From a plaster cast in the Berlin Museum.
Facing the god, and posed at a higher level (possibly, as in other examples of eastern art, so that the relative smallness of the figure would be less apparent), is the figure of the priest-king, who, if we mistake not the group of hieroglyphs that denote him, is the same that we have previously met with near Tyana.[458] In general style and in some details, the treatment of this figure is similar; but the dress differs in several ways. The priestly skull-cap is surrounded by three decorated fillets with a knotted ornament of jewels upon the brow. The long skirt is a richly woven garment, on which the pattern is chiefly a series of punctuated squares in parallel rows, with a svastika border edged with a fringe. Over the shoulders there is thrown an embroidered mantle, with ample collar, attached in front with a jewelled clasp or brooch. It falls behind to below the knees, while in front the tasselled or fringed ends trail on the ground. The pattern is arranged in three bands of continuous squares or double zigzags. There is a substantial necklace and bracelet. The boots and features and hair are treated as in the god-figure opposite; perhaps the hair is bunched in this case a little more thickly behind the neck. The right leg is advanced, and the two raised hands are clearly clasped before the face, the fingers and nails of the further hand being carefully represented.
There are three short inscriptions accompanying these figures. In that which is carved before the face of the god, Professors Sayce[459] and Jensen both find the name of Sandes in the first line (the W-like sign below the divided oval that signifies divinity). In the next line, as in the overlap of the first and second lines of inscription behind the king, we find the same name (read Ayminyas)[460] as we have previously seen in the inscriptions of Bor and of Bulghar-Madên. This point is of importance in considering the history of the Hittite peoples when, as it seems, the central authority was no longer at Boghaz-Keui. For the date of these sculptures, if only from their close analogy in treatment to those of Sakje-Geuzi, may be put down to the tenth or ninth century B.C. It would seem indeed that we are here drawn into relation with the kingdom of (Greater) Cilicia, which, with Tyana probably as capital, took the place of the Hatti-state within the Halys, as the dominant Hittite state at the beginning of the first millennium B.C.[461]
This point becomes more probable as we dwell upon the religious symbolism of the monument. As Professor Ramsay has shown, in the muscular toiling peasant-god who by his hoe and plough reclaims an arid waste and makes it bounteous, we have a conception of Hercules, and that he was the recognised chief deity of the district is evident from the name Herakleia given by the Greeks to Eregli. Professor Frazer also has put it beyond doubt that the attributes of this Hercules are to be found in Sandon of Tarsus. Now the prototype of Sandon we shall find in the national Son-god (later Attis) portrayed in the sculpture gallery of Boghaz-Keui,[462] and in this way we are linked at once with the older Hittite mythology through the intermediary of the Cilician.
IV
THE NORTHERN CAPITAL
A Description of Pteria, the Ancient City at Boghaz-Keui, and the Sculptures called Iasily Kaya.
Part I.
Fundamental though they are to our inquiry, the isolated monuments which have been reviewed in the preceding chapter illustrate only certain aspects of Hittite art, and disclose only incidentally a few details of features, dress, and armour, with some suggestion of religious observances and customs. Their disposition, it is true, helps us to determine the confines of the land we have set forth to examine; but their provenance tells us little or nothing of where and how the people lived who fashioned them. Nevertheless, just as these were the first materials from which scholars have little by little created a science of Hittite studies, so we may employ them most fittingly as the criteria for our further investigation; that we may examine, with minds prepared, the more coherent evidences of the Hittite civilisation, as disclosed by the ruins of their cities and fortifications, their sanctuaries, and their palaces adorned with mystic sculptures.
Such places are few indeed; but our knowledge of them is chiefly the result of recent scientific expeditions, and is therefore the surer and more precise.[463] The published accounts enable us to select four sites, which happily afford material for a comparative study. Two of these, Eyuk and Boghaz-Keui, are towards the north of Asia Minor,[464] within the wide circuit of the Halys; while the other two are found below the Taurus at Sinjerli and Sakje-Geuzi in the north of Syria.[465] Three of these, moreover, are sites superficially similar, being small walled towns placed on considerable mounds, which contain also the remains of palace buildings decorated with peculiar sculptures. The fourth, which covers the hilltop above the village of Boghaz-Keui, is of vastly greater extent, and includes in its remains many peculiarities not represented by the others. It has with some certainty been identified[466] with the Pteria (or Ptara) across the Halys which, according to Herodotus,[467] fell about 550 B.C. before Crœsus of Lydia, who found it in possession of a ‘Syro-Cappadocian’ population whom he reduced to servitude.[468] It has also for some time been linked with the Hittites in the minds of scholars, both by the nature of the art its ruins illustrate, and by the doubtful hieroglyphic inscription on the rock called Nishan Tash,[469] and more particularly by the clear hieroglyphs associated with the neighbouring sculptures of Iasily Kaya. Recently Dr. Winckler has added to these links two building-stones decorated with sculptures and with hieroglyphs[470] in the familiar Hittite style; and has finally riveted the chain of evidence by the discovery in the ruins of an early palace of numerous inscribed tablets of brick inscribed in cuneiform characters, which prove to be from the archives of Hatti kings, including fragments of diplomatic correspondence with the Pharaohs of Egypt and other Oriental potentates in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. It seems clear, then, that for several centuries at least the ancient city of this place was the centre of Hittite power and civilisation. In an earlier chapter[471] we have shown reason to believe that the decline of this power is traceable to an early movement of a people akin to the Phrygians, in the twelfth century B.C. We do not know as yet to what extent the city suffered at their hands, if at all, or indeed during the later struggles with Assyria. The palace of the fourteenth century B.C., however, would seem to have been in ruins some two or three hundred years later when it was rebuilt.[472] The visible remains of the city, some of which possibly belong to this period of revival, present no evidence of any striking changes in the art they typify, and we may assume that they represent to us the Hittite handiwork, or at least the direct survival of Hittite art, down to the period of Phrygian domination in the eighth century B.C., if not to the final overthrow and depopulation of the city at the hands of Crœsus. These ruins thus claim our first consideration.
Fortunately for the preservation of these remains the village of Boghaz-Keui lies just below the boundaries of the ancient site, and is also a day’s journey from the nearest modern towns of any importance, namely, Yuzghat and Sungurlu. In ancient times, however, the place seems to have been connected by a system of engineered roads with other portions of the country. The royal road which traversed Phrygia,[473] linking, it is supposed, by the Hermus valley with Sardis and the west, held on towards the Halys[474] without other apparent objective than to approach this city. To the south also a similar royal road has been traced for miles,[475] scouring the surface rocks northwards from Injesu (near Cæsarea), leading towards a ford of the Halys near to Bogche. The Persian posts from east to west are credited with having followed this northern route, although the direct road from Carchemish to Ephesus or Smyrna, whether by way of the Cilician Gates or by one of the passes leading down on Cæsarea, did not need to approach, much less to cross, the Halys river at all. It is indeed possible that the earliest continuation of the route passed eastward by the valley of the Tochma Su,[476] while a northern objective may be found in the old-time importance of Sinope as seaport. These considerations however, only increase the importance of Boghaz-Keui as the focus of the system. Nowadays, as we have seen,[477] the main routes run differently, adapting themselves to changed conditions, and the place which was once the apparent centre of all activities in the interior is now without economic interest, a wonderful memorial of the past.