Chapter VI. The Burning of Sandan.

§ 1. The Baal of Tarsus.

(M88) 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 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)

(M89) 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 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.

§ 2. The God of Ibreez.

(M90) 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 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)

(M91) 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 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 feature in the face both of the god and of his

worshipper; the hair and beard of both are thick and curly.(388)

(M92) 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 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.

(M93) 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)

§ 3. Sandan of Tarsus.

(M94) 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) 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)

(M95) 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) 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 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)

(M96) 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)

§ 4. The Gods of Boghaz-Keui.

(M97) 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 Europe into the interior of Asia Minor and established

a rival state to the west of the Halys.(407)

(M98) 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 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 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.

(M99) 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 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)

(M100) 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 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

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 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.

(M101) 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)

(M102) 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) 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 bodies and animal heads form an intermediate

stage in this evolution of anthropomorphic deities out of beasts.

(M103) 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 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.”

(M104) 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) 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 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)

§ 5. Sandan and Baal at Tarsus.

(M105) Whatever may be thought of these speculations, one thing seems

fairly clear and certain. The figure which I have called the divine Son at

Boghaz-Keui is identical with the god Sandan, who appears on the pyre at

Tarsus. In both personages the costume, the attributes, the attitude are

the same. Both represent a man clad in a short tunic with a tall pointed

cap on his head, a sword at his side, a double-headed axe in his hand, and

a lion or panther under his feet.(428) Accordingly, if we are right in

identifying him as the divine Son at Boghaz-Keui, we may conjecture that

under the name of Sandan he bore the same character at Tarsus. The

conjecture squares perfectly with the title of Hercules, which the Greeks

bestowed on Sandan; for Hercules was the son of Zeus, the great

father-god. Moreover, we have seen that the Baal of Tarsus, with the

grapes and the corn in his hand, was assimilated to Zeus.(429) Thus it

would appear that at Tarsus as at Boghaz-Keui there was a pair of deities,

a divine Father and a divine Son, whom the Greeks identified with Zeus and

Hercules respectively. If the Baal of Tarsus was a god of fertility, as

his attributes clearly imply, his identification with Zeus would be

natural, since it was Zeus who, in the belief of the Greeks, sent the

fertilizing rain from heaven.(430) And the identification of Sandan with

Hercules would be equally natural, since the lion and the death on the

pyre were features common to both. Our conclusion then is that it was the

divine Son, the lion-god, who was burned in effigy or in the person of a

human representative at Tarsus, and perhaps at Boghaz-Keui. Semitic

parallels suggest that the victim who played the part of the Son of God in

the fiery furnace ought in strictness to be the king’s son.(431) But no

doubt in later times an effigy would be substituted for the man.

§ 6. Priestly Kings of Olba.

(M106) Unfortunately we know next to nothing of the kings and priests of

Tarsus. In Greek times we hear of an Epicurean philosopher of the city,

Lysias by name, who was elected by his fellow-citizens to the office of

Crown-wearer, that is, to the priesthood of Hercules. Once raised to that

dignity, he would not lay it down again, but played the part of tyrant,

wearing a white robe edged with purple, a costly cloak, white shoes, and a

golden wreath of laurel. He truckled to the mob by distributing among them

the property of the wealthy, while he put to death such as refused to open

their money-bags to him.(432) Though we cannot distinguish in this account

between the legal and the illegal exercise of authority, yet we may safely

infer that the priesthood of Hercules, that is of Sandan, at Tarsus

continued down to late times to be an office of great dignity and power,

not unworthy to be held in earlier times by the kings themselves. Scanty

as is our information as to the kings of Cilicia, we hear of two whose

names appear to indicate that they stood in some special relation to the

divine Sandan. One of them was Sandu’arri, lord of Kundi and Sizu, which

have been identified with Anchiale and Sis in Cilicia.(433) The other was

Sanda-sarme, who gave his daughter in marriage to Ashurbanipal, king of

Assyria.(434) It would be in accordance with analogy if the kings of

Tarsus formerly held the priesthood of Sandan and claimed to represent him

in their own person.

