DAVID HOWARD, ESQ., D.L., F.C.S., IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed.

The following paper was read by Mr. Theophilus G. Pinches in the absence of the Author :

A VISIT TO THE HITTITE CITIES EYUK AND BOGHAZ KEOY. By Rev. G. E. WHITE, Marsovan, Turkey.

FINE

INE spring weather and fine Turkish courtesy from officials, local boys, and villagers, supplied the outward conveniences for the interesting visit named above, and made by three young Americans of the Marsovan missionary circle in March, 1898. The first night was spent at Chorum, near the junction of the three ancient provinces of Pontus, Galatia, and Cappadocia, and the 1st chapter of I Ep. of St. Peter furnished suitable devotional reading that evening.

The next day, an hour before reaching Eyuk, we came to Kaloh Hissar, Castle Wall, a double peak rising 500 to 600 feet above the plain, with a village of Circassian refugees from Russia at its foot. The peak has some of the crumbling masonry so common in Turkey, but at the summit we found something different. On the topmost of four steps, cut in the rock, once sat an idol, or a human figure nearly lifesized, the feet resting on the third step and cut from the same stone that formed the step. The feet are broken off at the ankles now, and the rest of the figure is gone. The toes of the shoes are round, not sharp pointed or up-turned according to the usual Hittite custom, but the Hittites did not carve all their shoes with sharp up-turned points, and the conclusion seems natural that Kaloh Hissar also was a Hittite shrine in the times of the Old Testament.

Eyuk, meaning in Turkish, "mound," is built upon a low level mound, in which the villagers say strange stones are sometimes found when they dig for the foundations of dwellings. At one corner of the town the stones remain exposed that once formed a temple, wonderful not for its size or beauty, but for its age and the peculiar character of the Hittite sculpture. Of the building nothing worthy the name is left save the outline of a room about 25 × 30 feet square. But the entrance is still guarded by two huge basalt stones some twelve feet high, the face of each of which is carved into the form of a sphinx, with fillet across the forehead, ear-rings, necklace, and wing-like attachments from the head to the sides of the body. There is a striking resemblance to the pictures that come from Egypt. On the inner wall of the sphinx at the right as one enters the temple, is a double-headed eagle with a hare in either talon, and a human figure above, almost or quite life-size, supported by a foot, resting on the double head of the eagle. On the left was a similar carving, now almost effaced.

The entrance is approached by a double line of huge basalt stones forming a dromos, which presently turns a sharp angle to the right and left. Two processions approaching the temple are represented on these walls. They are a series of human figures cut in bas-relief on the face of the stones about three feet high. They are mostly clad in tunics reaching to the knees, with sometimes a loose cloak draped from the shoulders to the feet, skull-cap with a horn in front reminding one of the Egyptian uræus, shoes (usually) turned up at the point, and the figures have large noses and large

ear-rings. One figure has either a long tassel on a closefitting cap, or hair depending in a closely-tied queue; either supposition favours a Mongol origin for the Hittites, for the first resembles the custom of the Turks; the second that of Chinamen. Such customs of dressing the hair or covering the head are very persistent in the Orient.

In one case a priest seems to be ministering before an altar, another priest is dragging a ram by the horn, with three more rams in the field behind and above; another pours a libation upon the foot of a seated goddess. One figure is playing a guitar, another blowing a horn, several have each a lituus, a musical instrument, depending from the hand; a man climbs a ladder half higher than himself and consisting of seventeen rounds. One of the great stone blocks exhibits six similar figures marching; two have bulls, one with something on his back, perhaps an altar; and there are two lions on blocks that have been displaced from the series the lion is the most characteristic animal of Hittite sculpture. The whole scene seems to be clearly religious, not political or military, and is attributed by Professor Sayce to the thirteenth century before Christ.

