Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/214

 196 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. • invest the pictures in question, even when subjects and forms are borrowed from Assyria, with an impress foreign to the Tigris valley. The points of touch we have indicated, the resemblances we have verified, lead to a conclusion which will long ere this have been anticipated, i.e. of an intimate link of parentage having existed between the Syrian Hittites (whose history we have almost entirely restored from Oriental documents) and the early inhabi- tants of Cappadocia, whom we only know from some passing words of Herodotus, and the meagre remains of their plastic art. These Western Hittites were a branch of the Syro-Cappadocian stock, a race of emigrants that we recognized on the northern and southern slopes of the Taurus and Amanus, as far as the edge of the Mediterranean, and the vast regions which stretch away to the Euphrates, including the eastern portion of the central plateau, on to the right bank of the Halys, whence they gradually spread over the whole peninsula, leaving everywhere traces of their passage and settlements. The influence they exercised on the religion, writing, and arts of tribes weaker and inferior in culture will be dealt with in a subsequent chapter, when we shall inquire as to the share they contributed to the general stock of knowledge and progress in that remote antiquity, be it as mediums or inventors, and which Hellas transmitted to the modern world with the stamp of her own genius.