Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/52

 2,6 A History of Art in Sardinia and Juimca. form. These characteristics of their art, together with their pecuHar mode of writing, they carried to all the peoples subjected to them. Northern Syria, being the nearest country, received them in their primitive form, abundantly proved by the frequent recur- rence of living images on all its monuments. The alphabets therefore derived from Hittite hieroglyphics, once used over so vast an area, must of necessity exhibit similarity of manipulation in some of the outlines of the figures and cha- racters. This should be particularly noticeable in those syllabaries which belong to the early style, before the action of Greek art was felt in the interior of the peninsula ; such as Hamath, Carchemish, and the towns generally of Northern Syria. Hence, a special, a vital interest attaches to the rare fragments which have been and may be discovered in that part of the world ; they alone can reveal to us the character and real value of the pictorial art of a nation whose history we have summarized in this chapter. The largest number of Hittite inscriptions are met with east of the Halys, in the Naharaim and Cappadocia. In the latter are the best-pre- served and, in size at least, most important monuments, not excepting the districts washed by the Orontes and Euphrates rivers. The Hittites do not seem to have made a long stay west of the Halys, at any rate inscriptions here are insignificant and exceedingly rare, albeit characterized by the same stamp of originality which is distinctive of all Hittite art. We will proceed to give a table, as complete as possible, of such monuments as were recovered in the very centre of Hittite power, together with a circumstantial description of rock-cut and other sculptures in Cappadocia, which it was our fortune to examine in place ; illus- trating the result of our excavations — we fear not so complete as we should have desired — by careful and reliable representations of them, so that those who devote their energies to this subject may have ample scope to form a just estimate of the whole series of documents.