In Cyprus the Tyrian Melcarth was worshipped side by side with Adonis at Amathus,377 and Phoenician inscriptions prove that he was revered also at Idalium and Larnax Lapethus. At the last of these places he seems to have been regarded by the Greeks as a marine deity and identified with Poseidon.378 A remarkable statue found at Amathus may represent Melcarth in the character of the lion-slayer, a character which the Greeks bestowed on Hercules. The statue in question is of colossal size, and exhibits a thick-set, muscular, hirsute deity of almost bestial aspect, with goggle eyes, huge ears, and a pair of stumpy horns on the top of his head. His beard is square and curly: his hair falls in three pigtails on his shoulders: his brawny arms appear to be tattooed. A lion's skin, clasped by a buckle, is knotted round his loins; and he holds the skin of a lioness in front of him, grasping a hind paw with each hand, while the head of the beast, which is missing, hung down between his legs. A fountain must have issued from the jaws of the lioness, for a rectangular hole, where the beast's head should be, communicates by a channel with another hole in the back of the statue. Greek artists working on this or a similar barbarous model produced the refined type of the Grecian Hercules with the lion's scalp thrown like a cowl over [pg 118] his head. Statues of him have been found in Cyprus, which represent intermediate stages in this artistic evolution.379 But there is no proof that in Cyprus the Tyrian Melcarth was burned either in effigy or in the person of a human representative.380
On the other hand, there is clear evidence of the observance of such a custom in Cilicia, the country which lies across the sea from Cyprus, and from which the worship of Adonis, according to tradition, was derived.381 Whether the Phoenicians ever colonized Cilicia or not is doubtful,382 but at all events the natives of the country, down to late times, worshipped a male deity who, in spite of a superficial assimilation to a fashionable Greek god, appears to have been an Oriental by birth and character. He had his principal seat at Tarsus, in a plain of luxuriant fertility and almost tropical climate, tempered by breezes from the snowy range of Tarsus on the north and from the sea on the south.383 Though Tarsus boasted of a school of Greek philosophy which at the beginning of our era surpassed those of Athens and Alexandria,384 the city apparently remained in manners and spirit essentially Oriental. The women went about the streets muffled up to the eyes in Eastern fashion, and Dio Chrysostom reproaches the natives with resembling the most dissolute of the Phoenicians rather than the Greeks [pg 119] whose civilization they aped.385 On the coins of the city they assimilated their native deity to Zeus by representing him seated on a throne, the upper part of his body bare, the lower limbs draped in a flowing robe, while in one hand he holds a sceptre, which is topped sometimes with an eagle but often with a lotus flower. Yet his foreign nature is indicated both by his name and his attributes; for in Aramaic inscriptions on the coins he bears the name of the Baal of Tarsus, and in one hand he grasps an ear of corn and a bunch of grapes.386 These attributes clearly mark him out as a god of fertility in general, who conferred on his worshippers the two things which they prized above all other gifts of nature, the corn and the wine. He was probably therefore a Semitic, or at all events an Oriental, rather than a Greek deity. For while the Semite cast all his gods more or less in the same mould, and expected them all to render him nearly the same services, the Greek, with his keener intelligence and more pictorial imagination, invested his deities with individual characteristics, allotting to each of them his or her separate function in the divine economy of the world. Thus he assigned the production of the corn to Demeter, and that of the grapes to Dionysus; he was not so unreasonable as to demand both from the same hard-worked deity.
