AN EGYPTIAN DISCOVERY

Evening Star, Issue 14491, 16 February 1911, Page 8

AN EGYPTIAN DISCOVERY

A bronw statuette, much corroded, has* been found m Egypt, and appears to be the first discovered specimen of a Hittite deity executed in the round. It represents a goddess standing upon the back of a lion, whose tongue is protruding and the tail turned up. The goddess wears the Cappadocian or Hittite. style of tiara, and carries in her arms an infant held to the breast. No features of the work denote an Egyptian artist, but all point to Syria., and it is almost a precise ropy of the Hittite reliefs upon thoir ruined palaces at Boghaz Kenoi and elsewhere, in which the gods stand upon the backs of animals. The projwrtions given to the body and the arrangement of the hair are also Syrian, but the have not tho upturned toes, as usual with Hittite figures. Should this statuette be accepted as of Hittite workmanship, it will givo support to the Old Testament \statements as to the existence of Hittites in Southern Palestine, a-nd will tend to show that the celebrated Hyksos, or shepherd kings, who reigned for some centuries in North Egypt, weie Hittites, or of an allied race. If the statuette was brought to Egypt during the early Hyksos period it would bo practically contemporary with the Vizirate of Joseph.