CHAPTER LIV. 
RUDE SYRO-HITTITE CYLINDERS. 
There is a class of cylinders, usually of hematite or magnetic iron ore, which 
may be treated by themselves because of the style of their artisanship rather than 
their designs, although sometimes they are of chalcedony or even agate. They 
are not found so much along the Syrian coast as they are within the Cilician Hittite 
region, from Marash and Aintab eastward. ‘Their peculiarity is that they are 
made entirely with the wheel, and generally very rudely. Three cutting tools may 
be used, one making a round deep hole, large or small, according to the size of the 
burr used; another a disk, the edge of which was applied to 
=; make straight lines, generally deeper in the middle where the 
disk dug deeper; and the third a cylindrical tool which when 
applied vertically would cut circles, or which if held at an angle 
would make semicircles or crescents. We may suppose these 
to represent a rather late period in the Hittite art, and also the 
cheaper products of the trade, for it was possible to do some very excellent work 
with the wheel. ‘The designs are of all sorts, but very rude animals, fishes, and 
birds were frequently sufficient to satisfy the owner. 
One of the better examples of this style is seen in fig. 984. Here Teshub leads 
his bull and lifts his weapon. Before him are a worshiper and the sacred disk. A 
bird-headed winged figure approaches a seated deity, probably a goddess. Fig. 
g85 is of interest, as it represents two far-separated periods of art. The cylinder 
was originally of an excellent old Gudea type, and afterwards fell into the hands 
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Aa Us 
of a man of the late Hittite period, who retained of it the fine seated god and the 
worshiper and the goddess Aa, and also the sun in its crescent. But the later owner 
removed the inscription and put in its place meaningless animals and other emblems 
between the old figures, one of them the Egyptian symbol of stability. 
In fig. 986 the seat of the goddess is on a lion and before her are a sphinx and 
also a worshiper. A winged figure lifts two antelopes. ‘There is a sacred tree. 
The guilloche is very rude and, as in these cylinders, is wrought with the cylindrical 
drill. In fig. 987 there is a seated deity, and another god rests his foot on a lion. 
There are various animals, and it is not quite certain that what looks like a sacred 
tree is not really a cuttle-fish, as in fig. 798. 
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