Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/282

 264 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. '* country " represented by an elongated cone or pyramid repeated once for "king" and twice or more for ''country/' seems to have been suggested by the conical rocks which rise from the ground, near Urgub, and Utch Hissar, in Southern Cappadocia^ (Fig"- 256, i, 2, 262 ; tailpiece, ch. i., and Fig. 389,^ as well as Figs. 2, 3, Appendix). The reason adduced in favour of priority of date in regard to this district does not carry conviction with it ; for conical hills of the same nature have been observed by Puchstein midway between Kaja-Dagh and Kurd-Dagh, south of Merash, which, all things con- sidered, have superior claims to be looked upon as having served as prototypes to the ideograph for king and country. The character, it will be remembered, is but an abridged form of these peculiar rocks.^ To make Cappadocia the cradle of Hittite culture is equi- valent to saying that civilization, contrary to all precedent, travelled from West to East ; but we contend that the accumulated experience of ages points the other way. Isolated instances, more or less numerous, might doubtless be cited against the theory we advocate ; were they thoroughly inquired into, however, they would be found to have been due to special or accidental instances. As Hittite writing was but a form of sculpture, we may assume that it was as old as the latter. At any rate, we have proofs that it was in full swing at the time of Khitisar, from the fact that the treaty made with Ramses H. was engraved on a plate of silver. Before this struggle, so happily put an end to by this alliance, no Egyptian army had appeared beyond the passes of the Amanus and Taurus ; whilst the Assyrians never penetrated westward of the Euphrates until long afterwards. Trade, properly so-called, can scarcely have existed in those early days between the barbarous semi-nomadic tribes of the central plateau and the more civilized populations that lived in towns or occupied the adjacent alluvial plains with outlook ^ In the several valleys, writes Hamilton {Asia Minora p. 251), many thousand conical hills, or rather pointed pinnacles, varying in height from fifty to two hundred feet, rose up in all directions, so closely arranged that their bases touched each other, leaving only a narrow path between them, and presenting a most strange and inexplicable phenomenon. In many places they were so slender and close together, that they resembled a forest of lofty fir-trees. — Editor. ^ The drawing was made from a photograph kindly forwarded to us by Mr. John Henry Haynes. Consult also Reclus, Geographic Universelle, tom. ix. pp. 562-564. « The rocks under notice, are styled " Basalt-kuppen," in the map of the German Expedition. "The soil where they occur," says the report, p. 2, "is of volcanic formation ; numerous cones rise from the ground, sometimes to considerable heights, and invest the landscape with a strange aspect."