(M107) We know that the whole of Western or Mountainous Cilicia was ruled

by kings who combined the regal office with the priesthood of Zeus, or

rather of a native deity whom, like the Baal of Tarsus, the Greeks

assimilated to their own Zeus. These priestly potentates had their seat at

Olba, and most of them bore the name either of Teucer or of Ajax,(435) but

we may suspect that these appellations are merely Greek distortions of

native Cilician names. Teucer (_Teukros_) may be a corruption of Tark,

Trok, Tarku, or Troko, all of which occur in the names of Cilician priests

and kings. At all events, it is worthy of notice that one, if not two, of

these priestly Teucers had a father called Tarkuaris,(436) and that in a

long list of priests who served Zeus at the Corycian cave, not many miles

from Olba, the names Tarkuaris, Tarkumbios, Tarkimos, Trokoarbasis, and

Trokombigremis, besides many other obviously native names, occur side by

side with Teucer and other purely Greek appellations.(437) In like manner

the Teucrids, who traced their descent from Zeus and reigned at Salamis in

Cyprus,(438) may well have been a native dynasty, who concocted a Greek

pedigree for themselves in the days when Greek civilization was

fashionable. The legend which attributed the foundation of the Cyprian

Salamis to Teucer, son of Telamon, appears to be late and unknown to

Homer.(439) Moreover, a cruel form of human sacrifice which was practised

in the city down to historical times savours rather of Oriental barbarity

than of Greek humanity. Led or driven by the youths, a man ran thrice

round the altar; then the priest stabbed him in the throat with a spear

and burned his body whole on a heaped-up pyre. The sacrifice was offered

in the month of Aphrodite to Diomede, who along with Agraulus, daughter of

Cecrops, had a temple at Salamis. A temple of Athena stood within the same

sacred enclosure. It is said that in olden times the sacrifice was offered

to Agraulus, and not to Diomede. According to another account it was

instituted by Teucer in honour of Zeus. However that may have been, the

barbarous custom lasted down to the reign of Hadrian, when Diphilus, king

of Cyprus, abolished or rather mitigated it by substituting the sacrifice

of an ox for that of a man.(440) On the hypothesis here suggested we must

suppose that these Greek names of divine or heroic figures at the Cyprian

Salamis covered more or less similar figures of the Asiatic pantheon. And

in the Salaminian burnt-sacrifice of a man we may perhaps detect the

original form of the ceremony which in historical times appears to have

been performed upon an image of Sandan or Hercules at Tarsus. When an ox

was sacrificed instead of a man, the old sacrificial rites would naturally

continue to be observed in all other respects exactly as before: the

animal would be led thrice round the altar, stabbed with a spear, and

burned on a pyre. Now at the Syrian Hierapolis the greatest festival of

the year bore the name of the Pyre or the Torch. It was held at the

beginning of spring. Great trees were then cut down and planted in the

court of the temple: sheep, goats, birds, and other creatures were hung

upon them: sacrificial victims were led round: then fire was set to the

whole, and everything was consumed in the flames.(441) Perhaps here also

the burning of animals was a substitute for the burning of men. When the

practice of human sacrifice becomes too revolting to humanity to be

tolerated, its abolition is commonly effected by substituting either

animals or images for living men or women. At Salamis certainly, and

perhaps at Hierapolis, the substitutes were animals: at Tarsus, if I am

right, they were images. In this connexion the statement of a Greek writer

as to the worship of Adonis in Cyprus deserves attention. He says that as

Adonis had been honoured by Aphrodite, the Cyprians after his death cast

live doves on a pyre to him, and that the birds, flying away from the

flames, fell into another pyre and were consumed.(442) The statement seems

to be a description of an actual custom of burning doves in sacrifice to

Adonis. Such a mode of honouring him would be very remarkable, since doves

were commonly sacred to his divine mistress Aphrodite or Astarte. For

example, at the Syrian Hierapolis, one of the chief seats of her worship,

these birds were so holy that they might not even be touched. If a man

inadvertently touched a dove, he was unclean or tabooed for the rest of

the day. Hence the birds, never being molested, were so tame that they

lived with the people in their houses, and commonly picked up their food

fearlessly on the ground.(443) Can the burning of the sacred bird of

Aphrodite in the Cyprian worship of Adonis have been a substitute for the

burning of a sacred man who personated the lover of the goddess?

(M108) If, as many scholars think, Tark or Tarku was the name, or part of

the name, of a great Hittite deity, sometimes identified as the god of the

sky and the lightning,(444) we may conjecture that Tark or Tarku was the

native name of the god of Olba, whom the Greeks called Zeus, and that the

priestly kings who bore the name of Teucer represented the god Tark or

Tarku in their own persons. This conjecture is confirmed by the

observation that Olba, the ancient name of the city, is itself merely a

Grecized form of Oura, the name which the place retains to this day.(445)

The situation of the town, moreover, speaks strongly in favour of the view

that it was from the beginning an aboriginal settlement, though in after

days, like so many other Asiatic cities, it took on a varnish of Greek

culture. For it stood remote from the sea on a lofty and barren tableland,

with a rigorous winter climate, in the highlands of Cilicia.

(M109) Great indeed is the contrast between the bleak windy uplands of

Western or Rugged Cilicia, as the ancients called it, and the soft

luxuriant lowlands of Eastern Cilicia, where winter is almost unknown and

summer annually drives the population to seek in the cool air of the

mountains a refuge from the intolerable heat and deadly fevers of the

plains. In Western Cilicia, on the other hand, a lofty tableland, ending

in a high sharp edge on the coast, rises steadily inland till it passes

gradually into the chain of heights which divide it from the interior.

Looked at from the sea it resembles a great blue wave swelling in one

uniform sweep till its crest breaks into foam in the distant snows of the

Taurus. The surface of the tableland is almost everywhere rocky and

overgrown, in the intervals of the rocks, with dense, thorny, almost

impenetrable scrub. Only here and there in a hollow or glen the niggardly

soil allows of a patch of cultivation; and here and there fine oaks and

planes, towering over the brushwood, clothe with a richer foliage the

depth of the valleys. None but wandering herdsmen with their flocks now

maintain a precarious existence in this rocky wilderness. Yet the ruined

towns which stud the country prove that a dense population lived and

throve here in antiquity, while numerous remains of wine-presses and

wine-vats bear witness to the successful cultivation of the grape. The

chief cause of the present desolation is lack of water; for wells are few

and brackish, perennial streams hardly exist, and the ancient aqueducts,

which once brought life and fertility to the land, have long been suffered

to fall into disrepair.

(M110) But for ages together the ancient inhabitants of these uplands

earned their bread by less reputable means than the toil of the husbandman

and the vinedresser. They were buccaneers and slavers, scouring the high

seas with their galleys and retiring with their booty to the inaccessible

fastnesses of their mountains. In the decline of Greek power all over the

East the pirate communities of Cilicia grew into a formidable state,

recruited by gangs of desperadoes and broken men who flocked to it from

all sides. The holds of these robbers may still be seen perched on the

brink of the profound ravines which cleave the tableland at frequent

intervals. With their walls of massive masonry, their towers and

battlements, overhanging dizzy depths, they are admirably adapted to bid

defiance to the pursuit of justice. In antiquity the dark forests of

cedar, which clothed much of the country and supplied the pirates with

timber for their ships, must have rendered access to these fastnesses

still more difficult. The great gorge of the Lamas River, which eats its

way like a sheet of forked lightning into the heart of the mountains, is

dotted every few miles with fortified towns, some of them still

magnificent in their ruins, dominating sheer cliffs high above the stream.

