CHAPTER XLII. 
SYRO-HITTITE CYLINDERS: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 
When we come to study the art and mythology of what we may call the Syro- 
Hittite region and period, we are confronted with peculiar difficulties. ‘This is 
partly because we are almost entirely without literary sources and partly because 
various streams of influence are hopelessly confused. ‘The period, or at least the art, 
from the Hittite side probably antedates, in good part, the emergence of the Pheni- 
cians. It originated before the entrance of the Egyptians as a conquering and 
assimilating power in Asia. Its native language is still a riddle, inasmuch as the 
few inscriptions we have are not yet satisfactorily read to the agreement of scholars, 
although Professors Sayce, Jensen, and others have made a fair beginning. A 
very few 1 inscriptions: are found in the cuneiform character, but in one of the native 
languages of the region. The Egyptian inscriptions giving the account of the con- 
quest of Rameses II. and of the Rameses treaty with the Hittites are of value for 
names of kings rather than of gods assimilated to Egyptian divine names. Equally 
there must have been a native art, Amorite, Egyptian, or whatever else, before 
the emergence of the Hittites to the sea-coast. 
In the American Journal of Archzology, vol. m1 (1899), No. 1, I have in a 
measure treated “The Hittite Gods in Hittite Art,’’ and have attempted, so far as 
I then could, to connect the Hittite gods with those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. A 
fuller discussion is now proper. Before discussing the cylinders themselves it will be 
necessary to gather the information we have of the Hittite gods from the bas-reliefs. 
The difficulty in the study whether of the art or the mythology of the Hittites 
comes from the fact already mentioned, that from their position between the two 
great empires of antiquity this people was dominated necessarily by the influences 
of civilization and religion from Babylonia and Egypt. Further, their territory from 
the south was overrun again and again by Assyria, and from the west by both Assyria 
and Egypt, until in the eighth century B. C., after a history which we can follow for 
nearly a thousand years, they were swallowed up in the Assyrian Empire. Nor 
does this exhaust the elements of confusion. The Hittite power also coexisted with 
those of other minor but yet influential neighbors, the Phenicians, the Arameans, 
the Jews, the Vannai, and the people of Mitanni and Nahrina. Of some of these 
once strong states, th their national gods, we know very little; and we may thus 
mistakenly ascribe to the Hittites what they may have borrowed from contiguous 
people with whom they fought and traded. We may not err in considering their 
borrowings from Assyria or Egypt, or even from the Mycenzan art; but as to other 
elements there may be great doubt what was their original source. They had their 
own original art and religion as well as language, but they are not yet disentangled. 
The confusion with the Syrians is especially intimate; and the most characteristic 
examples of cylinders are found in Syria and the Hauran. 
The gods of Egypt are well known, their names, their attributes, and their 
conventional representations in statue or painting. On the literary side, the Baby- 
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