John Garstang

“ River have scoured deep gorges in its wooded heights; and the main stream, flowing southward in a wild and sparsely cultivated valley, has hewn for itself a rocky bed through which it swirls until the hills are left behind, when turning westward it flows on to join the Orontes near to Antioch. In such a country it is not surprising that no Hittite monuments have been placed on record. ”

“ In the one the king is received as high priest into the presence and embrace of the god. We have already seen that such an action in itself was deemed of so great moment that it formed the subject of the royal signet. Thereby, maybe, the king became invested with sanctity of person; in any case, his privilege of access to the god is recognised. In the other sculpture, in our opinion, we see the god once more, but in another guise, and identified with another cult, which from its widespread vogue and influence must have been almost national—namely, that of a sacred dirk. ”

“ Never again, it would seem, could the Hittite leaders call up in their special enterprise so many allies drawn from such varied peoples.
The dynasty of the Hatti none the less retained the throne; Hattusil, brother of the ill-starred leader, whose end we have described, now became Great King, and Putukhipa, Princess of Qizwadna, was his queen. As daughter of the city of Arinna, the home of the sun-god, this lady was probably the foremost of the land, and her union with the Prince of the Hatti was one of the events that contributed to restore the prestige of his house. ”

“ Here is the natural centre of commerce for the north of Syria and a great part of Western Asia. So, instead of being a peasant village upon a nameless stream, Aleppo has grown to be one of the fairest cities of the East. Local industries have developed, adding to its resources. Its stone-built houses and public places, its groves and fruit-gardens, as well as the hearty spirit of its people, are the tokens of its prosperity. Another town of considerable interest and importance is Killiz, on the border of the plain, midway between Aleppo and Aintab. ”

“ A third stone shows, in crude fashion, a horse-rider; he holds up with his left hand a mask, the features upon which resemble his own, being of the usual Hittite character, with straight nose and large eye seen in profile. He rides with his heels drawn up as though clutching the horse’s side, for he has no stirrups. He is clad in a short tunic and short-sleeved vest, and upon his head there is the conical hat, though not so high as those [275] now familiar in the sculptures of Boghaz-Keui, while the curling lock or pigtail is prominent behind his neck. ”

“ Avoiding this, the route crosses a low divide, and descends upon an arm of another river, the Cydnus, which leads down eventually to Tarsus and the sea. For a short way in this second section of the route the country is more open, but the enchantment of it is maintained in the wooded highland landscapes, with views of the dark green slopes of rugged Taurus and the snowy crest and crevices of Bulghar Dagh. Two well-placed ornamental forts [75] are passed, and the winding road, when seemingly faced by an impenetrable ridge of mountain, enters suddenly a deep rocky gorge. ”

“ At the foot of the rock a stream of water, clear and cool, bursts out in tremendous volume, and, supplemented by other similar sources, becomes in a hundred yards a raging and impassable torrent, roaring with a wonderful noise as it foams and leaps over the rocks in its course. Before joining the main [192] stream of the valley it washes at a bend the foot of a bare rock, upon which from the opposite side there may be seen the famous sculptures, [455] the most striking of all known Hittite works, and one of the most imposing monuments of the ancient East. ”

“ We cannot hope at this stage of our knowledge to penetrate the mystery of the symbolism seen in the mountains, the lions, and the goats. But from what is known of the cult of Cybele in her various forms, and of Attis, her lover-son, whose attributes are distinguished yet identified in the separate cults of Baal and Sandon of Tarsus, there can be little doubt as to the main object of the ceremony. [573] The rejuvenescence of Nature, symbolised by the divine nuptials of the Goddess of Earth with the God of Fertility, is the central motive; and the fruits of the earth are the issue. ”

“ Not only can we measure, by the local differences and similarities to be seen in the works of Sinjerli and Sakje-Geuzi, the depth to which Assyrian feeling had already permeated the Hittite arts in the early centuries of the first millennium B.C.; but by comparing these again with those of Eyuk, we may realise how far certain features of architecture and religious symbolism were originally Hittite, and though here modified by close contact with the all-absorbing Assyrian power, remained on the farther side of the Taurus free from recognisable intrusion to the end. ”

“ The ancient city is no longer visible, and there are few [212] landmarks of special character. To the north-west a number of rolling valleys unfold themselves, while the gently rising ground to the north-east is partly corn-land and partly green pasture, splashed as it rises to its crest with dark scrub, and broken here and there with bare limestone rocks; a typical view of an Asiatic highland.
The sculptures are found in one of these masses of rock, which is not the largest or most conspicuous of the series, nor distinguishable in any general way. ”

“ Another turn, and a broad sweep of virgin forest lines the slopes in an unbroken curve; and ever and again Nature’s panorama changes, attracting the eye to some fresh beauty or surprise.
Though seemingly inaccessible, yet up in the wooded heights here and there a small village may be found, its houses nestling among fruit-trees and luxurious wildflowers. The people are very poor, for on these broken hilltops arable spots are scarce and difficult to work. ”

“ On the other hand, we see the cult at this age in its simplicity; in some cases the goddess worshipped alone, in others accompanied by the son-consort, whose position in legend and at Boghaz-Keui is secondary to her own. In the latter case, however, she is face to face with another god who is her equal. We have been able to trace in these sculptures to some extent the merging of this religion with the old conceptions, and now we pass to consider its union with the new. ”

