Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/92

90 procession consists of three gods, two of whom stand on mountain-peaks, while the foremost (with a goat beside him) is supported on the heads of two adoring priests. Facing him is the foremost figure of the other procession, which starts from the eastern side of the recess, and finally meets the first on its northern wall. This figure is that of the great Asiatic goddess, who wears on her head the mural crown and stands upon a panther, while beside her, as beside the god she is greeting, is the portraiture of a goat. Behind her a youthful god, with the double-headed battle-axe in his hand, stands upon a panther, and behind him again are two priestesses with mural crowns, whose feet rest upon the heads and wings of a double-headed eagle. This eagle, whose form is but a reproduction of that sculptured at Eyuk, closes the series of designs represented on the northern wall. The eastern wall is occupied with a long line, first of goddesses and then of priestesses. Where the line breaks off at last we come upon a solitary piece of sculpture. This is the image of an eunuch-priest, who stands on a mountain and holds in one hand a curved augural wand, in the other a strange symbol representing a priest with embroidered robes, who stands upon a shoe with upturned ends, and supports a winged solar disk, the two extremities of which rest upon baseless columns.

The entrance to the second recess is guarded on either side by two winged monsters, with human bodies and the heads of dogs. It leads into an artificially excavated passage of rectangular shape, on the rocky walls of which detached groups of figures and emblems are engraved. On the western wall is a row of twelve priests or soldiers, each of whom bears a scythe upon