Note 108.1 — Chapter VI · The Deities as Nature-Powers.

Of the Hittite gods we may say this much at least, that the monuments enable us to recognise the thunder-god with the hammer or axe, and in the striking relief at Ibreez we discern the form of the god of vegetation and crops, holding corn and grapes. The winged disk, carved with other doubtful fetich-emblems above the head of the god who is clasping the priest or king on the Boghaz-Keui relief, is a solar emblem, borrowed probably from Egyptian religious art. And the Hittite sun-god was invoked in the Hittite treaty with Rameses II.108.1 Whether the mother-goddess was conceived as the personal form of Gaia is doubtful; her clear affinity with Kybele would suggest this, and in the Hittite treaty with Rameses II. mentioned above, the goddess Tesker is called the Mistress of the Mountains, the express title of the Phrygian Mother, and another “the Mistress of the Soil.”108.2 Yet evidently the Hittite religion is too complex to be regarded as mere nature-worship: the great relief of Boghaz-Keui shows a solemn and elaborate ritual to which doubtless some spiritual concepts were attached.