The figure illustrates the facial type of the Hittite, with his prominent and slightly curved nose and strongly receding brow. (After Meyer.)] Their civilization was strongly influenced by that of Babylonia, perhaps through the medium of Assyrian trading settlements, which were already established in Cappadocia in the second half of the third millennium. From these early Semitic immigrants, or their successors, they borrowed the clay tablet and the cuneiform system of writing. But they continued to use their own picture-characters for monumental records; and even in the later period, when they came into direct contact with the Assyrian empire, their art never lost its individual character. Some of the most elaborate of their rock-sculptures still survive in the holy sanctuary at Yasili Kaya, not far from Boghaz Keui. Here on the rock-face, in a natural fissure of the mountain, are carved the figures of their deities, chief among them the great Mother-goddess of the Hittites. [Illustration: FIG. 50. HITTITE CHIEFTAIN, A CAPTIVE OF RAMESES III. A relief of the twelfth century, perhaps the finest representation of a Hittite on the Egyptian monuments; it is evidently a portrait sculpture, so far as the head is concerned. It illustrates, too, the manner in which the heavy plait of hair ends in a curled tail. (After Meyer.)] She and Teshub, the principal male deity, are here represented meeting, with their processions of deities and attendants. Whether it was from precisely this area that the Hittite tribes descended on their raid down the Euphrates, which hastened the fall of Babylon's First Dynasty and perhaps brought it to an end, we have as yet no means of judging.[31] But during the subsequent centuries we may certainly picture a slow but uninterrupted expansion of the area under Hittite control; and it is probable that authority was divided among the various local kingdoms and chieftainships, which occupied the valleys and upland stretches to the north of the Taurus. [Illustration: FIG. 51. FIGURE, PROBABLY OF A HITTITE KING, FROM THE ROYAL GATE AT KHATTI. The pose of the figure, slightly leaning to the right, is due to the sloping side of the gateway, beside which it is sculptured in relief. (After a photo by Puchstein.]