Note 787 — VI THE STORY OF THE HITTITES

See Pl. XLIV., and pp. 138, 139. Our date is based on the resemblance of the oblation vases (more clearly seen in Miss Bell’s photographs published by Hogarth in Liv. Annals of Arch., 1909) to those found in the hands of Hittite prisoners in Egypt, temp. Akhenaten; see De Garis Davies, El Amarna II. (London, 1905), pp. 41, 42, and Pl. XL. (bottom row). Such vases were common in Hittite Syria during the fifteenth century B.C. (cf. Maspero, Struggle of the Nations, fig. on p. 263), and the date of the sculptures is therefore liable to modification from various considerations, such as the range of time such types were in use, the probability of antique forms surviving in religious practices, and the possibility of special forms being sent as tribute to the Pharaoh.