may for a time have furnished rulers to the vigorous North Syrian principalities which resulted from this racial combination, but the Aramaean element, thanks to continual reinforcement, was numerically dominant, and their art may legitimately be regarded as in great measure a Semitic product.  Fortunately we have recovered examples of sculpture which prove that tendencies already noted in the Persian period were at work, though in a minor degree, under the later Assyrian empire.  The discoveries made at Zenjirli, for example, illustrate the gradually increasing effect of Assyrian influence upon the artistic output of a small North Syrian state.

(1) Cf.  Bevan, House of Seleucus, Vol.  I, pp. 5, 260 f.  The artistic influence of Mesopotamia was even more widely spread than that of Egypt during the Persian period.  This is suggested, for example, by the famous lion-weight discovered at Abydos in Mysia, the town on the Hellespont famed for the loves of Hero and Leander.  The letters of its Aramaic inscription (C.I.S., II. i, tab.  VII, No. 108) prove by their form that it dates from the Persian period, and its provenance is sufficiently attested.  Its weight moreover suggests that it was not merely a Babylonian or Persian importation, but cast for local use, yet in design and technique it is scarcely distinguishable from the best Assyrian work of the seventh century.

This village in north-western Syria, on the road between Antioch and Mar’ash, marks the site of a town which lay near the southern border or just within the Syrian district of Sam’al.  The latter is first mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions by Shalmaneser III, the son and successor of the great conqueror, Ashur-nasir-pal; and in the first half of the eighth century, though within the radius of Assyrian influence, it was still an independent kingdom.  It is to this period that we must assign the earliest of the inscribed monuments discovered at Zenjirli and its neighbourhood.  At Gerjin, not far to the north-west, was found the colossal statue of Hadad, chief god of the Aramaeans, which was fashioned and set up in his honour by Panammu I, son of Qaral and king of Ya’di.(1) In the long Aramaic inscription engraved upon the statue Panammu records the prosperity of his reign, which he ascribes to the support he has received from Hadad and his other gods, El, Reshef, Rekub-el, and Shamash.  He had evidently been left in peace by Assyria, and the monument he erected to his god is of Aramaean workmanship and design.  But the influence of Assyria may be traced in Hadad’s beard and in his horned head-dress, modelled on that worn by Babylonian and Assyrian gods as the symbol of divine power.