In the rock-temple at Boghaz-Keui, one of the figures, evidently a personage of great importance on account of his size,{] is represented as standing, or rather striding, with his feet on the summits of two mountains. The Divine nature rests on the mountains, and is at home on their summits, just as, in other representations on the walls of the same natural temple, several deities stand on
* The present writer has there seen bears and boars often ; panthers and leopards are reported to exist. |
+ ép0s Kammodononis xocl Osos zee) bpxos nol wyauruc (Max. Tyr. viii. 8); graves on hill-tops, Puchstein, Reisen in Kl. p. 228.
+ The order of Hierocles and the established identification of surrounding cities place Prostanna somewhere there,
§ Ramsay, in Bull. Corresp. Hell. 1883, p. 322.
|| Surely Attis must mean ‘king’ or ‘prince.’
| Perrot, Histoire del’ Art, iv. p. 639.
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their own sacred animals.* Again, in that same rock-temple, several of the sacred animals stand with their feet placed on the top of high squared pedestals; and the so-called ‘Niobe’? on Mt. Sipylus, which is beyond doubt an image of the goddess Cybele, sits with her feet resting on two similar pedestals. Those pedestals are probably to be interpreted as holy pillars (such as those at Gnossos in Crete, pictured in Mr. Evans’ article, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1901, p. 110). The present writer formerly interpreted them as moun- tains;{ but in the art as practised at Boghaz- Keui the type of the sacred mountain was rounded in form and broken in outline, and it seems hardly permissible to suppose that two types so different were employed there simultaneously to indicate the same conception.
The truth may indeed probably be that the sacred stone when tisha and rude derived its holiness, in some cases, from being regarded as representative of the sacred mountain, the part standing for the whole (just as the bull’s head stands for the god-bull, § III (2)), or the miniature for the vast reality. The omphalos, on which Apollo sits or stands, would then be a sort of miniature of the mountaim which is his Divine abode.
It seems, at any rate, beyond doubt that origin- ally any great mountain, such as Mt. Argzeus, was considered sacred, because on it there rested a vague formless Divine presence and power, whose might dominated the country round. ‘This becomes all the more clear when one considers the sacred caves: see the following paragraph.
(2) Sacred caves and mountaim glens. —Many sacred caves are known: as, for example, Steunos, © the cave of Cybele, near Aizani, described by Mr. J. G. C. Anderson in Annual of British Sch. Ath., 1897-8, p. 56; the cave of Leto or Cybele, beside Hierapolis, described in Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. p. 89; the cave of Zeus on Mt. Dicte in Crete, recently excavated by Mr. Hogarth; ete. All these are caves in the mountains, lonely, far from cities, full of the impressiveness and religious awe of wild and majestic nature. Along with caves in the stricter sense we may class deep gorges and glens among the mountains, in which holy places of Anatolia were often situated. They are roofed with the sky, instead of with a covering of rock.
In those caves and gorges the Divine power was not worshipped in any visible embodiment. The human mind was impressed by the vague formless presence of the Divine nature in such solitary places, and went there to worship. So, in modern times, at the head of the deep romantic gorge of Ibriz, where the great springs of the river of Cybistra-Heraclea flow forth from the rock in surroundings of impressive grandeur, the rude peasants from the neighbouring village come and tie a rag to the tree by the great fountain ; and, if you ask the reason why they do so, they reply in simple phrase, ‘ Dede var,’ which is the nearest approach their untrained thought and scanty words can make to expressing their sense of present Divine power.§ In ancient times men had the same thought, that the Divine power was clearly manifested for the benefit of man at Ibriz; and they expressed it similarly by votive offerings, as
* See above, § IIL: the figures are shown in Perrot, Histoire, Pied stew of Hell. Stud. 1882, p. 39.
¢ As quoted in the previous note.
$ Dede doubtless means originally ‘ancestor’: it is the name applied to those heroized personages worshipped in the Z’urbes common all over the country: the Turbe always contains or is built above the grave of the Dede, who is sometimes a known
historical figure, sometimes a mythical personage, sometimes one whose very name has been forgotten, and who is simply
See below, § VIII (5).
‘the Dede.’
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we may be sure. But they expressed it also in more civilized and artistic ways; and above all other forms they expressed it in a great rock sculpture, showing the god presenting his gifts of corn and wine to the king of the land. The river makes this part of the dry Lycaonian plain into a garden ; and the god has given the river, making it flow forth from his holy mountain at the head of that deep gorge, which is like a vast cave open to the sky. The king is dressed in gorgeous embroidered robes: the god wears a peasant’s dress, for he is the impersonation of the toiling cultivator, who b patience and faith adapts nature to the benefit of man. Nowhere is the spirit of Anatolian religion expressed so unmistakably asatIbriz. In the words in which St. Paul appealed to a simple audience of Lycaonians, the fountains of Ibriz are a witness to the Divine power, that it did good and gave men fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness (Ac 14"). The speaker knew his audience, and caught the exact tone of religious feeling that sounded in their hearts.