Now the suspicion that the Baal of Tarsus, for all his posing in the attitude of Zeus, was really an Oriental is confirmed by a remarkable rock-hewn monument which is to be seen at Ibreez in Southern Cappadocia. Though the [pg 120] place is distant little more than fifty miles from Tarsus as the crow flies, yet the journey on horseback occupies five days; for the great barrier of the Taurus mountains rises like a wall between. The road runs through the famous pass of the Cilician Gates, and the scenery throughout is of the grandest Alpine character. On all sides the mountains tower skyward, their peaks sheeted in a dazzling pall of snow, their lower slopes veiled in the almost inky blackness of dense pine-forests, torn here and there by impassable ravines, or broken into prodigious precipices of red and grey rock which border the narrow valley for miles. The magnificence of the landscape is enhanced by the exhilarating influence of the brisk mountain air, all the more by contrast with the sultry heat of the plain of Tarsus which the traveller has left behind. When he emerges from the defile on the wide open tableland of Anatolia he feels that in a sense he has passed out of Asia, and that the highroad to Europe lies straight before him. The great mountains on which he now looks back formed for centuries the boundary between the Christian West and the Mohammedan East; on the southern side lay the domain of the Caliphs, on the northern side the Byzantine Empire. The Taurus was the dam that long repelled the tide of Arab invasion; and though year by year the waves broke through the pass of the Cilician Gates and carried havoc and devastation through the tableland, the refluent waters always retired to the lower level of the Cilician plains. A line of beacon lights stretching from the Taurus to Constantinople flashed to the Byzantine capital tidings of the approach of the Moslem invaders.387
The village of Ibreez is charmingly situated at the northern foot of the Taurus, some six or seven miles south of the town of Eregli, the ancient Cybistra, From the town to the village the path goes through a richly cultivated district of wheat and vines along green lanes more lovely than those of Devonshire, lined by thick hedges and rows of willow, poplar, hazel, hawthorn, and huge old walnut-trees, where in early summer the nightingales warble on [pg 121] every side. Ibreez itself is embowered in the verdure of orchards, walnuts, and vines. It stands at the mouth of a deep ravine enclosed by great precipices of red rock. From the western of these precipices a river clear as crystal, but of a deep blue tint, bursts in a powerful jet, and being reinforced by a multitude of springs becomes at once a raging impassable torrent foaming and leaping with a roar of waters over the rocks in its bed. A little way from the source a branch of the main stream flows in a deep narrow channel along the foot of a reddish weather-stained rock which rises sheer from the water. On its face, which has been smoothed to receive them, are the sculptures. They consist of two colossal figures, representing a god adored by his worshipper. The deity, some fourteen feet high, is a bearded male figure, wearing on his head a high pointed cap adorned with several pairs of horns, and plainly clad in a short tunic, which does not reach his knees and is drawn in at the waist by a belt. His legs and arms are bare; the wrists are encircled by bangles or bracelets. His feet are shod in high boots with turned-up toes. In his right hand he holds a vine-branch laden with clusters of grapes, and in his raised left hand he grasps a bunch of bearded wheat, such as is still grown in Cappadocia; the ears of corn project above his fingers, while the long stalks hang down to his feet. In front of him stands the lesser figure, some eight feet high. He is clearly a priest or king, more probably perhaps both in one. His rich vestments contrast with the simple costume of the god. On his head he wears a round but not pointed cap, encircled by flat bands and ornamented in front with a rosette or bunch of jewels, such as is still worn by Eastern princes. He is draped from the neck to the ankles in a long robe heavily fringed at the bottom, over which is thrown a shawl or mantle secured at the breast by a clasp of precious stones. Both robe and shawl are elaborately carved with patterns in imitation of embroidery. A heavy necklace of rings or beads encircles the neck; a bracelet or bangle clasps the one wrist that is visible; the feet are shod in boots like those of the god. One or perhaps both hands are raised in the act of adoration. The large aquiline nose, like the beak of a hawk, is a conspicuous [pg 122] feature in the face both of the god and of his worshipper; the hair and beard of both are thick and curly.388
