Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/253

 THE LYDIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, HISTORY, AND RELIGION. 237 and Africa, and between the two stands the family of Shem, to which the sacred writer belonged. The nations of each group, represented by these various names, are ranged as near as possible as they would be on the map. One of two things may have happened : either the scribe of these tables put the Lydians between Chaldaea (Arphaxad) and Syria (Aram), or the appellative may denote a tribe of Mesopotamia unknown to us under that name ; or it may have been altered through a copyist's error. 1

Whichever conjecture be adopted, the reasons that tell in favour of the Lydians being nearly related to the nations who inhabited the west of the peninsula, between the Halys and the ygean, are far too weighty to be upset by an isolated doubtful and obscure passage. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that Semitic culture would seem to have had a deeper and more lasting hold on them, than on any of the tribes settled within the northern edge of the central plateau between the Halys and the Euxine ; in other words, on Phrygians, Bithynians, and Mysians. Traditions, lan- guage, and public ceremonies all testify to the relationship and interaction existing between these various populations. The national legends allied Ninus, the head of the second Lydian dynasty, to Chaldaea and Assyria, when they made him the son of Belus. 2 All reminiscence of Eastern conquerors had been blotted out by the later splendour and magnificence of the victories and the power of the Sargonides and of Nebuchadnezzar. Nineveh and Babylon had caused Carchemish to be forgotten ; nevertheless, some faint trace, it would seem, had lingered in the memory of the Lydians, as to the relations which had once existed between their ancestors, not with the great military states of Mesopotamia, but with the masters of Syria. Lydian princes, it was said Mopsos, Ascalos had carried their arms as far as Ascalon. 3 Similar tales, if they contain a residuum of truth, can but allude to a share taken long ago in the wars the Khetas had waged against Egypt. How- ever closely allied the Lydians may have been with the Mysians and Phrygians does not preclude the possibility that they were the first to reach the peninsula, early enough to join in the ambitious 1 This last notion is the one adopted by M. JULES HALVY (Rechenhes Bibliquts, p. 165). It is for Hebrew scholars to criticise the correction proposed by him. 9 Herodotus, i. 7. 8 Xanthus, Fr. ii. 23.