Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

The characters in which these inscriptions are written are not, as a rule, incised in the stone, but are cut in relief upon its surface, and if some few of them may remind us of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the majority are totally unlike them, both in form and execution.  A careful examination of them reveals a medley of human and animal outlines, geometrical figures, and objects of daily use, which all doubtless corresponded to some letter or syllable, but to which we have as yet no trustworthy key.  This system of writing is one of a whole group of Asiatic scripts, specimens of which are common in this part of the world from Crete to the banks of the Euphrates and Orontes.  It is thought that the Khati must have already adopted it before their advent to power, and that it was they who propagated it in Northern Syria.  It did not take the place of the cuneiform syllabary for ordinary purposes of daily life owing to its clumsiness and complex character, but its use was reserved for monumental inscriptions of a royal or religious kind, where it could be suitably employed as a framework to scenes or single figures.

[Illustration:  221.jpg THE ASIATIC INSCRIPTION OF KOLITOLU-YAILA]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hogarth.

It, however, never presented the same graceful appearance and arrangement as was exhibited in the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the signs placed side by side being out of proportion with each other so as to destroy the general harmony of the lines, and it must be regarded as a script still in process of formation and not yet emerged from infancy.  Every square yard of soil turned up among the ruins of the houses of Euyuk yields vestiges of tools, coarse pottery, terra-cotta and bronze statuettes of men and animals, and other objects of a not very high civilization.  The few articles of luxury discovered, whether in furniture or utensils, were not indigenous products, but were imported for the most part from Chaldaea, Syria, Phoenicia, and perhaps from Egypt; some objects, indeed, came from the coast-towns of the AEgean, thus showing that Western influence was already in contact with the traditions of the East.

[Illustration:  222.jpg DOUBLE SCEND OF OFFERINGS]

     Drawn by Paucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hogarth.  It
     will be remarked that both altars are in the form of a
     female without a head, but draped in the Assyrian robe.

All the various races settled between the Halys and the Orontes were more or less imbued with this foreign civilization, and their monuments, though not nearly so numerous as those of the Pharaohs and Ninevite kings, bear, nevertheless, an equally striking evidence of its power.  Examples of it have been pointed out in a score of different places in the valleys of the Taurus and on the plains of Cappadocia, in bas-reliefs, steke, seals, and intaglios, several of which must be nearly contemporaneous with the first Assyrian conquest.