*r02 THE ANCIENT HITTITES. 



artist could not conceive and reproduce a picture in its entirety, but 

 could only take each group separately in yiew. 



The attitude of the body is conyentional. The personages are rep- 

 resented as walking by placing one foot in front of the other. One arm 

 is extended to hold or carrj^ a stafi', a yessel, or an ornament and simi- 

 lar objects, the other is bent at a right angle and placed against the 

 chest. There seems to be no attempt at indiyidualizing. Even where 

 several personages or animals appear, each tigure, almost without 

 exception, is moving in the same attitude as the other. The e3^e is 

 always drawn with a front view and is generally too large. Profile 

 represetitation is the rule. The only example of drawing with front 

 view is upon a relief found at Carchemish representing a winged 

 goddess, which is certainly due to Babylonian influence, as the goddess 

 Ishtar very often appears in that attitude on seal cylinders of that 

 country. The lifeless monotony of Hittite art is enhanced where 

 only a single personage is represented, which is mostly the case. 

 The cooperation of several personages on the same tasks is seldom 

 observed, even where a larger sculpture series is found. For even 

 here each figure generally seems to be so little influenced by the action 

 of its neighbors that its absence would not be missed. Battle scenes 

 are until now entirely wanting. On the other hand we have the rep- 

 resentation of a lion hunt, accompanied l)v a Hittite inscription, which 

 belongs to the better productions of this art. Upon a war chariot, 

 supposed to be drawn by two horses, although only one is sketched, 

 while the other must be imagined as covered by it, there stands by 

 the side of the charioteer a bowman in the act of shooting an arrow at 

 a fleeing lion. The lion, already hit by an arrow and infuriated by it, 

 rears high upon his hind legs and with terrific roaring turns the upper 

 bod}', with raised fore claws, toward the bowman. Under the horse a 

 dog is represented in a rapid run. A very similar representation of a 

 deer chase, evidently coming from the same place, has recently been 

 discovered. 



As regards technology the Hittites seem to have been quite skillful 

 in working metals. The mountains l)etween Cilicia and Cappadocia 

 are rich in silver, and silver mines were found which must have been 

 worked in very ancient times. And, indeed, among the few remnants 

 of Hittite industry that have come to us there are several objects of 

 silver such as the sword knob in figure 2 and some seals. In one of 

 them, artisticall}^ executed, the several parts are held together with 

 silver alloy. The Hittite treaty, described on a previous page, was 

 engraved upon a silver tablet. Bronze works have been discovered 

 in the excavations on the soil of the Kingdom of Van. One of these 

 is a bronze votive shield, upon which rows of walking lions and bulls 

 in repousse arc represented in concentric circles around the center of 