They are now the haunt only of the ibex and the bear. Each of these

communities had its own crest or badge, which may still be seen carved on

the corners of the mouldering towers. No doubt, too, it blazoned the same

crest on the hull, the sails, or the streamers of the galley which, manned

with a crew of ruffians, it sent out to prey upon the rich merchantmen in

the Golden Sea, as the corsairs called the highway of commerce between

Crete and Africa.

(M111) A staircase cut in the rock connects one of these ruined castles

with the river in the glen, a thousand feet below. But the steps are worn

and dangerous, indeed impassable. You may go for miles along the edge of

these stupendous cliffs before you find a way down. The paths keep on the

heights, for in many of its reaches the gully affords no foothold even to

the agile nomads who alone roam these solitudes. At evening the winding

course of the river may be traced for a long distance by a mist which, as

the heat of the day declines, rises like steam from the deep gorge and

hangs suspended in a wavy line of fleecy cloud above it. But even more

imposing than the ravine of the Lamas is the terrific gorge known as the

_Sheitan dere_ or Devil’s Glen near the Corycian cave. Prodigious walls of

rock, glowing in the intense sunlight, black in the shadow, and spanned by

a summer sky of the deepest blue, hem in the dry bed of a winter torrent,

choked with rocks and tangled with thickets of evergreens, among which the

oleanders with their slim stalks, delicate taper leaves, and bunches of

crimson blossom stand out conspicuous.(446)

(M112) The ruins of Olba, among the most extensive and remarkable in Asia

Minor, were discovered in 1890 by Mr. J. Theodore Bent. But three years

before another English traveller had caught a distant view of its

battlements and towers outlined against the sky like a city of enchantment

or dreams.(447) Standing at a height of nearly six thousand feet above the

sea, the upper town commands a free, though somewhat uniform, prospect for

immense distances in all directions. The sea is just visible far away to

the south. On these heights the winter is long and severe. Snow lies on

the ground for months. No Greek would have chosen such a site for a city,

so bleak and chill, so far from blue water; but it served well for a

fastness of brigands. Deep gorges, one of them filled for miles with

tombs, surround it on all sides, rendering fortification walls

superfluous. But a great square tower, four stories high, rises

conspicuous on the hill, forming a landmark and earning for this upper

town the native name of _Jebel Hissar_, or the Mountain of the Castle. A

Greek inscription cut on the tower proves that it was built by Teucer, son

of Tarkuaris, one of the priestly potentates of Olba. Among other remains

of public buildings the most notable are forty tall Corinthian columns of

the great temple of Olbian Zeus. Though coarse in style and corroded by

long exposure to frost and snow, these massive pillars, towering above the

ruins, produce an imposing effect. That the temple of which they formed

part belonged indeed to Olbian Zeus is shown by a Greek inscription found

within the sacred area, which records that the pent-houses on the inner

side of the boundary wall were built by King Seleucus Nicator and repaired

for Olbian Zeus by “the great high-priest Teucer, son of Zenophanes.”

About two hundred yards from this great temple are standing five elegant

granite columns of a small temple dedicated to the goddess Fortune.

Further, the remains of two theatres and many other public buildings

attest the former splendour of this mountain city. An arched colonnade, of

which some Corinthian columns are standing with their architraves, ran

through the town; and an ancient paved road, lined with tombs and ruins,

leads down hill to a lower and smaller city two or three miles distant. It

is this lower town which retains the ancient name of Oura. Here the

principal ruins occupy an isolated fir-clad height bounded by two narrow

ravines full of rock-cut tombs. Below the town the ravines unite and form

a fine gorge, down which the old road passed seaward.(448)

§ 7. The God of the Corycian Cave.

(M113) Nothing yet found at Olba throws light on the nature of the god who

was worshipped there under the Greek name of Zeus. But at two places near

the coast, distant only some fourteen or fifteen miles from Olba, a deity

also called Zeus by the Greeks was revered in natural surroundings of a

remarkable kind, which must have stood in close relation with the worship,

and are therefore fitted to illustrate it. In both places the features of

the landscape are of the same general cast, and at one of them the god was

definitely identified with the Zeus of Olba. The country here consists of

a tableland of calcareous rock rent at intervals by those great chasms

which are characteristic of a limestone formation. Similar fissures, with

the accompaniment of streams or rivers which pour into them and vanish

under ground, are frequent in Greece, and may be observed in our own

country near Ingleborough in Yorkshire. Fossil bones of extinct animals

are often found embedded in the stalagmite or breccia of limestone caves.

For example, the famous Kent’s Hole near Torquay contained bones of the

mammoth, rhinoceros, lion, hyaena, and bear; and red osseous breccias,

charged with the bones of quadrupeds which have long disappeared from

Europe, are common in almost all the countries bordering on the

Mediterranean.(449) Western Cilicia is richer in Miocene deposits than any

other part of Anatolia, and the limestone gorges of the coast near Olba

are crowded with fossil oysters, corals, and other shells.(450) Here, too,

within the space of five miles the limestone plateau is rent by three

great chasms, which Greek religion associated with Zeus and Typhon. One of

these fissures is the celebrated Corycian cave.