The situation of this remarkable monument resembles that of Aphaca on the Lebanon;389 for in both places we see a noble river issuing abruptly from the rock to spread fertility through the rich vale below. Nowhere, perhaps, could man more appropriately revere those great powers of nature to whose favour he ascribes the fruitfulness of the earth, and through it the life of animate creation. With its cool bracing air, its mass of verdure, its magnificent stream of pure ice-cold water—so grateful in the burning heat of summer—and its wide stretch of fertile land, the valley may well have been the residence of an ancient prince or high-priest, who desired to testify by this monument his devotion and gratitude to the god. The seat of this royal or priestly potentate may have been at Cybistra,390 the modern Eregli, now a decayed and miserable place straggling amid orchards and gardens full of luxuriant groves of walnut, poplar, willow, mulberry, and oak. The place is a paradise of birds. Here [pg 123] the thrush and the nightingale sing full-throated, the hoopoe waves his crested top-knot, the bright-hued woodpeckers flit from bough to bough, and the swifts dart screaming by hundreds through the air. Yet a little way off, beyond the beneficent influence of the springs and streams, all is desolation—in summer an arid waste broken by great marshes and wide patches of salt, in winter a broad sheet of stagnant water, which as it dries up with the growing heat of the sun exhales a poisonous malaria. To the west, as far as the eye can see, stretches the endless expanse of the dreary Lycaonian plain, barren, treeless, and solitary, till it fades into the blue distance, or is bounded afar off by abrupt ranges of jagged volcanic mountains, on which in sunshiny weather the shadows of the clouds rest, purple and soft as velvet.391 No wonder that the smiling luxuriance of the one landscape, sharply contrasting with the bleak sterility of the other, should have rendered it in the eyes of primitive man a veritable garden of God.
Among the attributes which mark out the deity of Ibreez as a power of fertility the horns on his high cap should not be overlooked. They are probably the horns of a bull; for to primitive cattle-breeders the bull is the most natural emblem of generative force. At Carchemish, the great Hittite capital on the Euphrates, a relief has been discovered which represents a god or a priest clad in a rich robe, and wearing on his head a tall horned cap surmounted by a disc.392 Sculptures found at the palace of Euyuk in North-Western Cappadocia prove that the Hittites worshipped the bull and sacrificed rams to it.393 Similarly the Greeks conceived the vine-god Dionysus in the form of a bull.394
That the god of Ibreez, with the grapes and corn in his hands, is identical with the Baal of Tarsus, who bears the same emblems, may be taken as certain.395 But what was his name? and who were his worshippers? The Greeks apparently called him Hercules; at least in Byzantine times the neighbouring town of Cybistra adopted the name of Heraclea, which seems to show that Hercules was deemed the principal deity of the place.396 Yet the style and costume of the figures at Ibreez prove unquestionably that the god was an Oriental. If any confirmation of this view were needed, it is furnished by the inscriptions carved on the rock beside the sculptures, for these inscriptions are composed in the peculiar system of hieroglyphics now known as Hittite. It follows, therefore, that the deity worshipped at Tarsus and Ibreez was a god of the Hittites, that ancient and little-known people who occupied the centre of Asia Minor, invented a system of writing, and extended their influence, if not their dominion, at one time from the Euphrates to the Aegean. From the lofty and arid tablelands of the interior, a prolongation of the great plateau of Central Asia, with a climate ranging from the most burning heat in summer to the most piercing cold in winter,397 these hardy highlanders seem to have swept down through the mountain-passes and established themselves at a very early date in the rich southern lowlands of Syria and Cilicia.398 [pg 125] Their language and race are still under discussion, but a great preponderance of opinion appears to declare that neither the one nor the other was Semitic.399
