As regards the test, then, that we are at present applying, it seems
that the Hittite and the Mesopotamian religions were more or less on
the same plane, though we may suspect that theriolatry was stronger in
the former. It is also important for our purpose to register in
passing the clear proof of certain religious approximations, probably
in the second millennium B.C., between the Hittites and the
Assyrian-Babylonian kingdom. The Hittite god Teshup, with the
double-headed hammer or axe and the forked lightning in his hand, is
of close kin and similar in type to the Canaanite, Syrian, and
Babylonian Ramman-Adad, the god of storms.[62.2] But the evidence
does not yet seem to me to make it clear which people or group of
peoples was in this case the borrower, which the lender. And the same
doubt arises in respect of the striking art-type of the divinity
standing on the lion; we find it in the early Hittite monuments, such
as the Boghaz-Keui sculptured slabs; and again on the relief of
Gargamich, on which is a winged male deity standing on a lion and a
priest behind him, also on a lion;[62.3] and later among the Tarsos
representations of the Hittite Sandon: it was in vogue at the Syrian
Bambyke and at Babylon. The assumption of Perrot[62.4] is that it was
{63} of Babylonian origin, but the art-chronology does not seem to
speak decisively in this matter. It is not necessary here to prejudge
this difficult problem: it does not directly affect our present
question, as the type of the goddess with lions comes into Hellas only
at a later period. As regards the other Anatolian peoples who came
into close contact with the Hellenes, we may find abiding influences
of certain Hittite religious ideas and motives of religious art. We
may admit that the lion-borne goddess of Boghaz-Keui is the prototype
of Kybele, even the crenelated headdress that she wears suggesting the
turreted diadem of the later goddess: it is likely that the ancient
type of Teshup, the weather-god with hammer or axe and the lightning,
survived in Commagene in the cult-figure that was afterwards
interpreted as Jupiter Dolichenus: and it may have influenced the
ideas about the thunder-god in Pontus, as a primitive relief of a god
brandishing a thunderbolt and holding a shield has been found near
Amasia.[63.1] Speaking generally, we must pronounce the native
pre-Hellenic religious art of the Asia Minor littoral, of Phrygia,
Lydia, Caria, anthropomorphic, so far as it tried at all to embody the
imagined form of the divinity. The record is generally blurred by the
later Hellenic influences. But we have at least in Phrygia rude images
of the pre-Hellenic Cybele; the intention of these is anthropomorphic,
and in the rough outline of the goddess’s form as hewn out of the rock
of Sipylos above Smyrna, the Hellenes could discern their sorrowing
Niobe. Where the anthropomorphism fails, as in the Phrygian monument,
which shows Cybele seated with a phiale and human-shaped in other
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