(M114) To visit this spot, invested with the double charm of natural

beauty and legendary renown, you start from the dead Cilician city of

Corycus on the sea, with its ruined walls, towers, and churches, its

rock-hewn houses and cisterns, its shattered mole, its island-fortress,

still imposing in decay. Viewed from the sea, this part of the Cilician

coast, with its long succession of white ruins, relieved by the dark

wooded hills behind, presents an appearance of populousness and splendour.

But a nearer approach reveals the nakedness and desolation of the once

prosperous land.(451) Following the shore westward from Corycus for about

an hour you come to a pretty cove enclosed by wooded heights, where a

spring of pure cold water bubbles up close to the sea, giving to the spot

its name of _Tatlu-su_, or the Sweet Water. From this bay a steep ascent

of about a mile along an ancient paved road leads inland to a plateau.

Here, threading your way through a labyrinth or petrified sea of jagged

calcareous rocks, you suddenly find yourself on the brink of a vast chasm

which yawns at your feet. This is the Corycian cave. In reality it is not

a cave but an immense hollow or trough in the plateau, of oval shape and

perhaps half a mile in circumference. The cliffs which enclose it vary

from one hundred to over two hundred feet in depth. Its uneven bottom

slopes throughout its whole length from north to south, and is covered by

a thick jungle of trees and shrubs—myrtles, pomegranates, carobs, and many

more, kept always fresh and green by rivulets, underground water, and the

shadow of the great cliffs. A single narrow path leads down into its

depths. The way is long and rough, but the deeper you descend the denser

grows the vegetation, and it is under the dappled shade of whispering

leaves and with the purling of brooks in your ears that you at last reach

the bottom. The saffron which of old grew here among the bushes is no

longer to be found, though it still flourishes in the surrounding

district. This luxuriant bottom, with its rich verdure, its refreshing

moisture, its grateful shade, is called Paradise by the wandering

herdsmen. They tether their camels and pasture their goats in it and come

hither in the late summer to gather the ripe pomegranates. At the southern

and deepest end of this great cliff-encircled hollow you come to the

cavern proper. The ruins of a Byzantine church, which replaced a heathen

temple, partly block the entrance. Inwards the cave descends with a gentle

slope into the bowels of the earth. The old path paved with polygonal

masonry still runs through it, but soon disappears under sand. At about

two hundred feet from its mouth the cave comes to an end, and a tremendous

roar of subterranean water is heard. By crawling on all fours you may

reach a small pool arched by a dripping stalactite-hung roof, but the

stream which makes the deafening din is invisible. It was otherwise in

antiquity. A river of clear water burst from the rock, but only to vanish

again into a chasm. Such changes in the course of streams are common in

countries subject to earthquakes and to the disruption caused by volcanic

agency. The ancients believed that this mysterious cavern was haunted

ground. In the rumble and roar of the waters they seemed to hear the clash

of cymbals touched by hands divine.(452)

(M115) If now, quitting the cavern, we return by the same path to the

summit of the cliffs, we shall find on the plateau the ruins of a town and

of a temple at the western edge of the great Corycian chasm. The wall of

the holy precinct was built within a few feet of the precipices, and the

sanctuary must have stood right over the actual cave and its subterranean

waters. In later times the temple was converted into a Christian church.

By pulling down a portion of the sacred edifice Mr. Bent had the good

fortune to discover a Greek inscription containing a long list of names,

probably those of the priests who superintended the worship. One name

which meets us frequently in the list is Zas, and it is tempting to regard

this as merely a dialectical form of Zeus. If that were so, the priests

who bore the name might be supposed to personate the god.(453) But many

strange and barbarous-looking names, evidently foreign, occur in the list,

and Zas may be one of them. However, it is certain that Zeus was

worshipped at the Corycian cave; for about half a mile from it, on the

summit of a hill, are the ruins of a larger temple, which an inscription

proves to have been dedicated to Corycian Zeus.(454)

(M116) But Zeus, or whatever native deity masqueraded under his name, did

not reign alone in the deep dell. A more dreadful being haunted a still

more awful abyss which opens in the ground only a hundred yards to the

east of the great Corycian chasm. It is a circular cauldron, about a

quarter of a mile in circumference, resembling the Corycian chasm in its

general character, but smaller, deeper, and far more terrific in

appearance. Its sides overhang and stalactites droop from them. There is

no way down into it. The only mode of reaching the bottom, which is

covered with vegetation, would be to be lowered at the end of a long rope.

The nomads call this chasm Purgatory, to distinguish it from the other

which they name Paradise. They say that there is a subterranean passage

between the two, and that the smoke of a fire kindled in the Corycian cave

may be seen curling out of the other. The one ancient writer who expressly

mentions this second and more grisly cavern is Mela, who says that it was

the lair of the giant Typhon, and that no animal let down into it could

live.(455) Aeschylus puts into the mouth of Prometheus an account of “the

earth-born Typhon, dweller in Cilician caves, dread monster,

hundred-headed,” who in his pride rose up against the gods, hissing

destruction from his dreadful jaws, while from his Gorgon eyes the

lightning flashed. But him a flaming levin bolt, crashing from heaven,

smote to the very heart, and now he lies, shrivelled and scorched, under

the weight of Etna by the narrow sea. Yet one day he will belch a fiery

hail, a boiling angry flood, rivers of flame, to devastate the fat

Sicilian fields.(456) This poetical description of the monster, confirmed

by a similar passage of Pindar,(457) clearly proves that Typhon was

conceived as a personification of those active volcanoes which spout fire

and smoke to heaven as if they would assail the celestial gods. The

Corycian caverns are not volcanic, but the ancients apparently regarded

them as such, else they would hardly have made them the den of Typhon.