In the inscription attached to the colossal figure of the god at Ibreez two scholars have professed to read the name of Sandan or Sanda.400 Be that as it may, there are independent grounds for thinking that Sandan, Sandon, or Sandes may have been the name of the Cappadocian and Cilician god of fertility. For the god of Ibreez in Cappadocia appears, as we saw, to have been identified by the Greeks with Hercules, and we are told that a Cappadocian and Cilician name of Hercules was Sandan or Sandes.401 [pg 126] Now this Sandan or Hercules is said to have founded Tarsus, and the people of the city commemorated him at an annual or, at all events, periodical festival by erecting a fine pyre in his honour.402 Apparently at this festival, as at the festival of Melcarth, the god was burned in effigy on his own pyre. For coins of Tarsus often exhibit the pyre as a conical structure resting on a garlanded altar or basis, with the figure of Sandan himself in the midst of it, while an eagle with spread wings perches on the top of the pyre, as if about to bear the soul of the burning god in the pillar of smoke and fire to heaven.403 In like manner when a Roman emperor died leaving a son to succeed him on the [pg 127] throne, a waxen effigy was made in the likeness of the deceased and burned on a huge pyramidal pyre, which was reared upon a square basis of wood; and from the summit of the blazing pile an eagle was released for the purpose of carrying to heaven the soul of the dead and deified emperor.404 The Romans may have borrowed from the East a grandiose custom which savours of Oriental adulation rather than of Roman simplicity.405
The type of Sandan or Hercules, as he is portrayed on the coins of Tarsus, is that of an Asiatic deity standing on a lion. It is thus that he is represented on the pyre, and it is thus that he appears as a separate figure without the pyre. From these representations we can form a fairly accurate conception of the form and attributes of the god. They exhibit him as a bearded man standing on a horned and often winged lion. Upon his head he wears a high pointed cap or mitre, and he is clad sometimes in a long robe, sometimes in a short tunic. On at least one coin his feet are shod in high boots with flaps. At his side or over his shoulder are slung a sword, a bow-case, and a quiver, sometimes only one or two of them. His right hand is raised and sometimes holds a flower. His left hand grasps a double-headed axe, and sometimes a wreath either in addition to the axe or instead of it; but the double-headed axe is one of Sandan's most constant attributes.406
Now a deity of almost precisely the same type figures prominently in the celebrated group of Hittite sculptures which is carved on the rocks at Boghaz-Keui in North-Western Cappadocia. The village of Boghaz-Keui, that is, “the village of the defile,” stands at the mouth of a deep, narrow, and picturesque gorge in a wild upland valley, shut in by rugged mountains of grey limestone. The houses are built on the lower slopes of the hills, and a stream issuing from the gorge flows past them to join the Halys, which is distant about ten hours' journey to the west. Immediately above the modern village a great ancient city, enclosed by massive fortification walls, rose on the rough broken ground of the mountainside, culminating in two citadels perched on the tops of precipitous crags. The walls are still standing in many places to a height of twelve feet or more. They are about fourteen feet thick and consist of an outer and inner facing built of large blocks with a core of rubble between them. On the outer side they are strengthened at intervals of about a hundred feet by projecting towers or buttresses, which seem designed rather as architectural supports than as military defences. The masonry, composed of large stones laid in roughly parallel courses, resembles in style that of the walls of Mycenae, with which it may be contemporary; and the celebrated Lion-gate at Mycenae has its counterpart in the southern gate of Boghaz-Keui, which is flanked by a pair of colossal stone lions executed in the best style of Hittite art. The eastern gate is adorned on its inner side with the figure of a Hittite warrior or Amazon carved in high relief. A dense undergrowth of stunted oak coppice now covers much of the site. The ruins of a large palace or temple, built of enormous blocks of stone, occupy a terrace in a commanding situation within the circuit of the walls. This vast city, some four or five miles in circumference, appears to have been the ancient Pteria, which Croesus, king of Lydia, captured in his war with Cyrus. It was probably the capital of a powerful Hittite empire before the Phrygians made their way from [pg 129] Europe into the interior of Asia Minor and established a rival state to the west of the Halys.407
