RELIGION AMOXG THE PEOPLE OF ASIA MINOR. 



151 



Maiy. The pictures emphasise this trio, and often ignore the 

 Holy Spirit. "Whence this honour ascribed the Virgin Mother 

 of God ? Different writers have pointed out that in the early 

 Anatolian conception the chief of the divine beings was a 

 goddess, not a god, witness the worship of the great goddess 

 Ma at Comana and several other known centres, of Anahid 

 among the Armenians, Anaitis in Zile, Cybele in Phrygia, and 

 of Diana at Tyana and Ephesus. The mother principle in the 

 divine nature was primary ; the male element secondary. 

 Those who have seen the remarkable Hittite sculptures at 

 Yasili Kaya, near Boghaz Keuy, where Professor Dr. AVinckler 

 made his remarkable discovery of 3,000 more or less 

 fragmentary cuneiform tablets in the summer of 1906, 

 remember that in the larger gallery the chief goddess or 

 priestess is immediately followed in the great procession by a 

 smaller, perhaps younger, male figure, apparently her consort 

 and perhaps her son. Similarly in the smaller gallery a large 

 female figure embraces another smaller, younger, and apparently 

 that of a 'protege or son. Sir William Eamsay, in an 

 exceedingly suggestive article in The E.qjositor for August, 

 1905, has traced the worsliip of the Virgin Mother back to the 

 pre-Cliristian beliefs prevalent among the people of Anatolia. 

 Terra cotta figurines found in abuntlance by the writer as well 

 as by others at Chirishli Tepe, 25 miles south of Samsoun 

 on the Black Sea, offer evidence pointing in the same direction. 

 Here on a commanding hill-top was a gi^eat sanctuary perhaps 

 500 to 800 B.C., where votive offerings in terra cotta were 

 deposited in quantities, most of them being heads of cattle or 

 other animals, but many being heads of women. In the 

 experience of the present speaker female figures or heads done 

 in baked clay and dating from before the Christian era are very 

 common in Asia Minor, but male figures corresponding are 

 very rare. 



Now given a people imbued with the idea that Mother 

 Nature bestows upon them rain and sun, fruits and flocks and 

 fertile fields, that she is a kind, protecting, watchful mother 

 goddess, attended, often at least, by her youthful son, and teach 

 among them the New Testament, what result should we look for ? 

 "Why, at first we expect tliat the new and true Gospel will 

 wholly supersede the old Paganism, but, when we think of what 

 poor human nature really is, we are not so much surprised to 

 be told that men soon began to mix the old with the new, that 

 Mary was given the first place, while Christ her son was a 

 subordinate associate. Come down to the fifth Christian 



L 