(M117) According to one legend Typhon was a monster, half man and half

brute, begotten in Cilicia by Tartarus upon the goddess Earth. The upper

part of him was human, but from the loins downward he was an enormous

snake. In the battle of the gods and giants, which was fought out in

Egypt, Typhon hugged Zeus in his snaky coils, wrested from him his crooked

sword, and with the blade cut the sinews of the god’s hands and feet. Then

taking him on his back he conveyed the mutilated deity across the sea to

Cilicia, and deposited him in the Corycian cave. Here, too, he hid the

severed sinews, wrapt in a bear’s skin. But Hermes and Aegipan contrived

to steal the missing thews and restore them to their divine owner. Thus

made whole and strong again, Zeus pelted his beaten adversary with

thunderbolts, drove him from place to place, and at last overwhelmed him

under Mount Etna. And the spots where the hissing bolts fell are still

marked by jets of flame.(458)

(M118) It is possible that the discovery of fossil bones of large extinct

animals may have helped to localize the story of the giant at the Corycian

cave. Such bones, as we have seen, are often found in limestone caverns,

and the limestone gorges of Cilicia are in fact rich in fossils. The

Arcadians laid the scene of the battle of the gods and the giants in the

plain of Megalopolis, where many bones of mammoths have come to light, and

where, moreover, flames have been seen to burst from the earth and even to

burn for years.(459) These natural conditions would easily suggest a fable

of giants who had fought the gods and had been slain by thunderbolts; the

smouldering earth or jets of flame would be regarded as the spots where

the divine lightnings had struck the ground. Hence the Arcadians

sacrificed to thunder and lightning.(460) In Sicily, too, great quantities

of bones of mammoths, elephants, hippopotamuses, and other animals long

extinct in the island have been found, and have been appealed to with

confidence by patriotic Sicilians as conclusive evidence of the gigantic

stature of their ancestors or predecessors.(461) These remains of huge

unwieldy creatures which once trampled through the jungle or splashed in

the rivers of Sicily may have contributed with the fires of Etna to build

up the story of giants imprisoned under the volcano and vomiting smoke and

flame from its crater. “Tales of giants and monsters, which stand in

direct connexion with the finding of great fossil bones, are scattered

broadcast over the mythology of the world. Huge bones, found at Punto

Santa Elena, in the north of Guayaquil, have served as a foundation for

the story of a colony of giants who dwelt there. The whole area of the

Pampas is a great sepulchre of enormous extinct animals; no wonder that

one great plain should be called the ‘Field of the giants,’ and that such

names as ‘the hill of the giant,’ ‘the stream of the animal,’ should be

guides to the geologist in his search for fossil bones.”(462)

(M119) About five miles to the north-east of the Corycian caverns, but

divided from them by many deep gorges and impassable rocks, is another and

very similar chasm. It may be reached in about an hour and a quarter from

the sea by an ancient paved road, which ascends at first very steeply and

then gently through bush-clad and wooded hills. Thus you come to a stretch

of level ground covered with the well-preserved ruins of an ancient town.

Remains of fortresses constructed of polygonal masonry, stately churches,

and many houses, together with numerous tombs and reliefs, finely

chiselled in the calcareous limestone of the neighbourhood, bear witness

to the extent and importance of the place. Yet it is mentioned by no

ancient writer. Inscriptions prove that its name was Kanyteldeis or

Kanytelideis, which still survives in the modern form of Kanidiwan. The

great chasm opens in the very heart of the city. So crowded are the ruins

that you do not perceive the abyss till you are within a few yards of it.

It is almost a complete circle, about a quarter of a mile wide,

three-quarters of a mile in circumference, and uniformly two hundred feet

or more in depth. The cliffs go sheer down and remind the traveller of the

great quarries at Syracuse. But like the Corycian caves, the larger of

which it closely resembles, the huge fissure is natural; and its bottom,

like theirs, is overgrown with trees and vegetation. Two ways led down

into it in antiquity, both cut through the rock. One of them was a tunnel,

which is now obstructed; the other is still open. Remains of columns and

hewn stones in the bottom of the chasm seem to show that a temple once

stood there. But there is no cave at the foot of the cliffs, and no stream

flows in the deep hollow or can be heard to rumble underground. A ruined

tower of polygonal masonry, which stands on the southern edge of the

chasm, bears a Greek inscription stating that it was dedicated to Olbian

Zeus by the priest Teucer, son of Tarkuaris. The letters are beautifully

cut in the style of the third century before Christ. We may infer that at

the time of the dedication the town belonged to the priestly kings of

Olba, and that the great chasm was sacred to Olbian Zeus.(463)

