Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/26

 lO A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. pseudo Sesostris/ on examination of the characters carved in relief between the head and the spear, which at one time were supposed to be a royal cartouche, were unanimous in declaring them unlike the hieroglyphs of Egypt. To-day, when inscribed monuments of this class abound, affording ample scope from which their distinct manipulation and outline can be traced, it is hard to realize that they should ever have been confounded with Egyptian writing, which is decidedly finer and more realistic than the ruder Hama- thite characters. The hieroglyphs which are now generally called " Hittite," whether in Northern Syria or Asia Minor, with two exceptions, are carved in relief; a disposition which has only been noticed in the oldest known Egyptian monuments. What is a rare occurrence at Memphis, forms the rule at Carchemish, Kadesh, Eyuk, and Boghaz-Keui. On looking at them, we feel that they were traced by a sturdy race more accus- tomed to handle the spear than the point of the graver, and that when they carved these charac- ters they were still at the stage when art had not been conventionalized by long practice, and that time was not given them to pro- gress beyond a real- istic rendering of nature. Hence some of these images, despite awkward manipulation, bear a lifelike ^ Herodotus, ii. io6. We published an article as far back as 1866, to demonstrate that the rock-cut figure in the Karabel Pass was not of Assyrian nor yet of Egyptian origin, but the result of an art peculiar to Asia Minor (" Le Bas-relief de Nymphi, d'apr^s de nouveaux renseignements," Revue Archeologique^ torn. xiii.). This article was reproduced in our Mmoires d' Archeologie^ d'Epigraphie et dJIistoire, in 8°. Didier, 1875. Fig. 255.— Hittite hierqglyph, Actual size, St- Elme Gautier,