Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/88

86 symbolism and art. The symbol was adopted in later days by the Turkoman princes, who had perhaps first seen it on the Hittite monuments of Kappodokia; and the Crusaders brought it to Europe with them in the 14th century. Here it became the emblem of the German Emperors, who have passed it on to the modern kingdoms of Russia and Austria. It is not the only heirloom of Hittite art which has descended to us of to-day.

The lintel of the palace gate at Eyuk was of solid stone, and, if Professor Perrot is right, the huge stone lintel, adorned with a lion's head, still lies in fragments on the ground. The entrance was flanked with walls on which bas-reliefs were carved, as in the palaces which were built by the kings of Assyria. They formed, in fact, a dado, the rest of the wall above them being probably of brick covered with stucco and painted with bright colours. Many of the sculptured blocks still lie scattered on the ground. Here we have the picture of a priest before an altar, there of a sacred bull mounted on a pedestal. Hard by is the likeness of two men, one of whom carries a lyre, the other a goat; while on another stone a man is represented with little regard to perspective in the act of climbing a ladder. Another relief introduces to us three rams and a goat whose horn is grasped by a shepherd; elsewhere again we see a goddess seated in a chair of peculiar construction, with her feet upon a stool and objects like flowers in her hand. A similar piece of sculpture has been found at Merash, on the southern side of the Taurus, within the limits of the ancient Komagênê, even such details as the form of the chair and stool being alike in the two cases. The two reliefs might have been executed by the same hand.