From the village of Boghaz-Keui a steep and rugged path leads up hill to a sanctuary, distant about a mile and a half to the east. Here among the grey limestone cliffs there is a spacious natural chamber or hall of roughly oblong shape, roofed only by the sky, and enclosed on three sides by high rocks. One of the short sides is open, and through it you look out on the broken slopes beyond and the more distant mountains, which make a graceful picture set in a massy frame. The length of the chamber is about a hundred feet; its breadth varies from twenty-five to fifty feet. A nearly level sward forms the floor. On the right-hand side, as you face inward, a narrow opening in the rock leads into another but much smaller chamber, or rather corridor, which would seem to have been the inner sanctuary or Holy of Holies. It is a romantic spot, where the deep shadows of the rocks are relieved by the bright foliage of walnut-trees and by the sight of the sky and clouds overhead. On the rock-walls of both chamber are carved the famous bas-reliefs. In the outer sanctuary these reliefs represent two great processions which defile along the two long sides of the chamber and meet face to face on the short wall at the inner end. The figures on the left-hand wall are for the most part men clad in the characteristic Hittite costume, which consists of a high pointed cap, shoes with turned-up toes, and a tunic drawn in at the waist and [pg 130] falling short of the knees.408 The figures on the right-hand wall are women wearing tall, square, flat-topped bonnets with ribbed sides; their long dresses fall in perpendicular folds to their feet, which are shod in shoes like those of the men. On the short wall, where the processions meet, the greater size of the central figures, as well as their postures and attributes, mark them out as divine. At the head of the male procession marches or is carried a bearded deity clad in the ordinary Hittite costume of tall pointed cap, short tunic, and turned-up shoes; but his feet rest on the bowed heads of two men, in his right hand he holds on his shoulder a mace or truncheon topped with a knob, while his extended left hand grasps a symbol, which apparently consists of a trident surmounted by an oval with a cross-bar. Behind him follows a similar, though somewhat smaller, figure of a man, or perhaps rather of a god, carrying a mace or truncheon over his shoulder in his right hand, while with his left he holds aloft a long sword with a flat hilt; his feet rest not on two men but on two flat-topped pinnacles, which perhaps represent mountains. At the head of the female procession and facing the great god who is borne on the two men, stands a goddess on a lioness or panther. Her costume does not differ from that of the women: her hair hangs down in a long plait behind: in her extended right hand she holds out an emblem to touch that of the god. The shape and meaning of her emblem are obscure. It consists of a stem with two pairs of protuberances, perhaps leaves or branches, one above the other, the whole being surmounted, like the emblem of the god, by an oval with a cross-bar. Under the outstretched arms of the two deities appear the front parts of two animals, which have been usually interpreted as bulls but are rather goats; each of them wears on its head the high conical Hittite cap, and its body is concealed by that of the deity. Immediately behind the goddess marches a smaller and apparently youthful male figure, standing like her upon a lioness or panther. He is beardless and wears the Hittite [pg 131] dress of high pointed cap, short tunic, and shoes with turned-up toes. A crescent-hilted sword is girt at his side; in his left hand he holds a double-headed axe, and in his right a staff topped by an armless doll with the symbol of the cross-barred oval instead of a head. Behind him follow two women, or rather perhaps goddesses, resembling the goddess at the head of the procession, but with different emblems and standing not on a lioness but on a single two-headed eagle with outspread wings.
