Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/57

 Character of Country occupied by the Hittites. 41 chimaera, or horned lion, and had preserved much of the warHke aspect of heroic times (Fig. 267)/ Later he is given a more dignified mien, and is seated upon a throne, like Jupiter Olympian, with whom he would be easily confounded, but for the clustering grapes and ears of corn carried in his hand.^ But although he has followed the whims of fashion in his outward appearance, were we to enter his temple we should find that the rites in his honour had preserved much of their pristine character, when he was worshipped as Tarsi- Baal, closely related to the Baalim of Tyre and Sidon. This equally applies to the coins of Cilicia ; ^ thus when we wished to illustrate the type of Phoenician deities of this era, we quoted the coins of Mallos, a maritime city north-west of Issus Bay.* The climate and pro- ductions of Cilicia are those of Syria rather than Asia Minor; two rivers, the Saros (Sihoun) and the Pyramos (Jihoun), leave on the plains fringing their banks a soil as rich as that of the Nile, needing little or no labour from the husbandman. It is protected from northern blasts by the Taurus range, whose rocky sides, reflecting the sun's rays, are as a huge hothouse, yielding almost tropical fruit as fine as any in the delta, which together with the cotton grown on the broad level below, are shipped off from Mersina, the port of Tarsus, and find a ready sale in the European markets. Here we might expect to meet with many a fragment of Hittite civilization, for we read that Khitisar, in his journey to Egypt, was accompanied by the prince of Khidi, evidently a Cilician chief (the name spelt kidi, khodi, /n^rt?, is applied by Ptolemy to the maritime portion of Cilicia, which faces the north coast of Cyprus),^ were it not that Cilician Fig. 267. — Bronze Coin of Tarsus. Lajard, Atlas^ Plate IV., Fig. 9. ^ Fr. Lenormant identifies the figure seen on the coins of Tarsus with Adar Samdam, "the strong" "the powerful," the Assyrian deity {Essai de Commentaire sur les Fragments Cosinogonique$ de Berose^ p. 1 1 2). des Beaux-Arts, November, 1876). " KtA-iKia TTcSta, the Cihcia campestris of the Romans. '' It is possible that the name of Cataonia, a southern province of Cappadocia, may have the same origin (Maspero, Hist. Ancienne^ p. 216, note i).
 * See Heuzey's "Les Fragments de Tarse au Musee du Louvre," Fig. 2 {Gazette
 * Hist, of Art, tom. iii. p. 418, Figs. 288, 298.