SYRO-HITTITE CYLINDERS: GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 265 
borrowed from these two more ancient sources that it is a task of the utmost diffi- 
culty, not yet successfully accomplished, to separate what was native, local, and 
original, from what was borrowed; and the task is made more difficult by the suc- 
cession of ruling races in the same territory. A seal uninscribed, even if we know 
its provenance, may be Assyrian, Hittite, Syrian, Phenician, or Mycenzan, so far 
as the location where it is found will tell us. Still we may often reach practical 
certainty. The long supremacy of the Hittites in this region during the period 
when cylinder seals were in use gives the presumption in their favor in many cases 
in which the archeological data are not conclusive. Under the Hittite name itself 
we must include a succession of peoples of the same general race, but which inhabited 
different sections from Armenia to-the Mediterranean, and who waged for centuries 
equal war with Assyria and Egypt. ‘They are the Mitanni; the people of Nahrina; 
the Chatti, or Hittites proper; the Lukki, or Lycians; the Kummukh of Comma- 
gene; the Kaski; the Tabal, or Tibareni; the Muski (Meschech, Moschians), of 
Phrygia; the Kumani (of Comana); and the Khilakki, of Cilicia. Messerschmidt 
sees in the Lydian and Cilician kingdoms the last shoots of Hittite state organization. 
And in this connection it must never be forgotten that Egyptian influence 
must have been very powerful from the very earliest historical period. Snefru, 
the last king of the third dynasty, about 2900 B. C. sent a fleet of forty ships to 
Lebanon for cedar wood (Breasted, “Ancient Records, Egypt,” 1, p. 66); and 
Pepi I., of the sixth dynasty, invaded Palestine about three centuries later. ‘The age 
of these dynasties is still contested, and Petrie makes Snefru reign from about 3998 
B. C. to 3969. Doubtless Egypt was predominant, or at least influential, in Syria 
long before the eighteenth dynasty and long before the Hittite predominance. 
There is no reason why cylinders might not have shown Egyptian influence from 
the earliest times, for the firs. six dynasties used cylinders rather than scarabs. 
Certain it is that Semitic and Asianic elements entered in the aboriginal Egyptian 
stock in a prehistoric period and with the first dynasty, and we do not know but they 
may have come as much from Syria as from Arabia. Along the coast of Asia cyl- 
inders are likely to have been introduced from Babylonia quite as early as in Egypt. 
Possibly fig. 945 may give us an early illustration of the Hittite type as it was 
seen with purely northern influence, unaffected by that of Babylonia. It belongs 
to a style of early art of the region, usually to be seen on large cylinders, early As- 
syrian, of soft serpentine, but in this case limestone. Apparently a goddess in a 
square hat, like that of the goddess heading the procession of Boghaz-keui, stands 
on a bull with its tail raised like that of a lion. Theis is hardly the god Teshub lead- 
ing his bull. She holds in one hand a circle and she is attended by two bird-headed 
genil, one of whom, and perhaps both, holds a “‘cone” and carries a basket or 
pail. Above and below is a rude guilloche. Such a design is related to those early 
forms with the attendants before the sacred tree. It is not easy to identify the god- 
dess, but we may relate her to early forms. 
A Hittite feature which is very noticeable in the Egyptian representations of 
Hittites is the long queue worn by them. This seldom appears on the Hittite seals, 
but an unusual example is shown in fig. goo, where we have the frequent design 
of two archaic-looking figures drinking through a tube from a vase. 
A splendid example of the Syro-Hittite cylinder art is to be seen in fig. 792, 
which is given here because in a rare way it represents the three principal Hittite 
