Page 158 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

ASIA MINOR AND THE HITTITES
a view/7 The lions guarding the gate (Plate 13 3 a) show a number of peculiarities which
link them with the art of Boghazkeuy; their manes are rendered by connected spirals,
exa ctly like the hair on the chest of the figure at die Royal Gate (Plate 127). The small
round marks between their eyes occur in the Hons from Boghazkeuy (Figure 50).
The slabs with reliefs found built into the towers of the Hon gate show scenes of wor­
ship (Plate 13 3 b). The king/8 and occasionally the queen, is observed pouring a libation
before various gods while a servant holds a sacrificial animal. The gods sometimes ap­
pear in groups and arc identified by the same attributes as those depicted in Yasilikaya.
The most striking link with imperial art appears on the left of our plate. The god shown
there mounts a chariot drawn by a sprightly stepping bull, and tills motif occurs identi­
cally in the rock sculpture of Imamkiilii (Figure 56), which belongs to the imperial
period. Here the god and Ills chariot appears over the personified mountains which we
know from Yasilikaya, where they carry with bent heads the chief god in the central
panel. Yet another link between the reliefs from Malatya and Boghazkeuy with Yasili-

Figure 56. Rock sculpture, at Imamkiilii

kaya exists in the occurrence of a deified former king, under the winged disk, receiving
honours like any god. Finally, when the queen is shown pouring a libation, she worships
a goddess supported by two flying doves, once again a figure known from Yasilikaya.
But if the provincial art is linked with that of the capital by its repertoire, the peculiar
style of the capital is not found elsewhere. At Ala$a Hiiyiik, at Malatya, and at Tell
Atchana near Antioch (where a relief of king Tudhaliyas of the thirteenth century has
been found)49 the carving is flat and entirely without plastic sense. Details are engraved,
but workmanship is poor; at best the proportions and gestures of some figures are con­
vincing or even spirited, as in the hunter and the boar at Ala$a Huyiik. If the work at
Boghazkeuy was carried out in collaboration with a Babylonian sculptor, the difference
from all provincial work would be explained, for there was no native tradition of stone­
work. Yet the provincial craftsmen showed enterprise as designers. The acrobats and
hunters from Ala$a Huyiik display originality, and at Malatya one of the orthostats be­
longing to the same series as our plate 133B presents, for the only time in Hittite art, a
mythological scene.50 But Hittite art appears a stunted growth; and furthermore it was
crushed by the great migration which initiated the dark ages for die Levant as well as for
Greece.
Hittite rock sculptures are found at various localities in Anatolia. They are rough and
simple, showing the figure of the king in relief on a smoothed surface on the face of a

129