unfortunate in an age of lawlessness and revenge. But the inst.i.tution on the whole worked well, and, while it strengthened the power of the priesthood, it curbed injustice and restrained violence.

Now the inst.i.tution of Cities of Refuge did not exist only in Asia Minor and in the region occupied by the Hitt.i.tes. It existed also in Palestine, and it seems not unlikely that it was adopted by the great Hebrew lawgiver, acting under divine guidance, from the older population of the country. The Hebrew cities of refuge were six in number. One of them was 'Kedesh in Galilee,' whose very name declares it to have been a 'Holy City,' like Kadesh on the Orontes, while another was the ancient sanctuary of Hebron, once occupied by Hitt.i.tes and Amorites. Shechem, the third city of refuge on the western side of the Jordan, had been taken by Jacob 'out of the hand of the Amorite' (Gen. xlviii. 22); and the other three cities were all on the eastern side of the Jordan, in the region so long held by Amorite tribes. We are therefore tempted to ask whether these cities had not already been 'asyla' or cities of refuge long before Moses was enjoined by G.o.d to make them such for the Israelitish conquerors of Palestine.

Closely connected with Hitt.i.te religion was. .h.i.tt.i.te art. Religion and art have been often intertwined together in the history of the world, and we can often infer the religion of a people from its art, as in the case of the sculptures of Boghaz Keui. Hitt.i.te art was a modification of that of Babylonia, and bears testimony to the same Babylonian influence as the wors.h.i.+p of the 'Mother-G.o.ddess.' The same Chaldaean culture is presupposed by both.

But while the art of the Hitt.i.tes was essentially Babylonian in origin, it was profoundly modified in the hands of the Hitt.i.te artists. The deities, indeed, were made to ride on the backs of animals, as upon Babylonian cylinders, the walls of the palaces were adorned with long rows of bas-reliefs, as in Chaldaea and a.s.syria, and there was the same tendency to arrange animals face to face in heraldic style; but nevertheless the workmans.h.i.+p and the details introduced into it were purely native. Even a symbol like the winged solar disk a.s.sumes in Hitt.i.te sculpture a special character which can never be mistaken. The Hitt.i.te artist excelled in the representation of animal forms, but the lion, which he seems to have never wearied of designing, is treated in a peculiar way which marks it sharply off from the sculptured lions either of Babylonia or of any other country. So, too, in the case of the human figure, though the general conception has been derived from Babylonian art, the conception is worked out in a new and original manner. Those who have once seen the sculptured image of a Hitt.i.te warrior or a Hitt.i.te G.o.d, can never confuse it with the artistic productions of another race. The figure is clearly drawn from the daily experience of the sculptor's own life. The dress with its peaked shoes, the thick rounded form, the strange protrusive profile, were copied from the costume and appearance of his fellow-countrymen, and the striking agreement that exists between his representation of them and that which we find on the Egyptian monuments proves how faithfully he must have worked. The elements, in short, of Babylonian art are present in the art of the Hitt.i.te, but the treatment and selection are his own.

It is in his selection and combination of these elements that he exhibits most clearly his originality. Monsters, half human, half b.e.s.t.i.a.l, were known to the Babylonians, but it was left to the Hitt.i.te to invent a double-headed eagle, or to plant a human head on a column of lions. The so-called rope-pattern occurs once or twice on Babylonian gems, but it became a distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of Hitt.i.te art, like the employment of the heads only of animals instead of their entire forms.

So, again, the heraldic arrangement of animals face to face, or more rarely back to back, had its first home in Chaldaea, but it was the Hitt.i.tes who raised it into a principle of art. We may perhaps trace their doing so to their love of animal forms.

The influence of Babylonian culture may have made itself first felt in the age of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, when the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna represent the Hitt.i.te tribes as descending southward into the Syrian plains. It may on the other hand go back to a much earlier epoch. We have no materials at present for deciding the question. One fact, however, is clear; there was a time when the Hitt.i.tes were profoundly affected by Babylonian civilisation, religion and art. Before this could have been the case they must have been already settled in Syria.

It is more easy to fix the period when the Hitt.i.te sculptor received that inspiration from Egyptian art which produced the sphinxes of Eyuk and the seated image on Mount Sipylos. It can only have been the age of Ramses II., and of the great wars between Egypt and the Hitt.i.te princes in the fourteenth century before our era. The influence of Egypt was but transitory, but it was to it, in all probability, that the Hitt.i.tes owed the idea of hieroglyphic writing.

At a far later date Babylonian influence was superseded by that of a.s.syria. The later sculptures of Carchemish betray the existence of a.s.syrian rather than of Babylonian models. The winged figure of the G.o.ddess of Carchemish now in the British Museum is a.s.syrian in style and character, and it is possible that other draped images of the G.o.ddess may be derived from the same source. In Babylonian art Istar was represented nude.

However this may be, Professor Perrot has made it clear that the beginnings of Hitt.i.te art must be looked for in Syria, on the southern slopes of the Taurus, from whence it spread to the tribes of Kappadokia.

It is in Northern Syria that its rudest and most infantile attempts have been found. The sculptors of Eyuk were already advanced in skill.

To Professor Perrot we also owe the discovery of bronze figures of Hitt.i.te manufacture. The execution of them is at once conventional and barbarous. Nothing can exceed the rudeness of a figure now in the Louvre, which represents a G.o.d with a pointed tiara, standing on the back of an animal. Though the face of the G.o.d has evidently been modelled with care, it is impossible to tell to what zoological species the animal which supports him is intended to belong. Almost equally far removed from nature is the bronze image of a bull which is also in the Louvre.

