The bulls and other winged monsters, placed at the entrance of Assyrian and Persian palaces, which keep the mean between statuary and the bas-relief, also find their parallel among the Hittites. There is at the Imperial Museum at Constantinople a basalt lion, found at Marash, the head and neck of which are completely disengaged from the stone block; the fore paws are even with the front surface of the wall, and the body of the beast is continued round the corner. Thus it is sculptured on two sides in imitation of the Ninevite bulls, and the extent of servility in the copy is finally proved by an inscription in Hittite hieroglyphs covering the fore paws, in accordance with the singular fashion observed at Nineveh. [Illustration: Fig. 150.--Stela from Birejik (British Museum).] Assyrian influence is even more obviously conspicuous at Carchemish, a fact to which witness is borne by two figures standing on a crouching lion, which remind us of the rock sculptures of Sennacherib at Bavian and Malthaiyah.[67] Is not a pseudo-Assyrian style also to be detected in this figure[68] (fig. 150) surmounted by the winged disk, with his tunic open in front? However, his cylindrical tiara, his twisted hair, and the peculiar disks which he holds in his two hands, are features which the artist did not copy from Mesopotamia. Like the Babylonian Istar, the Hittite Astarte is represented standing, in full face and entirely nude; she holds her breasts with the same indecent gesture, the first example of which belongs to the plastic art of Chaldæa. Nevertheless Astarte is winged and crowned with a conical tiara which are peculiarities of Hittite symbolism. The priestess performing adoration before her is veiled, like the figures of Assyrian women. [Illustration: Fig. 151.--Fragments of sculpture from Carchemish (from the _Graphic_, Dec. 1880).]