CHAPTER XLIV. 
SYRO-HITTITE CYLINDERS; EGYPTIAN STYLE. 
Inasmuch as the lands bordering on the Mediterranean coast were very much 
controlled by Egyptian culture and religion, we may expect their influence to appear 
on the seals of this region, and such is the fact. We know that the Syrian coast 
was overrun by the Egyptian armies in the time of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
dynasties. Egyptian kings recorded their victories and figured their battles with 
the Hittites and other tribes. The Tel el-Amarna tablets give us rich historical 
data and show us that Babylonian influence had preceded the Egyptian, inasmuch 
as the Babylonian was the language and the script of international intercourse. 
But certainly commerce had carried Egyptian art motives all along the coast, cen- 
turies before the time of Thothmes and Ramses. The multitude of scarabs found 
in Syria and the neighborhood, as well as in Crete and Cyprus, are further evidences 
of Egyptian influence. Accordingly we find Egyptian gods on a considerable num- 
ber of cylinders. ‘The style of the art, in general, is not Egyptian, but it appears that 
Egyptian figures had been applied to a style that was already native. ‘There is 
not to be expected a hieroglyphic inscription, or the cartouche of a king. The 
cylinders are quite unlike those found in Egypt. The reason is clear. The Egyptian 
cylinder belonged to the earlier period, and was not much affected, except archaisti- 
cally, after about the twelfth dynasty. Accordingly the Egyptian cylinder would 
not have been seen by the Syrian or Hittite people, and could not be copied. But 
on the Babylonian cylinder it was easy to engrave the crux ansata or figures of 
Egyptian gods, more or less modified for native taste. 
Very important, in this study, are two cylinders belonging to the de Clercq 
Collection, figs. 805, 806. They are inscribed, in Babylonian script, with the names 
of the owners, father and son, residents of Sidon. We might call them Phenician, 
except that they come from a period, probably, that antedates the Phenician writing 
and the characteristic Phenician art. They might belong to a period of about 
1500 B. C., when, as we now know from the Tel el-Amarna tablets, Babylonian was 
the Gera: language of the Syrian coast; and at the same time Thess might possibly 
be some centuries older, inasmuch as the Babylonian must have been the language 
and the script for one or two thousand years. ‘The script is poor and would seem 
to follow some other than a lapidary style. It is neither pure Babylonian nor 
Assyrian, but a special local form of writing, more like what appears on some of the 
Tel el-Amarna tablets. ‘These seals, with a few others of the same type, form a 
connecting link with those that we call Hittite, or Syro-Hittite, and they help us to 
fix the age of the more numerous seals, inasmuch as in style and design they are 
related beyond question to them. Fig. 805 has four lines, crowded into the space, 
and gives us the name of “Addumu, of the City of Sidon, his seal”; while fig. 806 
allows room for three lines, which read: “Annipi, son of Addumu, the Sidonian.” 
In fig. 805 there are three figures, a worshiper between two gods, and all in the 
Egyptian style. One of the gods, however, is the Syrian Resheph, or Hittite Teshub, 
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