The entrance to the smaller chamber is guarded on either side by the figure of a winged monster carved on the rock; the bodies of both figures are human, but one of them has the head of a dog, the other the head of a lion. In the inner sanctuary, to which this monster-guarded passage leads, the walls are also carved in relief. On one side we see a procession of twelve men in Hittite costume marching with curved swords in their right hands. On the opposite wall is a colossal erect figure of a deity with a human head and a body curiously composed of four lions, two above and two below, the latter standing on their heads. The god wears the high conical Hittite hat: his face is youthful and beardless like that of the male figure standing on the lioness in the large chamber; and the ear turned to the spectator is pierced with a ring. From the knees downwards the legs, curiously enough, are replaced by a device which has been interpreted as the tapering point of a great dagger or dirk with a midrib. To the right of this deity a square panel cut in the face of the rock exhibits a group of two figures in relief. The larger of the two figures closely resembles the youth on the lioness in the outer sanctuary. His chin is beardless; he wears the same high pointed cap, the same short tunic, the same turned-up shoes, the same crescent-hilted sword, and he carries a similar armless doll in his right hand. But his left arm encircles the neck of the smaller figure, whom he seems to clasp to his side in an attitude of protection. The smaller figure thus embraced by the god is clearly a priest or priestly king. His face is beardless; he wears a skull-cap and a long mantle reaching to his feet with a sort of chasuble thrown over it. The crescent-shaped hilt of a sword projects from under his [pg 132] mantle. The wrist of his right arm is clasped by the god's left hand; in his left hand the priest holds a crook or pastoral staff which ends below in a curl. Both the priest and his protector are facing towards the lion-god. In an upper corner of the panel behind them is a divine emblem composed of a winged disc resting on what look like two Ionic columns, while between them appear three symbols of doubtful significance. The figure of the priest or king in this costume, though not in this attitude, is a familiar one; for it occurs twice in the outer sanctuary and is repeated twice at the great Hittite palace of Euyuk, distant about four and a half hours' ride to the north-east of Boghaz-Keui. In the outer sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui we see the priest marching in the procession of the men, and holding in one hand his curled staff, or lituus, and in the other a symbol like that of the goddess on the lioness: above his head appears the winged disc without the other attributes. Moreover he occupies a conspicuous place by himself on the right-hand wall of the outer sanctuary, quite apart from the two processions, and carved on a larger scale than any of the other figures in them. Here he stands on two heaps, perhaps intended to represent mountains, and he carries in his right hand the emblem of the winged disc supported on two Ionic columns with the other symbols between them, except that the central symbol is replaced by a masculine figure wearing a pointed cap and a long robe decorated with a dog-tooth pattern. On one of the reliefs at the palace of Euyuk we see the priest with his characteristic dress and staff followed by a priestess, each of them with a hand raised as if in adoration: they are approaching the image of a bull which stands on a high pedestal with an altar before it. Behind them a priest leads a flock of rams to the sacrifice. On another relief at Euyuk the priest, similarly attired and followed by a priestess, is approaching a seated goddess and apparently pouring a libation at her feet. Both these scenes doubtless represent acts of worship paid in the one case to a goddess, in the other to a bull.409
[pg 133]We have still to inquire into the meaning of the rock-carvings at Boghaz-Keui. What are these processions which are meeting? Who are the personages represented? and what are they doing? Some have thought that the scene is historical and commemorates a great event, such as a treaty of peace between two peoples or the marriage of a king's son to a king's daughter.410 But to this view it has [pg 134] been rightly objected that the attributes of the principal figures prove them to be divine or priestly, and that the scene is therefore religious or mythical rather than historical. With regard to the two personages who head the processions and hold out their symbols to each other, the most probable opinion appears to be that they stand for the great Asiatic goddess of fertility and her consort, by whatever names these deities were known; for under diverse names a similar divine couple appears to have been worshipped with similar rites all over