The land of the Hittites : $b An account of recent explorations and discoveries in Asia Minor, with descriptions of the Hittite monumentsGarstang, John
History
The land of the Hittites : $b An account of recent explorations and discoveries in Asia Minor, with descriptions of the Hittite monuments
Garstang, John
Hittites; Turkey -- Antiquities
The system of Roman organisation at first modified and finally broke up
the old tribal communities. For some time, many old-world institutions
were maintained, notably the priest-dynasts of Comana, Olba, and
Venasa; but gradually the native communal temple-district organisation
of society gave way, to be replaced by the Greek political system, the
seeds of which had been planted two or three centuries before, and
had now taken root. In this system the city became the administrative
centre, and the villages around were its branches. Greek became more and
more the language of the people.[115] The formal records of military
works, the milestones and imperial monuments, are inscribed in Latin,
but the inscriptions in the old graveyards are carved in Greek letters.
We cannot dwell upon the history of these times, of the reorganisation
under Diocletian, at the close of the third century, marking the
commencement of the Byzantine period, nor of the spread of Christianity,
with the great social changes that involved. We reproduce, however, some
illustrations of Roman works, such as are met with in plenty throughout
the length and breadth of Hittite lands, from Malatia to Iconium and
beyond, from Tarsus to the Black Sea coast. The great aqueducts like
those of Tyana,[116] and those which stretch for miles across the
Cilician plain,[117] are an indication of the vast scheme of development
that was instituted under the new well-ordered system of government.
Great cities both in Syria and in Asia Minor were the product of these
times. Many of these were the foundations of places that still remain
centres of administration; while some have lost their importance, and
are falling gradually to ruin in silence and desolation. The remains of
Kyrrhus upon the Afrîn,[118] a site now marked only by the small village
of Huru-Pegamber some distance away, are among the wonderful memorials
of antiquity. The imposts are falling from their pilasters, and the
keystones to its arches are working loose, but it retains its silent
streets of impressive stone buildings, its arches and colonnades, its
amphitheatre, as though its people had quitted hardly a generation ago.
Numerous Greek inscriptions may still be found amongst the ruins,[119]
and just southward of the Acropolis several sarcophagi of marble, with
Greek names upon them, indicate the position of the old-time burying
place. In the extreme south of the site, with its sanctity still
maintained in a modern Mohammedan shrine and well adjoining, there stands
perfect a tomb-structure[120] in the Roman style of the second century
A.D. We give a photograph of this, which is one of the best-preserved
examples of its kind. Our other photographs[121] taken at Ephesus and at
Ba’albec,[122] at the two ends of the Hittite lands, will sufficiently
illustrate the art and civilisation of their time and place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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