Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/252

 236 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. of Carian Zeus, at Mylasa, which no stranger was allowed to enter, stood open to Lydians and Mysians. 1 If, setting aside local cults, which are very imperfectly known, we consider solely the broader features of the creeds which obtained in the west of the penin- sula, we shall be able to say that the religion of the Phrygians and Lydians was identical. The most important temples of Lydia were consecrated, as in Phrygia, to the great goddess who per- sonified the creative power of Nature she whom the Asiatic Greeks (heirs and pupils of the nations they had found settled on the soil) worshipped, now under the name of Cybele, as at Smyrna, and now under that of Artemis, as at Ephesus. Atys, the inseparable companion of Cybele and the lunar god, Men, were honoured as much in Lydia as in Phrygia. Lydian and Phrygian myths represented the hero Manes as the founder of their re- spective national dynasty. 2 Then, too, the basis of religious belief and the character of public worship of either country are very similar, save that myths in Lydia have assumed a very peculiar form and complexion. Such would be that out of which the Greeks spun the tale of Heracles and Omphales. Let it be demonstrated, then, that whether the Lydians originally came from Thracia, or entered Asia by another route, they none the less belonged, as all their neighbours, to the Aryan family. If this was for a long time a moot question, if the Lydians were considered as Semites, it was on the strength of a verse in Genesis; 3 but this curious chapter (tenth) has no longer the authoritative weight it once had, even in the eyes of orthodox commentators. 4 Besides, it is now generally acknowledged that the ethnographic, or rather ethnogenitic, classification which the author of the genealogies strove to establish corresponds, at least in its general outlines, with the geographical table of the distribution of the human families over the earth's surface. Thus, to the north and south are people descended from Japhet ; the sons of Ham hold Southern Syria 1 Herodotus, i. 171. 2 PLUTARCH, Isis and Osiris, 24; Herodotus, i. 94, iv. 45 ; DENYS OF HALICAR- NASSUS, Reman Antiquities, i. 27. Manes has been compared with the Indian Manu and the Teutonic Mannus. It would be more risky, perhaps, trying to do the same for the Cretan Minos. 8 Gen. x. 22 : " The children of Shem ; Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram." 4 LENORM ANT, Les Crigines de Fhistoire tfaprls la Bible et les traditions des peuples orientaux, torn. ii. p. 324.