Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/255

 u HiTTiTE Monuments in Lydia. 237 only one which fits our figure ; for the Niobe of Homer, Sophocles, and Ovid is seated near the mountain springs, ever moist with rain and snow.^ Needless to say that Sipylus is not in the region of perpetual snow ; and far from being on the summit of a hill, the image is sculptured on the rocky base of the cliff, with no spring or stream in the immediate neighbourhood. Then, too, the Buyuk Souret is too regular and artificial to agree with the Niobe of Pausanias. Even now, in its defaced state, whether we view it near or from afar, it is impossible to mistake its real nature ; and in its pristine days this must have been even more so. The very words of the historian make it self-evident that a lusus naturce was intended, such as is to be found in almost every locality.^ There was somewhere on Sipylus a rock which at a particular angle and distance somewhat resembled a sorrowing human form, identified by popular fancy with the tragic story of Niobe. This par- ticular rock has been sought in vain, and in all probability will never be found ; a fact that does not invalidate the testimony of classic writers with regard to its existence ; for the special outline which gave it a far-off resemblance to a human form may have been worn down since antiquity, or destroyed by the early Christians on account of the cultus offered to it. How and when Niobe was destroyed is unknown ; but the name was too deeply impressed in the popular fancy to disappear. It was forthwith transferred to the statue called by Pausanias the '' oldest goddess," and its appellative was accepted by travellers without question- ing until recent times. Strickland, and after him Weber and others, as well as ourselves, are confident that the statue on the rocky base of Sipylus is the ancient Kubele of the Phrygians, the Cybele of Pausanias, or by whatever other name Mother Earth, the personification of fecundity, was addressed, whose worship passed from Cappadocia into Phrygia. To judge solely from its fabrication, the statue might properly be ascribed to the Phrygians, were it not for the group of Hittite characters in front of it. Mr. Dennis, British consul at Smyrna, was the first to notice the uneven surface of this portion of the stone ; but as this was on a 1 Homer, Iliad, xxiv. 615 ; Sophocles, Elcdra, vv. 148-150, Antigpm.w, 821- 83 T. Ovid, Metamorphoses^ vi. 310; Fixa cacuminc mentis. " Pausanias, in this instance, uses the words ircrpa kqX Kprffivo^t JyaX/xa, statue in reference to Cybele.