Page 177 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART two: the peripheral REGIONS

i,5oo years earlier.5* It was provided with a tunnel or postern for sorties during siege
resembling those found at Boghazkeuy, Alishar, Mycenae, and Tiryns. It seems likely
that there is a connexion between the Anatolian and Syrian instances, but we do not
know where the device originated.
It was also at this time that an alphabet consisting of twenty-nine cuneiform signs was
invented at Ras Shamra. The texts written in this script are couched in a language closely
related to Hebrew and Phoenician; they include mythological poems depicting vividly
the quarrels and feasts of the gods. It is natural that one should wish to recognize these
passionate divinities on the monuments where gods are depicted. This, however, is im­
possible. Even in Mesopotamia, where our material is much more extensive, we succeed
not as often as one would expect in establishing correspondences between the imagery
of die monuments and passages in the texts. Considering the stele of plate 141, it is a safe
guess that it shows a weather-god, because these were all-important in the Syrian Pan­
theon. The two undulating lines at the bottom of the stele probably indicated die moun­
tains where he resides, and the zigzagging butt of his spear, with its strange excrescences,
could very well indicate lightning. Yet all this is surmise.
The costume of the god has affinities with Syria and Anatolia. The pointed helmet
occurs on seals of the Second Syrian Group56 and in a bone figure of a god found at
Nuzi.57 The horns which indicate divinity and the curled locks occur on the same group
of cylinders. The broad metallic band, the sword with the curved tip, the hilt divided
into narrow horizontal bands, recall the god on the Royal Gate at Boghazkeuy (Plate
127).
While the accoutrement of the god points to the north, the style of the figure has
southern affinities. The attitude, with lifted mace, repeats the traditional pose of Pharaoh
victorious over his enemies; the slenderness of the figure, the modelling of the knees, the
absence of shoes or sandals, and the omission of toes in the drawing of the feet, confirm
that the formal inspiration of the stele was Egyptian. The steles of an earlier age found at
i
Ras Shamra (p. 137 above) also showed Egyptian influence, but in a different maimer.
They borrowed objects and attributes from Egyptian renderings of gods, but they lacked
the orderly arrangement of plate 141 - the ground-line, the raised border at the edge o
the stone. In plate 141, on the other hand, the subject is purely Asiatic, but its clarity o
;
disposition and its strong yet diversified outline are derived from Egyptian art. The sm
figure on a pedestal in front of the god probably represents a goddess allied with him.
She seems to hold a plant.58 . _ .
An entirely different type of stele was set up about the same time at Beisan Be l
Shan) in Palestine (Plate 147). Everything about it is enigmatic. It wo se^\ ,

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