Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Balai-tars and Zeus Tersios

595

seen at Ivriz, where a singularly fertile glen runs far into the
northern flank of Mount Tauros. Prof. J. Garstang describes the
scene in graphic language:

'At the foot of the rock a stream of water, clear and cool, bursts out in
tremendous volume, and, supplemented by other similar sources, becomes in
a hundred yards a raging and impassable torrent, roaring with a wonderful
noise as it foams and leaps over the rocks in its course. Before joining the
main stream of the valley it washes at a bend the foot of a bare rock, upon
which from the opposite side there may be seen the famous sculptures, the most
striking of all known Hittite works, and one of the most imposing monuments
of the ancient East.

The treatment of these sculptures is all in relief. In composition there are
two persons represented : the Peasant-god, a gigantic figure fourteen feet in
height, distinguished by the bunches of grapes and bearded wheat which he
holds, and the King-priest, an heroic figure eight feet in height, facing towards
the god, with clasped hands raised in adoration or thanksgiving for his bounty.

The god is clad in the short tunic, short-sleeved vest, pointed cap, and shoes
with turned-up toes, characteristic of the godlike figures on all Hittite sculptures.
But here the sculptor has elaborated his theme, and has worked into it ideas or
conceptions which we may reasonably suspect were derived ultimately from the
East through the intermediary of Cilicia. The figure is squat and stolid, and
the face almost Semitic...Perhaps the most peculiar and Oriental detail is to be
found in the horns which decorate the helmet, of which four pairs are visible.
In front of the right foot is the suggestion of a bolted implement, possibly
a plough....

There are three short inscriptions accompanying these figures. In that
which is carved before the face of the god, Professors Sayce and Jensen both find
the name of Sandes in the first line (the W-like sign below the divided oval that
signifies divinity). In the next line, as in the overlap of the first and second
lines of inscription behind the king, we find the same name (read Ayminyas) as
...in the inscriptions of Bor and of Bulghar-Maden. This point is of importance
in considering the history of the Hittite peoples when, as it seems, the central
authority was no longer at Boghaz-Keui. For the date of these sculptures, if
only from their close analogy in treatment to those of Sakje-Geuzi, may be put
down to the tenth or ninth century B.C. It would seem indeed that we are here
drawn into relation with the kingdom of (Greater) Cilicia, which, with Tyana
probably as capital, took the place of the Hatti-state within the Halys, as the
dominant Hittite state at the beginning of the first millennium B.C.'

Sandas was clearly a god of fertility1. The bovine horns on
his tiara, the grape-bunches and corn-ears in his hands, the plough (?)
at his feet, all point in that direction. At Tarsos in the fourth
century B.C., while retaining his old attributes the grapes and the
corn, he acquired the characteristics of Zeus. On silver coins

97, O. Hofer in Roscher Lex. Myth. iv. 330 f. fig. 2, J. Garstang The Land of the
Hittites London 1910 pp. 191—195 pi. 57 (from a cast at Berlin).

1 So e.g. J. G. Frazer loc. cit., E. Meyer Geschichte des Alterthutns Stuttgart 1909 i.
22. 641 ff.

38-2