Page 145 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO:
THE peripheral regions
sti^aCHnnVn thecllicftain’sbody probably consisted of cloth on which were
bodts off l °!! CUt ?°m SOld_foil-ItS four suPP°rts P®cd through die
bodies of bulls cast in solid gold or silver (Plate 124, c and d). They arc smaller than the
iguics from Ala?a Huyuk and their modelling is superior. But they show the same
heaviness m form (which is never found in the Mesopotamian animals cast in metal, for
instance, on rein-rings);11 and they possess the same odd elongation of the muzzle which
we observed in plate 123D. Moreover, there are other similarities between the two sites.
At Ala^a Hiiyuk, too, the bodies were placed i 111 a timbered funerary chamber; they
were in some eases covered with red ochre, a custom found throughout south Russia
and notably at Maikop.
The prevalence of the stag at Ala^a Hiiyiik is also revealing. It rarely counted as a
sacred animal in the Near East, but it did receive worship both from the dwellers on the
Eurasian steppes and from the Hittitcs who differed in this respect from their neigh­
bours.12 There is, then, some probability that the people buried at Ala^a Hiiyiik entered
Cappadocia from the Russian or Central Asian steppes; and that some similarity existed,
perhaps due to continuity, between their beliefs and those of the Hittites.
In probing Hittite origins in relation to the finds from Ala<;a Hiiyiik, we arc inevitably
drawn into a discussion of historical developments. For these take the place of artists’
biographies where no individual craftsmen are known, and their work must be reckoned
as die artistic expression of the group to which they belong. It is the definition of this
group which presents our problem. For Hittite records do not reach back to the time of
the Ala^a Hiiyiik tombs (c. 2300-2000 B.c.), and it is not, as a rule, assumed diat Hittites
were in Anatolia at the time; but there arc analogies for movements of people extending
over several centuries. The migration which brought the Hittites to Anatolia reached its
peak in the eighteenth century b.c., when the Kassites entered Babylonia and the Hyksos
Egypt. In contrast with these two groups, the Hittites, like the Mitanni who settled in
north Syria, spoke an Eido-European language. The Hittites, like the Mitanni, always
remained a minority in their new domains. They formed a dominating class imposing
unified rule upon aboriginal populations who had never shown any political aptitude,
and had been governed by a variety of local princelings. There is no evidence diat the
Hittites disturbed this order in the beginning. They did not sweep over the country in a
mass migration, but established themselves by infiltration, and so obtained power in
some principalities. We know this from cimeiform documents - business archives of
Assyrian traders of about 1970-1875 b.c. which mention local rulers bearing names
which the imperial Hittite tradition recognized; a text of one of them, written in Indo-
European Hittite, has actually been preserved.13 We do not know to what extent die
ruling people, the Hittites proper, took over beliefs and practices of the natives, and the
worship of the stag may have been one of these, hr that case tire princes burred at Ala9a
Huviik would be the vanguard of the Hittites. Yet it is difficult to consider them abongi-
y. • 0f the foreign affinities of their tombs; and it seems a little far-fetched
na S “V ^hev were immigrants from the same direction from which a few centuries
claim that they an<1 had ye, no relationship with them The evidence
U h p“^‘ “ inconclusive, but it dote not exclude the poss.bthty that the
Il6

.