(M120) What, then, was the character of the god who was worshipped under

the name of Zeus at these two great natural chasms? The depth of the

fissures, opening suddenly and as it were without warning in the midst of

a plateau, was well fitted to impress and awe the spectator; and the sight

of the rank evergreen vegetation at their bottom, fed by rivulets or

underground water, must have presented a striking contrast to the grey,

barren, rocky wilderness of the surrounding tableland. Such a spot must

have seemed to simple folk a paradise, a garden of God, the abode of

higher powers who caused the wilderness to blossom, if not with roses, at

least with myrtles and pomegranates for man, and with grass and underwood

for his flocks. So to the Semite, as we saw, the Baal of the land is he

who fertilizes it by subterranean water rather than by rain from the sky,

and who therefore dwells in the depths of earth rather than in the height

of heaven.(464) In rainless countries the sky-god is deprived of one of

the principal functions which he discharges in cool cloudy climates like

that of Europe. He has, in fact, little or nothing to do with the

water-supply, and has therefore small excuse for levying a water-rate on

his worshippers. Not, indeed, that Cilicia is rainless; but in countries

bordering on the Mediterranean the drought is almost unbroken through the

long months of summer. Vegetation then withers: the face of nature is

scorched and brown: most of the rivers dry up; and only their white stony

beds, hot to the foot and dazzling to the eye, remain to tell where they

flowed. It is at such seasons that a green hollow, a shady rock, a

murmuring stream, are welcomed by the wanderer in the South with a joy and

wonder which the untravelled Northerner can hardly imagine. Never do the

broad slow rivers of England, with their winding reaches, their grassy

banks, their grey willows mirrored with the soft English sky in the placid

stream, appear so beautiful as when the traveller views them for the first

time after leaving behind him the aridity, the heat, the blinding glare of

the white southern landscape, set in seas and skies of caerulean blue.

(M121) We may take it, then, as probable that the god of the Corycian and

Olbian caverns was worshipped as a source of fertility. In antiquity, when

the river, which now roars underground, still burst from the rock in the

Corycian cave, the scene must have resembled Ibreez, where the god of the

corn and the vine was adored at the source of the stream; and we may

compare the vale of Adonis in the Lebanon, where the divinity who gave his

name to the river was revered at its foaming cascades. The three

landscapes had in common the elements of luxuriant vegetation and copious

streams leaping full-born from the rock. We shall hardly err in supposing

that these features shaped the conception of the deities who were supposed

to haunt the favoured spots. At the Corycian cave the existence of a

second chasm, of a frowning and awful aspect, might well suggest the

presence of an evil being who lurked in it and sought to undo the

beneficent work of the good god. Thus we should have a fable of a conflict

between the two, a battle of Zeus and Typhon.

(M122) On the whole we conclude that the Olbian Zeus, worshipped at one of

these great limestone chasms, and clearly identical in nature with the

Corycian Zeus, was also identical with the Baal of Tarsus, the god of the

corn and the vine, who in his turn can hardly be separated from the god of

Ibreez. If my conjecture is right the native name of the Olbian Zeus was

Tark or Trok, and the priestly Teucers of Olba represented him in their

own persons. On that hypothesis the Olbian priests who bore the name of

Ajax embodied another native deity of unknown name, perhaps the father or

the son of Tark. A comparison of the coin-types of Tarsus with the Hittite

monuments of Ibreez and Boghaz-Keui led us to the conclusion that the

people of Tarsus worshipped at least two distinct gods, a father and a

son, the father-god being known to the Semites as Baal and to the Greeks

as Zeus, while the son was called Sandan by the natives, but Hercules by

the Greeks. We may surmise that at Olba the names of Teucer and Ajax

designated two gods who corresponded in type to the two gods of Tarsus;

and if the lesser figure at Ibreez, who appears in an attitude of

adoration before the deity of the corn and the vine, could be interpreted

as the divine Son in presence of the divine Father, we should have in all

three places the same pair of deities, represented probably in the flesh

by successive generations of priestly kings. But the evidence is far too

slender to justify us in advancing this hypothesis as anything more than a

bare conjecture.

§ 8. Cilician Goddesses.

(M123) So far, the Cilician deities discussed have been males; we have as

yet found no trace of the great Mother Goddess who plays so important a

part in the religion of Cappadocia and Phrygia, beyond the great dividing

range of the Taurus. Yet we may suspect that she was not unknown in

Cilicia, though her worship certainly seems to have been far less

prominent there than in the centre of Asia Minor. The difference may

perhaps be interpreted as evidence that mother-kin and hence the

predominance of Mother Goddesses survived, in the bleak highlands of the

interior, long after a genial climate and teeming soil had fostered the

growth of a higher civilization, and with it the advance from female to

male kinship, in the rich lowlands of Cilicia. Be that as it may, Cilician

goddesses with or without a male partner are known to have been revered in

various parts of the country.

