Page 160 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat
P. 160
ASIA MINOR AND THE HITTITES
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Figure 58. Metal belt, from Boghazkcuy
Similar supporters occur on the ivory plaque from Megiddo (Figure 57)» which
seems to have formed the side of a casket. Though found in Palestine it was doubtlessly
made for a Hittite king, and represents Hittitc rather than Syrian design. Separate motifs
can often be matched on seal cylinders of the second Syrian group: the rosettes, the
bull-men, the hclmcted gods, the gods emerging from the mountain,56 heads with the
typical wig of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom.57 But this head-dress occurs also at Ala^a
Hiiyiik (Plate 12813), and the bull-men supporters and the god emerging from the moun
tain are known at Yasilikaya. It is impossible to say whether the Hittites derived these
motifs from a Syrian repertoire, or whether the Syrians used them under Hittite in
fluence. Irrespective of this wider problem, three arguments point to a Hittite origin of
the ivory plaque. The squatting winged sphinx with a pointed cap and a lion’s head
growing from her breast58 recurs on a gold signet ring of imperial times.59 Moreover,
the accumulation of supporting figures is Hittite; on Syrian monuments they appear as a
pair or trio under the sun-disk. Finally, the main theme, in the upper register, shows the
Hittite king in his characteristic garb with the Hittite winged disk above.60 I am inclined
to assign this ivory to the fourteenth century, after Suppiluliumas, conquest of Syria and
Palestine (see below p. 153), since at any other time the presence of a Hittite royal
casket at Megiddo would be hard to explain.
The minor arts of the Hittite empire show some continuity with earlier times. The
seal designs, often of great merit, contain animal figures and other motifs related with
earlier glyptic.61 The bronze figurines which we have discussed (p. 133 above) are
modelled in the style of the stone carvings at Boghazkeuy, but other objects, such as the
rein-ring of plate 129B, resemble in the treatment of the figures the bronzes from
Ala^a Hiiyiik (Plate 123), which, as we have seen, may well be early Hittite products.
The fragment of a metal belt from Boghazkeuy (Figure 58), four inches high, is interest
ing, because it is known from the monuments as a characteristic element of Hittite attire
(Plates 127 and 129); because of its design, and because of its technique. It consists of a
thin sheet of silver cased in two sheets of bronze. The outer sheet has a sunk design of
131
