Page 150 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ASIA MINOR AND THE IIITTITES
temple courts. In the Iiittitc temple there is a central court, but the rooms surrounding
it have large windows in their outer walls. Even the Holy of Holies, with the statue of
the god, has four windows. The temple we have discussed, Temple I, is situated in the
north of the town. Four others were built to the south (Figure 48). They lack the ring of
magazines, but a wall starting from the town wall near the Royal Gate and surrounding
Temple V may also have enclosed the others. These southern temples, built perhaps at a
later date than Temple I, resemble one another more closely than the larger building in
the north. Their plans arc less clearly articulated. The shrine of Temple I is an emphatic
architectural composition; die splendid gateway firmly marks the main axis; the single
coloimadc, at the end of the court, leads on in the direction of the Holy of Holies. It may
be said that the southern temples have sacrificed clarity to elegance. They open up on all
sides; irregular groups of rooms project or recede and, within, the courts arc almost
turned into cloistered quadrangles by the colonnades and walls, pierced by long win­
dows, which surround them.
The similarities and differences shown in figures 47, 48, and 51 demonstrate the range
and variety of diis most original architecture of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries
b.c. At present we know nothing of its antecedents, except that some of its features were
found in Syria early in the second millennium, in the palace of Yarimlim at Atchana
(Alalakh; see below). It may, therefore, be a mere accident of discovery that a common
feature of Syrian temples and palaces in the first millennium B.c., namely the placing of
columns on the back of the Hons (Plate 156 below), is first found at Boghazkeuy, in the
coloimadc of Temple III.19

Sculpture
Not only the Hons of the columns which we have just mentioned, but aU imperial Hittite
sculpture is subservient to architecture. Free-standing statues have not been found,20 and
the Hons and sphinxes which guarded the gates at Boghazkeuy and Alaga Hiiyuk are
more intimately joined to the structure than their prototypes in Mesopotamia and Egypt
had ever been. There is no precedent for these semi-engaged figures, whose front parts
project from the door-jambs, while their bodies may or may not be indicated in reHef
on the sides of the stones.
The scale of these gate figures is equaHy new. The sphinxes at Alaga Hiiyiik (Plate
I28b) stand seven feet high; the monoHths in which they are carved reach a height of ten
feet. It is clear that figures on the scale of the terra-cotta or copper Hons of the Meso­
potamian temples, or even of the sphinxes and rams which form avenues at Kamak and
Deir el Bahri, would have looked puny and ineffectual before the cyclopean walls of the
Hittites. But size alone does not explain the unexpected fact that the addition of figures
did not diminish, but enrich the majesty of this architecture. It is the boldness of the
modelling which creates a harmony widi their surroundings.
As works of art the Hittite sculptures present an enigma. Those found at Boghazkeuy
reveal a competence Ha carving winch presupposes a sound tradition of craftsmanship.
This can best be seen in the detail of one of the sphinxes from Yerkapu (Plate 126-
Figure 49). Nothing among the numerous sculptures of the first millennium from eastern

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