(M124) Thus at Tarsus itself the goddess ’Atheh was worshipped along with

Baal; their effigies are engraved on the same coins of the city. She is

represented wearing a veil and seated upon a lion, with her name in

Aramaic letters engraved beside her.(465) Hence it would seem that at

Tarsus, as at Boghaz-Keui, the Father God mated with a lion-goddess like

the Phrygian Cybele or the Syrian Atargatis. Now the name Atargatis is a

Greek rendering of the Aramaic ’Athar-’atheh, a compound word which

includes the name of the goddess of Tarsus.(466) Thus in name as well as

in attributes the female partner of the Baal of Tarsus appears to

correspond to Atargatis, the Syrian Mother Goddess whose image, seated on

a lion or lions, was worshipped with great pomp and splendour at

Hierapolis-Bambyce near the Euphrates.(467) May we go a step farther and

find a correspondence between the Baal of Tarsus and the husband-god of

Atargatis at Hierapolis-Bambyce? That husband-god, like the Baal of

Tarsus, was identified by the Greeks with Zeus, and Lucian tells us that

the resemblance of his image to the images of Zeus was in all respects

unmistakable. But his image, unlike those of Zeus, was seated upon

bulls.(468) In point of fact he was probably Hadad, the chief male god of

the Syrians, who appears to have been a god of thunder and fertility; for

at Baalbec in the Lebanon, where the ruined temple of the Sun is the most

imposing monument bequeathed to the modern world by Greek art in its

decline, his image grasped in his left hand a thunderbolt and ears of

corn,(469) and a colossal statue of the deity, found near Zenjirli in

Northern Syria, represents him with a bearded human head and horns, the

emblem of strength and fertility.(470) A similar god of thunder and

lightning was worshipped from early times by the Babylonians and

Assyrians; he bore the similar name of Adad and his emblems appear to have

been a thunderbolt and a bull. On an Assyrian relief his image is

represented as that of a bearded man clad in a short tunic, wearing a cap

with two pairs of horns, and grasping an axe in his right hand and a

thunderbolt in his left. His resemblance to the Hittite god of the

thundering sky was therefore very close. An alternative name for this

Babylonian and Assyrian deity was Ramman, an appropriate term, derived

from a verb _ramâmu_ to “scream” or “roar.”(471) Now we have seen that the

god of Ibreez, whose attributes tally with those of the Baal of Tarsus,

wears a cap adorned with bull’s horns;(472) that the Father God at

Boghaz-Keui, meeting the Mother Goddess on her lioness, is attended by an

animal which according to the usual interpretation is a bull;(473) and

that the bull itself was worshipped, apparently as an emblem of fertility,

at Euyuk near Boghaz-Keui.(474) Thus at Tarsus and Boghaz-Keui, as at

Hierapolis-Bambyce, the Father God and the Mother Goddess would seem to

have had as their sacred animals or emblems the bull and the lion

respectively. In later times, under Greek influence, the goddess was

apparently exchanged for, or converted into, the Fortune of the City, who

appears on coins of Tarsus as a seated woman with veiled and turreted

head, grasping ears of corn and a poppy in her hand. Her lion is gone, but

a trace of him perhaps remains on a coin which exhibits the throne of the

goddess adorned with a lion’s leg.(475) In general it would seem that the

goddess Fortune, who figures commonly as the guardian of cities in the

Greek East, especially in Syria, was nothing but a disguised form of Gad,

the Semitic god of fortune or luck, who, though the exigencies of grammar

required him to be masculine, is supposed to have been often merely a

special aspect of the great goddess Astarte or Atargatis conceived as the

patroness and protector of towns.(476) In Oriental religion such

permutations or combinations need not surprise us. To the gods all things

are possible. In Cyprus the goddess of love wore a beard,(477) and

Alexander the Great sometimes disported himself in the costume of Artemis,

while at other times he ransacked the divine wardrobe to figure in the

garb of Hercules, of Hermes, and of Ammon.(478) The change of the goddess

’Atheh of Tarsus into Gad or Fortune would be easy if we suppose that she

was known as Gad-’Atheh, “Luck of ’Atheh,” which occurs as a Semitic

personal name.(479) In like manner the goddess of Fortune at Olba, who had

her small temple beside the great temple of Zeus,(480) may have been

originally the consort of the native god Tark or Tarku.

(M125) Another town in Cilicia where an Oriental god and goddess appear to

have been worshipped together was Mallus. The city was built on a height

in the great Cilician plain near the mouth of the river Pyramus.(481) Its

coins exhibit two winged deities, a male and a female, in a kneeling or

running attitude. On some of the coins the male deity is represented, like

Janus, with two heads facing opposite ways, and with two pairs of wings,

while beneath him is the forepart of a bull with a human head. The obverse

of the coins which bear the female deity displays a conical stone,

sometimes flanked by two bunches of grapes.(482) This conical stone, like

those of other Asiatic cities,(483) was probably the emblem of a Mother

Goddess, and the bunches of grapes indicate her fertilizing powers. The

god with the two heads and four wings can hardly be any other than the

Phoenician El, whom the Greeks called Cronus; for El was characterized by

four eyes, two in front and two behind, and by three pairs of wings.(484)

A discrepancy in the number of wings can scarcely be deemed fatal to the

identification. The god may easily have moulted some superfluous feathers

on the road from Phoenicia to Mallus. On later coins of Mallus these

quaint Oriental deities disappear, and are replaced by corresponding Greek

deities, particularly by a head of Cronus on one side and a figure of

Demeter, grasping ears of corn, on the other.(485) The change doubtless

sprang from a wish to assimilate the ancient native divinities to the new

and fashionable divinities of the Greek pantheon. If Cronus and Demeter,

the harvest god and goddess, were chosen to supplant El and his female

consort, the ground of the choice must certainly have been a supposed

resemblance between the two pairs of deities. We may assume, therefore,

that the discarded couple, El and his wife, had also been worshipped by

the husbandman as sources of fertility, the givers of corn and wine. One

of these later coins of Mallus exhibits Dionysus sitting on a vine laden

with ripe clusters, while on the obverse is seen a male figure guiding a

yoke of oxen as if in the act of ploughing.(486) These types of the

vine-god and the ploughman probably represent another attempt to adapt the

native religion to changed conditions, to pour the old Asiatic wine into

new Greek bottles. The barbarous monster with the multiplicity of heads

and wings has been reduced to a perfectly human Dionysus. The sacred but

deplorable old conical stone no longer flaunts proudly on the coins; it

has retired to a decent obscurity in favour of a natural and graceful

vine. It is thus that a truly progressive theology keeps pace with the

march of intellect. But if these things were done by the apostles of

culture at Mallus, we cannot suppose that the clergy of Tarsus, the

capital, lagged behind their provincial brethren in their efforts to place

the ancient faith upon a sound modern basis. The fruit of their labours

seems to have been the more or less nominal substitution of Zeus, Fortune,

and Hercules for Baal, ’Atheh, and Sandan.(487)

(M126) We may suspect that in like manner the Sarpedonian Artemis, who had

a sanctuary in South-Eastern Cilicia, near the Syrian border, was really a

native goddess parading in borrowed plumes. She gave oracular responses by

the mouth of inspired men, or more probably of women, who in their moments

of divine ecstasy may have been deemed incarnations of her divinity.(488)

Another even more transparently Asiatic goddess was Perasia, or Artemis

Perasia, who was worshipped at Hieropolis-Castabala in Eastern Cilicia.

