Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/96

94 Hittite characters. So far as can be judged from a photograph of it he has published, the forms are the same as those which are found on the Hittite monuments of Syria.

Tedious as all these details may seem to be, it has been necessary to give them, since they tell us what was the appearance and construction of a Hittite city, a Hittite palace, and the interior of a Hittite temple. The discoveries recently made in the Hittite districts south of the Taurus, show us that here too the palaces and temples were like those of Eyuk and Boghaz Keui. Here too we find the same dados sculptured with the same figures dressed in the same costume; here too we meet with the same lions, and the same winged deities standing on the backs of animals. A photograph of a piece of sculpture on a block of basalt at Carchemish, taken by Dr. Gwyther, might have been taken at Boghaz Keui. The art, the forms, and the symbolism are all the same.

The high-road from Boghaz Keui to Merash must have passed through the defile of Ghurun, where Sir Charles Wilson discovered Hittite inscriptions carved upon the cliff. But there may have been a second road which led through Kaisariyeh, the modern capital of Kappadokia, southward to Bor or Tyana, where Prof. Ramsay found a Hittite text, and from thence to the silver mines of the Bulgar Dagh. The bas-reliefs of Ibreez are not far distant from the famous Cilician gates which led the traveller from the great central plateau of Asia Minor to Tarsus and the sea.

It would seem that the silver mines of the Bulgar Dagh were first worked by Hittite miners. Silver had a special attraction for the Hittite race. The material