THE PSEUDO-SESOSTRIS, CARVED ON THE ROCK IN THE PASS 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 pass which the two warriors seem to guard leads not only from Ephesos to Phokæa, but also from Sardes to Smyrna. It is not until the pass is cleared at its northern end that the road which runs through it—the Karabel-déré, 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 Hittite 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 Assaon, 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 Niobê, when her twelve children had been slain by the gods, 'now changed to stone, broods over the woes the gods 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 Niobê. 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 Niobê of his own mythology. The figure was originally that of the great goddess of Asia Minor, known sometimes as Atergatis or Derketo, sometimes as Kybelê, 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 'Niobê' of Sipylos owes its origin to Hittite art. On the wall of rock out of which the niche is cut wherein the goddess sits Dr. Dennis discovered a cartouche containing Hittite 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].
How came these characters and these creations of Hittite art in a region so remote from that in which the Hittite kingdoms rose and flourished? How comes it that we find figures of Hittite warriors in the Pass of Karabel and on the rocks of Ghiaur-kalessi, and the image of a Hittite goddess 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.
[6] In the Academy of Aug. 16th, 1879.
[7] Travels in Syria, p. 146.
[8] A copy of the inscription made from the squeeze is given in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, 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.