Eyuk and Boghaz Keoy are five hours apart, and the latter was evidently a great capital. It is suggested that it was the cool summer abode of the "kings of the Hittites," who were natives of this region, but operated in Syria or elsewhere in winter. The space enclosed by a wall is over a mile long by a half mile broad, and contains remnants of

three castles and three palaces. From the top of the wall to what was the bottom of the moat in places exceeds 150 feet in a straight line. These walls were built without mortar, the great rampart of earth being topped by a double-faced wall of large cut stones, the space between being packed with rubble. The outer upper edge of each cut stone has a little turned-up ledge, which prevents the stone laid upon it from slipping outward, while its fellows on either side and the rubble behind kept it from moving in those directions. The outer slope of the walls is in some places paved with flat stones, which both held the earth and would place invaders at the mercy of defenders. The principal palace was of the form of an Oriental inn, with a series of rooms about a large central court. Near by is an overturned chair or throne mounted upon and between two lions.

Boghaz Keoy has but one inscription, Nishan Tash, a lettered stone face six feet by eighteen in size, but, sad to say, this is defaced beyond decipherment. We were fortunate however in securing some fragments of cuneiform tablets (Fig. 2) and seals, probably Hittite or Mycenean. One of these last had a figure 4 in the centre, surrounded by rope-work and with a loop at the back for passing a cord through. We found also a whorl of the sort found in such numbers by Dr. Schliemann at Troy.

One of the spots we found most interesting is an abrupt rock called "School Rock," two slopes of which have been hewn into the shape of bowling floors. The larger, about 18 by 30 feet, and as nearly semi-circular as the configuration of the rock permits, forms quite an auditoriumi. The rock faces are cut down eight feet, and decorated with striated lines, and the floor is a series of low broad tiers or stairs. At the focal point the rock has been drilled with several holes, where the platform of players or the bench of a judge might easily have been erected. The whole is a rough but distinct form of a theatre, and the query at once arose, Have we not here a copy of the original of that famous structure, the Greek theatre? If the Hittites of Cappadocia could make sphinxes like those of Egypt, correspond in cuneiform characters with the people of Mesopotamia, and amuse themselves with playthings of a kind more abundantly used at Troy, how natural for them to pass on to the Greeks anything of their own worth while copying, for the Greeks to improve upon? Here is a small rough assembly hall, within the walls of a capital and near

the throne, why not a model to the Greek? The suggestion is made for what it may be worth.

The most important sculptures at Boghaz Keoy are those of Yazili Kaza, two miles from the ancient town. Here again the design is devotional, not military. The larger of two rock galleries contains on its sides a double procession meeting in the middle. The figures are like those at Eyuk, but more in number and of greater variety. The skull-cap gives place to high and flat-topped, or high and conical caps, the peak sometimes drawn forward in the "Phrygian" style. Lions, tigers, and double-headed eagles support various human forms. Others stand on mountain summits, or on the heads of men. At the head of the two processions, which contain more than three score figures, a priest and a priestess of gigantic size meet each other with peculiar symbols in their hands. Would that the key to all this were known to us; that we understood what were the thoughts in the minds of the men who carved these images in the rocks long before the time of our Lord! The Hittites faded from history 700 B.C.

The smaller of the Yazili Kaya rock galleries contains other figures like those in the larger. One interesting series of twelve men seem to be reapers, each with his sickle over his shoulder, but they may be soldiers marching with swords. Many places in the region were described to us by the villagers as having "idols and writing," or "lions and dogs,' etc., some that we were able to examine yielding nothing interesting. Rock-hewn tombs with Doric columns, and a spiral stairway cut through solid rock down to a river, but with no trace of a castle above, aroused our curiosity.

One place, however, the village of Eski Yapar, one hour west of Alaja, deserves special mention. It is built like Eyuk on a flat mound in an open plain, and discovers peculiar stones to the inhabitants when they dig. Apparently the debris of an Oriental village occupied for generations had lifted the very site of the place up to the height of a man above the plain. Here we found several Greek inscriptions on stones used as tombstones, perhaps a thousand years ago. A round column inverted and half buried proved to be a Roman milestone with the name Cæsar plainly to be read on it. Apparently it was a milestone of Antoninus Pius, well nigh two thousand years ago, set up to guide travellers on roads long since forgotten. Then a villager invited us to look at a queer stone built into the corner of