SYRIA: THE LAND LINK OF HISTORY'S CHAT? 



4.11 



wen Williams 



the: finest examples of hittite sculpture 



The discovery of this remarkable group at Carchemish, ancient capital of the Hittites, 

 east of Aleppo, was Col. T. E. Lawrence's first famous work. The family life here shown 

 is far different from the stiff and formal representations of the kings of the East that arc 

 found elsewhere. Two men, evidently kings, or possibly a king and an ally, are followed by 

 three boys with whip tops and four girls playing with knuckle-bones, still a favorite game 

 in Syria. A small boy, just learning to walk, leans on a staff and a woman, queen or nurse, 

 follows with a baby in her arms. The pickman who uner.rthed this four-thousand-year-old 

 group wore just such a web belt as is shown in the dolerite sculpture chiseled in stone so 

 hard that modern tools can make little impression on it. 



guide parties here and there, rapping with 

 their silver-topped pikes on the marble 

 pavement in order to make a way through 

 the crowds. The Russian dragoman, a. 

 bluff figure in white serge and a jaunty 

 cap, who might have stepped over the 

 footlights from a Merry Widow chorus, 

 comes in with a slender girl in a tailored 

 suit, with a white hat and veil and ruby 

 lips. She climbs a ladder above the 

 heads of the crowd and secures a place 

 of vantage on one of the platforms. 



Gradually every place becomes filled. 

 Down on the floor each pilgrim is clasp- 

 ing a bunch of 33 wax candles to his 

 throbbing heart. Those candles, one for 

 each year in the life of Christ, will be 

 carried far back to the homeland and dis- 

 tributed as blessed mementoes among; the 

 less fortunate people who will never see 



the walls of Jerusalem. Every minute 

 the situation becomes more tense. 



The Armenian runners, strong giants, 

 naked to the waist and wearing white 

 caps, burst through the crowd and take 

 their places near one of the two holes 

 where the fire is to appear. A little later 

 the Greek runners appear near their fire- 

 hole — an ill-assorted lot in kaffiyehs and 

 tarbooshes. When the fire appears, these 

 men will fight their way out through that 

 insane crowd and carry the fire, like Paul 

 Revere's night-call, to the villages around 

 Jerusalem. 



Now the Moslem soldiers shove the 

 crowds back on either side, forcing those 

 on the outside into the dark aisles, com- 

 pressing those near the sepulcher into 

 a solid, but restless, mass of heads and 

 shoulders. The Greek Patriarch, in the 



