Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/193

 The Palace. Eyuk. 175 hence his supposition that " the eagle may have been a later addition." Similarity of style, however, between this and the surrounding sculpture, coupled with the part assigned to the eagle in the lasili-Kaia bas-relief, where it supports personages insepar- able from the rest of the composition, have induced us to reach a totally different con- clusion. Old Mahommedan traditions give the name of '' Hamca " to a fabulous creature which coincides with the bicepha- lous eagle carved on the rocks of Pterium. Bronze coins with this emblem were struck by Turcoman princes early in the thirteenth century ; the symbol was also emblazoned on the walls of their castles, and carried in their battles, figured on their flags. It was brought to Europe by the crusaders, and adopted by the German Emperor in preference to the single- headed Roman eagle, from whom it has passed to Russia. Thus a symbol that originally belonged to an Asiatic cultus of remote antiquity ^ was imported to Europe ; and through a whim- sical trick of fortune, the same eagle that had witnessed the triumphal march of the Turks to the banks of the Euphrates and the Bos- phorus saw them waved back at Belgrade and Lepanto. There are details about these sculp- tures upon which we could not lay stress whilst endeavouring to convey a general idea of them ; but which point to similarity of creed with Boghaz-Keui : the lituus, for example, carried by priests (Fig. 328), and carved about animals (Fig. 341), accompanied by one or two Fig. 341. — Front View of Lion. Eyuk. Plate LVIL Fig. 342. — Lion in Dromos. Exploration^ p. 342. ^ Our information is derived from an interpenetrating suggestive article in the Ancienne Revue Archeologique, 1845, torn. i. pp. 91-102, by Longperier, upon the then recent discoveries of Tdxier and Hamilton. It also contains a copy of a coin struck by Malek el Salah Mahmud (1217), as well as two seals by Adalbert Beaumont, Plate CLIX., with the double-headed eagle upon them, described as: Sassanid ; one being a facsimile of the Eyuk example. This charming writer, unfortunately, is more of an artist than archaeologist, and does not tell us where he met with the originals ; hence the impossibility of checking their date. We regret the omission, as it would be of some interest, in tracing the history of this symbol, to find an intermediary point between the remote antiquity of Eyuk and 1217 a.d.