If these bronzes are to be regarded as the highest efforts of Hitt.i.te metallurgic work, it is not to be regretted that they are few in number.

But it is quite different with the engraved gems which we now know to have been of Hitt.i.te workmans.h.i.+p. Many of them are exceedingly fine; a haemat.i.te cylinder, for instance, which was discovered at Kappadokia, is equal to the best products of Babylonian art. The gems and cylinders were for the most part intended to be used as seals, and some of them are provided with handles cut out of the stone, the seal itself having designs on four, and sometimes on five faces. These handles seem to be a peculiarity of Hitt.i.te art, or at least of the art which derived its inspiration from that of the Hitt.i.tes. Another peculiarity noticeable in many of the gems, consists in enclosing the inner field of the engraved design with one or more concentric circles, each circle containing an elaborate series of ornaments or figures, or even characters, though the characters are usually placed in the central field. Thus two gems have been found at Yuzghat, in Kappadokia, so much alike, that they must have been the work of the same artist. On the larger an inscription has been engraved in the centre, round which runs a circle containing a large number of beautifully-executed figures. The winged solar disk rests upon the symbol of 'kings.h.i.+p,' on either side of which kneels a figure, half man and half bull. On the right and left is the figure of a standing priest, behind whom we see on the left a man adoring what seems to be the stump of a tree, while on the right are a tree, two arrows and a quiver, a basket, a stag's head, and a seated deity, above whose hand is a bird. The two groups are separated by the picture of a boot--the symbol, it may be, of the earth--which rests, like the winged solar disk, on the symbol of royalty. The smaller seal has a different inscription in the centre, encircled by two rings, one containing a row of ornaments, and the other the same figures as those engraved on the larger seal, excepting only that the arrangement of the figures has been changed, and a tree introduced among them. What is curious, however, is that a gem has been found at Aidin, far away towards the western extremity of Asia Minor, containing a central inscription almost identical with that of the smaller Yuzghat seal, though the figures which surround it are not the same.

These circular seals must be regarded not only as characteristic of Hitt.i.te art, but also as a product of Hitt.i.te invention. We meet with nothing resembling them in Babylonia or a.s.syria.

The gems can be traced across the aegean to the sh.o.r.es of Greece. Among the objects discovered by Dr. Schliemann at Mykenae were two rings of gold, on the chatons of which designs are engraved in what we may now recognise as the Hitt.i.te style of art. On one of them are two rows of animals' heads; on the other an elaborate picture, which reminds us of the elaborate designs on the gems of Asia Minor. It represents a woman under a tree, facing two other persons, who wear the upturned boots and flounced dress that we find in Hitt.i.te sculptures, while the background is filled in with the heads of animals.

These gems are not the only indication the ruins of Mykenae have afforded that Hitt.i.te influence was spread beyond the coasts of Asia Minor.

Allusion has already been made to the figures of the Hitt.i.te G.o.ddess and the doves that rested on the pinnacles of her temple; another figure in thin gold gives us a likeness of the Hitt.i.te G.o.ddess seated on the cliff of Sipylos, as she appeared before rain and tempest had changed her into 'the weeping Niobe.' Perhaps, however, the most striking ill.u.s.tration of the westward migration of Hitt.i.te influence, is to be found in the famous lions which stand fronting each other, carved on stone, above the great gate of the ancient Peloponnesian city. The lions of Mykenae have long been known as the oldest piece of sculpture in Europe, but the art which inspired it was of Hitt.i.te origin. A similar bas-relief has been discovered at k.u.mbet, in Phrygia, in the near vicinity of Hitt.i.te monuments; and we have just seen that the heraldic position in which the lions are represented was a peculiar feature of Hitt.i.te art.

Greek tradition affirmed that the rulers of Mykenae had come from Lydia, bringing with them the civilisation and the treasures of Asia Minor. The tradition has been confirmed by modern research. While certain elements belonging to the prehistoric culture of Greece, as revealed at Mykenae and elsewhere, were derived from Egypt and Phoenicia, there are others which point to Asia Minor as their source. And the culture of Asia Minor was. .h.i.tt.i.te. Mr. Gladstone, therefore, may be right in seeing the Hitt.i.tes in the Keteians of Homer--that Homer who told of the legendary glories of Mykenae and the Lydian dynasty which held it in possession.

Even the buckle, with the help of which the prehistoric Greek fastened his cloak, has been shown by a German scholar to imply an arrangement of the dress such as we see represented on the Hitt.i.te monument of Ibreez.

For us of the modern world, therefore, the resurrection of the Hitt.i.te people from their long sleep of oblivion possesses a double interest.

They appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hitt.i.te was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. Our culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were derived from the Hitt.i.te conquerors of Asia Minor. The Hitt.i.te warriors who still guard the Pa.s.s of Karabel, on the very threshold of Asia, are symbols of the position occupied by the race in the education of mankind. The Hitt.i.tes carried the time-worn civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the grey dawn of European history. But they never pa.s.sed the boundary themselves; with the conquest of Lydia their mission was accomplished, the work that had been appointed them was fulfilled.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN INSCRIPTION FOUND AT CARCHEMISH (_now destroyed_).]