of some once
celebrated personage, and mention the god in whose honour he had
achieved the work.

[Illustration: 220.jpg AN ASIATIC GODDESS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The characters in which these inscriptions are written are not, as a
rule, incised in the stone, but are cut in relief upon its surface,
and if some few of them may remind us of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the
majority are totally unlike them, both in form and execution. A careful
examination of them reveals a medley of human and animal outlines,
geometrical figures, and objects of daily use, which all doubtless
corresponded to some letter or syllable, but to which we have as yet
no trustworthy key. This system of writing is one of a whole group of
Asiatic scripts, specimens of which are common in this part of the world
from Crete to the banks of the Euphrates and Orontes. It is thought that
the Khati must have already adopted it before their advent to power, and
that it was they who propagated it in Northern Syria. It did not take
the place of the cuneiform syllabary for ordinary purposes of daily life
owing to its clumsiness and complex character, but its use was reserved
for monumental inscriptions of a royal or religious kind, where it could
be suitably employed as a framework to scenes or single figures.

[Illustration: 221.jpg THE ASIATIC INSCRIPTION OF KOLITOLU-YAILA]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hogarth.

It, however, never presented the same graceful appearance and
arrangement as was exhibited in the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the signs
placed side by side being out of proportion with each other so as to
destroy the general harmony of the lines, and it must be regarded as a
script still in process of formation and not yet emerged from infancy.
Every square yard of soil turned up among the ruins of the houses of
Euyuk yields vestiges of tools, coarse pottery, terra-cotta and bronze
statuettes of men and animals, and other objects of a not very high
civilization. The few articles of luxury discovered, whether in
furniture or utensils, were not indigenous products, but were imported
for the most part from Chaldaea, Syria, Phoenicia, and perhaps from
Egypt; some objects, indeed, came from the coast-towns of the AEgean,
thus showing that Western influence was already in contact with the
traditions of the East.

[Illustration: 222.jpg DOUBLE SCEND OF OFFERINGS]

Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from a photogr