Page 157 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO:
THE PERIPHERAL REGIONS
perhaps a trained dog, the other a land of guitar. No more is preserved of the sculptures
aporo ScrrCl°n a! t lC ?P U,1JX GatC’ but °U tIlC °PP°sltc sidc a Procession of figures
approaches a goddess who is depicted on her throne and holds a mirror."'' Some bfocks
were found out of place, and they do not seem to belong to the series we have described
liicir subjects arc commonplaces in Ancient Near Eastern art, but have so far not been
found elsewhere in the Hittitc
empire, and their treatment is quite individual. A hunter
on foot receives a springing Hon on his spear, while his two dogs attack the great beast
figure 55). A kneeling hunter aims his arrow at a charging boar. The stone, in this ease
is divided into two, and below the archer a stag is shown nibbling an ornamental pi
ant;
This stag, and those appearing on another block (Plate i32a), bear on the body designs
winch seem additions rather than renderings of their anatomy. They are seen on two
seals of King Muwatalli, who lived in the fourteenth or tliirtccnth century b.c.;"1 and,

1 •L

Figure 55. Lion hunt, at Alaga Hiiyiik

again, on a sculptured door-jamb decorated with a snarling Hon which resembles those
found at Boghazkeuy on column-bases of Temple III.42 But the Hon of the door-jamb
at Ala^a Hiiyiik holds down a bull-calf which shows the quasi-liieroglyphic designs on
its body. Another gate Hon from Ala^a Hiiyiik43 which is badly damaged, seems to
stand over a prostrate man.44 Another block shows a charging buU.
It may be owing to the lack of monuments from other sites that the repertoire of
Alafa Hiiyiik seems exceptionally rich; it is, in any case, impossible to derive it from
outside sources.45 The kneeling archer is actually known from a Hittite seal."6 The primi­
tive scheme of composition of these reliefs from Ala?a Hiiyiik, a mere juxtaposition of
figures, sometimes even without a ground-line to connect them, is characteristic of
Pittite art as a whole. Even at Yasilikaya the composition of the friezes is elementary.
ritual scenes with the reliefs at the lion gate of Malatya. At this site wor e
We return to
of three periods has been found, but there ca be no doubt that some of it goes back to
as a compromise, it
^ <«.
earTy meHth century had swept through Anatolia. I see no adequate grounds for such

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