Identifier: hilprechtanniver00leip (find matches)
Title: Hilprecht anniversary volume. Studies in Assyriology and archaeology dedicated to Hermann V. Hilprecht upon the twenty-fifth anniversary of his doctorate and his fiftieth birthday (July 28)
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Assyriology Archaeology
Publisher: Leipzig : J.C. Hinrichs
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
Recent discoveries have shown that Babylonian culture exer-
cised a great influence upon Asia Minor at a comparatively early
date. Asia Minor was the home of the metals that were brought
to Assyria and Babylonia by the valley of the Euphrates, and

3] SAYCE, THE ORIGIN OF THE GREEK LAMP 8l


an Assyrian military and trading colony was settled near Kaisa-
riych in Cappadocia at a site now called Kara Eyuk as early
as the Khammu-rabi age.¹ It was from northern Asia Minor
that bronze seems to have first made its way to Assyria and
Canaan,² and the painted pottery of the pre-Israelitish strata
at Gezer and Lachish in Palestine has been traced back to the
Hittite region north of the Halys.³ The cuneiform system of
writing was introduced among the Hittite tribes of Asia Minor
along with the Assyro-Babylonian language, and libraries or ar-
chive-chambers filled with clay tablets were established at Boghaz
Keui, the Hittite capital, in the Mosaic age. Hittite art passed
under Babylonian influence so as to become what I described
Text Appearing After Image:

Bronze lamp from Boghaz Keui.

it many years ago as being: "a modified form of Babylonian
art.⁴ Along with art, the religion of Asia Minor also became
Babylonianised; the native fetishes and nature-worship were re-
placed by gods in human form, whose figures were sculptured
on the rocks or engraved upon seals, and the gods were further
grouped in triads in the Babylonian fashion. The composite
divine symbols of Babylonia were introduced among the Asiatic
populations; the eagle of Lagas was transported to the Hittite

——————————————————————————————

¹ Sayce: The Cappadocian Cuneiform Tablets in Babyloniaca, 1907.
² Sayce: The Aichaeobgy of the Otneiform Inscriptions, pp. 61 —6.
³ J. L. Myres: Journal of the Anthropological Institute, XXXIII, pp. 367^sqq..
⁴ Trans. S. B. A., VII. 2 (1881).

6

82 HILPRECHT ANNIVERSARY VOLUME [4

—————————————————————————————

capital, the winged horse appears upon Hittite seals, to become
later the Pegasos of the Greeks, and the centaur of Babylonia
passed through Asia Minor to the West.
It was by the same road that the Babylonian lamp also
made its way westward.


Note About Images