Western Asia.411 The bearded god who, grasping a trident in his extended left hand, heads the procession of male figures is probably the Father deity, the great Hittite god of the thundering sky, whose emblems were the thunderbolt and the bull; for the trident which he carries may reasonably be interpreted as a thunderbolt. The deity is represented in similar form on two stone monuments of Hittite art which were found at Zenjirli in Northern Syria and at Babylon respectively. On both we see a bearded male god wearing the usual Hittite costume of tall cap, short tunic, and shoes turned up at the toes: a crescent-hilted sword is girt at his side: his hands are raised: in the right he holds a single-headed axe or hammer, in the left a trident of wavy lines, which is thought to stand for forked lightning or a bundle of thunderbolts. On the Babylonian slab, which bears a long Hittite inscription, the god's cap is ornamented with a pair of horns.412 The horns on the cap are probably [pg 135] those of a bull; for on another Hittite monument, found at Malatia on the Euphrates, there is carved a deity in the usual Hittite costume standing on a bull and grasping a trident or thunderbolt in his left hand, while facing him stands a priest clad in a long robe, holding a crook or curled staff in one hand and pouring a libation with the other.413 The Hittite thunder-god is also known to us from a treaty of alliance which about the year 1290 b.c. was contracted between Hattusil, King of the Hittites, and Rameses II., King of Egypt. By a singular piece of good fortune we possess copies of this treaty both in the Hittite and in the [pg 136] Egyptian language. The Hittite copy was found some years ago inscribed in cuneiform characters on a clay tablet at Boghaz-Keui; two copies of the treaty in the Egyptian language are engraved on the walls of temples at Thebes. From the Egyptian copies, which have been read and translated, we gather that the thunder-god was the principal deity of the Hittites, and that the two Hittite seals which were appended to the treaty exhibited the King embraced by the thunder-god and the Queen embraced by the sun-goddess of Arenna.414 This Hittite divinity of the thundering sky appears to have long survived at Doliche in Commagene, for in later Roman art he reappears under the title of Jupiter Dolichenus, wearing a Phrygian cap, standing on a bull, and wielding a double axe in one hand and a thunderbolt in the other. In this form his worship was transported from his native Syrian home by soldiers and slaves, till it had spread over a large part of the Roman empire, especially on the frontiers, where it flourished in the camps of the legions.415 The combination of the bull with the thunderbolt as emblems of the deity suggests that the animal may have been chosen to represent the sky-god for the sake not merely of its virility but of its voice; for in the peal of thunder primitive man may well have heard the bellowing of a celestial bull.
[pg 137]The goddess who at the head of the procession of women confronts the great sky-god in the sanctuary at Boghaz-Keui is generally recognized as the divine Mother, the great Asiatic goddess of life and fertility. The tall flat-topped hat with perpendicular grooves which she wears, and the lioness or panther on which she stands, remind us of the turreted crown and lion-drawn car of Cybele, who was worshipped in the neighbouring land of Phrygia across the Halys.416 So Atargatis, the great Syrian goddess of Hierapolis-Bambyce, was portrayed sitting on lions and wearing a tower on her head.417 At Babylon an image of a goddess whom the Greeks called Rhea had the figures of two lions standing on her knees.418
But in the rock-hewn sculptures of Boghaz-Keui, who is the youth with the tall pointed cap and double axe who stands on a lioness or panther immediately behind the great goddess? His figure is all the more remarkable because he is the only male who interrupts the long procession of women. Probably he is at once the divine son and the divine lover of the goddess; for we shall find later on that in Phrygian mythology Attis united in himself both these characters.419 [pg 138] The lioness or panther on which he stands marks his affinity with the goddess, who is supported by a similar animal. It is natural that the lion-goddess should have a lion-son and a lion-lover. For we may take it as probable that the Oriental deities who are represented standing or sitting in human form on the backs of lions and other animals were originally indistinguishable from the beasts, and that the complete separation of the bestial from the human or divine shape was a consequence of that growth of knowledge and of power which led man in time to respect himself more and the brutes less. The hybrid gods of Egypt with their human [pg 139] bodies and animal heads form an intermediate stage in this evolution of anthropomorphic deities out of beasts.