“ These indications all agree with the impression that Greek tradition and the Hittite monuments have already left upon our minds. The worship of the Mother-Goddess, to which we have alluded, would seem, indeed, to have been paramount throughout the Hittite lands, from Carchemish to Ephesus, from Kadesh to the coast of the Black Sea. Originally a nature cult, derivable from the productivity of the earth, this had now taken divine form with the quality of self-reproduction, to develop later into the conception of a universal mother. ”

“ From the Taurus we descended firstly to the north of Syria, because in the development of Hittite studies this region first attracted attention through the references to it in Egyptian and Assyrian history. But modern research has added to our knowledge of the Hittite lands a wider and different territory on the other side. There the descent to the interior of Asia Minor from the mountains is not so marked, for even around the foot of snow-capped Argæus, the most advanced pinnacle of the system, the plateau is still four thousand feet above the sea. ”

“ The worship of a goddess with virtues so natural and with powers that it was so desirable to propitiate would, in any case, it may be thought, be readily acceptable to a peasant people. It became deeply rooted, and in certain localities took special forms, reflected many centuries later in rites like those of Ma at Comana, Kybele in Phrygia, Artemis at Ephesus, and, latest of all, Semiramis at the post-Hittite city at Carchemish. ”

“ They were the founders of the Heraklid dynasty in Lydia, and Babylonian art as modified in Asia Minor was carried by them to the Greek seas. Greek religion and mythology owed much to them; even the Amazons of Greek legend prove to have been the warrior-priestesses of the great Hittite goddess. Above all, it was the Hittites who controlled the mines of Asia Minor which supplied the ancient world with silver, copper, lead, and perhaps also tin. Before the age of Abraham traders carried the bronze of Asia Minor to Assyria and Palestine, and thus transformed the whole culture of western Asia. ”

“ Other tracks are found naturally along the river’s bed, which they cross and recross, scaling the cliffs where the water has laid bare the rocks, and at other times passing through more open spaces cheered by narrow strips of corn-land and the rich bloom of a myriad oleanders, wherever the steep banks recede a little way on one side or the other. ”

“ A walk through any market town, where the people are brought together, or even a glance out of the carriage window at the people on the platform of a busy railway station, will bring forth visions of Tartars and Mongols, Greeks and Jews, even occasionally Hindoos and Arabs, as well as the dominant Turkoman, Circassian and Armenian types, all of which under Nature’s gentle and wonderful influence seem to blend quite fittingly together. ”

“ The Hittites would seem to have brought with them (sooner or later) a new cycle of deities, with Babylonian prototypes, including their national Sandes or Sandan, lord of heaven, a god of the skies with lightning in his hand, in one of his various forms; and they seem to have absorbed into their pantheon a number of acceptable nature-cults, like the worship of mountains and streams and of the mother-goddess of earth, already practised by an earlier population whom they overlaid. ”

“ The nicely engineered road, however, with its bridges and embankments, its rock-cuttings and eased gradients, is a work of modern times. At the opening of our story we must look back to the beginnings of the pass in a rough track alongside the rushing stream. Even in early Hittite times, if we pay regard to the disposition of their monuments, it seems probable that the longer but more open route that follows the Tochma Su, and the shorter but rocky track that descends by Kuru-Bel, continued to be the chief lines of communication between the two main branches of their empire. ”

“ Only in the sculptures before us we see, whether as an illusion caused by the softening hand of Time, or whether by the deliberate treatment of the Hittite sculptor, an infinitely greater freedom, fulness, and suggestion of life imparted to the figure than we are wont to find in Egyptian funereal sculptures and temple decorations, notwithstanding the masterly skill with which the latter may have been executed. ”

“ But it is indeed remarkable that in none of the defiles that connect it with the several portions of the Hittite land has a single Hittite monument been discovered. When we consider how suitable many spots would seem to be for Hittite monuments, whether in the Cilician Gates, or in the valley of the Pyramus, or in the pass leading by Bogche over the Amanus mountains eastward, or on the wave-washed rocks which must be crossed by the coast route to Alexandretta, this absence of any Hittite trace becomes the more conspicuous and significant. ”

“ Unfortunately we have no collateral evidence as to the plateau of Asia Minor to help in answering these questions; yet if the Hittite culture had taken root in the north of Syria before the second millennium B.C., it may readily be believed that it had been planted equally long upon the tableland, where in historic times its chief power is found. The high standard of Hittite culture, as revealed by their own archives and monuments at the dawn of their history in the fourteenth century B.C., argues in itself a long period of settlement and development under civilised conditions ”

“ The site of the ancient city (Mazaca) is probably that marked by the ruins of Græco-Roman times, to be found in the vineyards on a low spur of the mountain about a mile south of the modern town. [31] Here is a spot that will one day reward excavation by a volume of unsuspected history. In the modern town, apart from its bazaars and industries and its splendid mediæval remains, [32] one of the most interesting sights is the ever-changing stream of human faces to be seen in its streets, for its traffic and position bring to it daily caravans from every side. ”

“ We now pass to a third group of Syrian monuments: those which are found at places on the Euphrates, which we accept as the eastern frontier. We begin naturally with Jerablus, the site of Carchemish, [123] as being the nearest, the furthest south and the most famous. Here was the strategic frontier in the struggle of the oriental nations, and here a Hittite fortress was so strongly placed that it defied the assaults of the Pharaohs, and resisted with a great measure of success the efforts of the Assyrians to reduce it several centuries after the Hittite power had passed its zenith. ”

“ And the struggle of the continents was not merely for the possession of a land itself rich in minerals and for the most part highly fertile, but for a passage-way for great migrations, civilisations, and religions. ”