Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/281

 General Characteristics of Hittite Civilization. 26 J could always rely on their brethren. Knowledge of this powerful ally in the background enabled the Semites of Asia Minor to get the upper hand and lord it over their neighbours, albeit they prob- ably were their inferiors in point of numbers and warlike energy/ It was about the fifteenth or sixteenth (some authorities carry it back to the nineteenth) century B.C., that the Khetas constituted themselves into a nation in Syria, when they elaborated the art and system of writing, which bear unmistakable proofs of having been suggested by the art of ancient Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt ; born, too, of the desire to possess means which would enable them to transmit their thoughts and deeds to a late posterity. Such a theory harmonizes with the nature of the monuments they have left behind them. If, as a rule, their subjects are modelled after the bas-reliefs of Egypt or Babylonia, their symbols and mode of execution, both in their national costume and repre- sentation of the human and animal forms, prove the strong indivi- duality of the people which fabricated them. At the outset, the aim of the artist, whether on the banks of the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Halys, had been a faithful and realistic rendering of the actual objects ; difference between them was shown in the selection and forms of the signs. These, among the Hittites, with the single exception of the stela of Tyana, in Cappadocia, were always in "cameo." The original pictorial characters were found too unwieldly for the purposes of daily life, and in due course of time they were modified into purely determinative or phonetic values. According to Professor Sayce, Hittite hieroglyphs were first made use of in Cappadocia, where the most striking manifestations of the art of the people which invented them are to be found.^ His theory is based upon the fact that the ideograph for "king" and ^ Decipherment of a statistical table and inscription to record the campaigns of Anemenhid, discovered at Karnac, have led M. Maspero to the following conclu- sions : (i) In the reign of Thothmes I. the position occupied by the Khiti in Northern Syria was essentially the same as that which they had in the nineteenth dynasty. (2) The conquests of Thothmes I. extended as far as Carchemish, where ''at the crossing of the Euphrates, he planted a stela of victory (to record his invasion) which Thothmes II., found in place in one of his campaigns:' (3) The Khiti were then in full possession of the Naharana, proved by towns whose names may still be identified, such as Dour Baniti, Deir-el-Banath ; Tounipa, Tinnab, in the vicinity of Aleppo; Tourmana, Tourmanln, Khazaza, Azas, Ourima, Oupi/xayiyai'To?, etc. (4) Although not formally stated, the context of this same inscription permits us to infer that in the time of Thothmes III. the suzerainty of Kadesh was still in the hands of Oi'^ Khiti
 * Sayce. Wright, The Empire, p. 177.