We may now perhaps hazard a conjecture as to the meaning of that strange colossal figure in the inner shrine at Boghaz-Keui with its human head and its body composed of lions. For it is to be observed that the head of the figure is youthful and beardless, and that it wears a tall pointed cap, thus resembling in both respects the youth with the double-headed axe who stands on a lion in the outer sanctuary. We may suppose that the leonine figure in the inner shrine sets forth the true mystic, that is, the old savage nature of the god who in the outer shrine presented himself to his worshippers in the decent semblance of a man. To the chosen few who were allowed to pass the monster-guarded portal into the Holy of Holies, the awful secret may have been revealed that their god was a lion, or rather a lion-man, a being in whom the bestial and human natures mysteriously co-existed.420 The reader may remember that on the rock beside this leonine divinity is carved a group which represents a god with his arm twined round the neck of his priest in an attitude of protection, holding one of the priest's hands in his own. Both figures are looking and stepping towards the lion-monster, and the god is holding out his right hand as if pointing to it. The scene may represent the deity revealing the mystery to the priest, or preparing him to act his part in some solemn rite for which all his strength and courage will be needed. He seems to be leading his minister onward, comforting him with an assurance that no harm can come near him while the divine arm is around him and the divine hand clasps his. Whither is he leading him? Perhaps to death. The deep shadows of the rocks which fall on the [pg 140] two figures in the gloomy chasm may be an emblem of darker shadows soon to fall on the priest. Yet still he grasps his pastoral staff and goes forward, as though he said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
If there is any truth in these guesses—for they are little more—the three principal figures in the processional scene at Boghaz-Keui represent the divine Father, the divine Mother, and the divine Son. But we have still to ask, What are they doing? That they are engaged in the performance of some religious rite seems certain. But what is it? We may conjecture that it is the rite of the Sacred Marriage, and that the scene is copied from a ceremony which was periodically performed in this very place by human representatives of the deities.421 Indeed, the solemn meeting of the male and female figures at the head of their respective processions obviously suggests a marriage, and has been so interpreted by scholars, who, however, regarded it as the historical wedding of a prince and princess instead of the mystic union of a god and goddess, overlooking or explaining away the symbols of divinity which accompany the principal personages.422 We may suppose that at Boghaz-Keui, as at many other places in the interior of Asia Minor, the government was in the hands of a family who combined royal with priestly functions and personated the gods whose names they bore. Thus at Pessinus in Phrygia, as we shall see later on, the priests of Cybele bore the name of her consort Attis, and doubtless represented him in the ritual.423 [pg 141] If this was so at Boghaz-Keui, we may surmise that the chief pontiff and his family annually celebrated the marriage of the divine powers of fertility, the Father God and the Mother Goddess, for the purpose of ensuring the fruitfulness of the earth and the multiplication of men and beasts. The principal parts in the ceremony would naturally be played by the pontiff himself and his wife, unless indeed they preferred for good reasons to delegate the onerous duty to others. That such a delegation took place is perhaps suggested by the appearance of the pontiff himself in a subordinate place in the procession, as well as by his separate representation in another place, as if he were in the act of surveying the ceremony from a distance.424 The part of the divine Son at the rite would fitly devolve upon one of the high-priest's own offspring, who may well have been numerous. For it is probable that here, as elsewhere in Asia Minor, the Mother Goddess was personated by a crowd of sacred harlots,425 with whom the spiritual ruler may have been required to consort in his character of incarnate deity. But if the personation of the Son of God at the rites laid a heavy burden of suffering on the shoulders of the actor, it is possible that the representative of the deity may have been drawn, perhaps by lot, from among the numerous progeny of the consecrated courtesans; for these women, as incarnations of the Mother Goddess, were probably supposed to transmit to their offspring some portion of their own divinity. Be that as it may, if the three principal personages in the processional scene at Boghaz-Keui are indeed the Father, the Mother, and the Son, the remarkable position assigned [pg 142] to the third of them in the procession, where he walks behind his Mother alone in the procession of women, appears to indicate that he was supposed to be more closely akin to her than to his Father. From this again we may conjecturally infer that mother-kin rather than father-kin was the rule which regulated descent among the Hittites. The conjecture derives some support from Hittite archives, for the names of the Great Queen and the Queen Mother are mentioned along with that of the King in state documents.426 The other personages who figure in the procession may represent human beings masquerading in the costumes and with the attributes of deities. Such, for example, are the two female figures who stand on a double-headed eagle; the two male figures stepping on what seem to be two mountains; and the two winged beings in the procession of men, one of whom may be the Moon-god, for he wears a crescent on his head.427