The extensive ruins of the ancient city, now known as Bodroum, cover the

slope of a hill about three-quarters of a mile to the north of the river

Pyramus. Above them towers the acropolis, built on the summit of dark grey

precipices, and divided from the neighbouring mountain by a deep cutting

in the rock. A mediaeval castle, built of hewn blocks of reddish-yellow

limestone, has replaced the ancient citadel. The city possessed a large

theatre, and was traversed by two handsome colonnades, of which some

columns are still standing among the ruins. A thick growth of brushwood

and grass now covers most of the site, and the place is wild and solitary.

Only the wandering herdsmen encamp near the deserted city in winter and

spring. The neighbourhood is treeless; yet in May magnificent fields of

wheat and barley gladden the eye, and in the valleys the clover grows as

high as the horses’ knees.(489) The ambiguous nature of the goddess who

presided over this City of the Sanctuary (_Hieropolis_)(490) was confessed

by a puzzled worshipper, a physician named Lucius Minius Claudianus, who

confided his doubts to the deity herself in some very indifferent Greek

verses. He wisely left it to the goddess to say whether she was Artemis,

or the Moon, or Hecate, or Aphrodite, or Demeter.(491) All that we know

about her is that her true name was Perasia, and that she was in the

enjoyment of certain revenues.(492) Further, we may reasonably conjecture

that at the Cilician Castabala she was worshipped with rites like those

which were held in honour of her namesake Artemis Perasia at another city

of the same name, Castabala in Cappadocia. There, as we saw, the

priestesses of the goddess walked over fire with bare feet unscathed.(493)

Probably the same impressive ceremony was performed before a crowd of

worshippers in the Cilician Castabala also. Whatever the exact meaning of

the rite may have been, the goddess was in all probability one of those

Asiatic Mother Goddesses to whom the Greeks often applied the name of

Artemis.(494) The immunity enjoyed by the priestess in the furnace was

attributed to her inspiration by the deity. In discussing the nature of

inspiration or possession by a deity, the Syrian philosopher Jamblichus

notes as one of its symptoms a total insensibility to pain. Many inspired

persons, he tells us, “are not burned by fire, the fire not taking hold of

them by reason of the divine inspiration; and many, though they are

burned, perceive it not, because at the time they do not live an animal

life. They pierce themselves with skewers and feel nothing. They gash

their backs with hatchets, they slash their arms with daggers, and know

not what they do, because their acts are not those of mere men. For

impassable places become passable to those who are filled with the spirit.

They rush into fire, they pass through fire, they cross rivers, like the

priestess at Castabala. These things prove that under the influence of

inspiration men are beside themselves, that their senses, their will,

their life are those neither of man nor of beast, but that they lead

another and a diviner life instead, whereby they are inspired and wholly

possessed.”(495) Thus in traversing the fiery furnace the priestesses of

Perasia were believed to be beside themselves, to be filled with the

goddess, to be in a real sense incarnations of her divinity.(496)

A similar touchstone of inspiration is still applied by some villagers in

the Himalayan districts of North-Western India. Once a year they worship

Airi, a local deity, who is represented by a trident and has his temples

on lonely hills and desolate tracts. At his festival the people seat

themselves in a circle about a bonfire. A kettle-drum is beaten, and one

by one his worshippers become possessed by the god and leap with shouts

round the flames. Some brand themselves with heated iron spoons and sit

down in the fire. Such as escape unhurt are believed to be truly inspired,

while those who burn themselves are despised as mere pretenders to the

divine frenzy. Persons thus possessed by the spirit are called Airi’s

horses or his slaves. During the revels, which commonly last about ten

days, they wear red scarves round their heads and receive alms from the

faithful. These men deem themselves so holy that they will let nobody

touch them, and they alone may touch the sacred trident, the emblem of

their god.(497) In Western Asia itself modern fanatics still practise the

same austerities which were practised by their brethren in the days of

Jamblichus. “Asia Minor abounds in dervishes of different orders, who lap

red-hot iron, calling it their ‘rose,’ chew coals of living fire, strike

their heads against solid walls, stab themselves in the cheek, the scalp,

the temple, with sharp spikes set in heavy weights, shouting ‘Allah,

Allah,’ and always consistently avowing that during such frenzy they are

entirely insensible to pain.”(498)

§ 9. The Burning of Cilician Gods.

(M127) On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in concluding that

under a thin veneer of Greek humanity the barbarous native gods of Cilicia

continued long to survive, and that among them the great Asiatic goddess

retained a place, though not the prominent place which she held in the

highlands of the interior down at least to the beginning of our era. The

principle that the inspired priest or priestess represents the deity in

person appears, if I am right, to have been recognized at Castabala and at

Olba, as well as at the sanctuary of Sarpedonian Artemis. There can be no

intrinsic improbability, therefore, in the view that at Tarsus also the

divine triad of Baal, ’Atheh, and Sandan may also have been personated by

priests and priestesses, who, on the analogy of Olba and of the great

sanctuaries in the interior of Asia Minor, would originally be at the same

time kings and queens, princes and princesses. Further, the burning of

Sandan in effigy at Tarsus would, on this hypothesis, answer to the walk

of the priestess of Perasia through the furnace at Castabala. Both were

perhaps mitigations of a custom of putting the priestly king or queen, or

another member of the royal family, to death by fire.