(M105) Whatever may be thought of these speculations, one thing seems fairly clear and certain. The figure which I have called the divine Son at Boghaz-Keui is identical with the god Sandan, who appears on the pyre at Tarsus. In both personages the costume, the attributes, the attitude are the same. Both represent a man clad in a short tunic with a tall pointed cap on his head, a sword at his side, a double-headed axe in his hand, and a lion or panther under his feet.(428) Accordingly, if we are right in identifying him as the divine Son at Boghaz-Keui, we may conjecture that under the name of Sandan he bore the same character at Tarsus. The conjecture squares perfectly with the title of Hercules, which the Greeks bestowed on Sandan; for Hercules was the son of Zeus, the great father-god. Moreover, we have seen that the Baal of Tarsus, with the grapes and the corn in his hand, was assimilated to Zeus.(429) Thus it would appear that at Tarsus as at Boghaz-Keui there was a pair of deities, a divine Father and a divine Son, whom the Greeks identified with Zeus and Hercules respectively. If the Baal of Tarsus was a god of fertility, as his attributes clearly imply, his identification with Zeus would be natural, since it was Zeus who, in the belief of the Greeks, sent the fertilizing rain from heaven.(430) And the identification of Sandan with Hercules would be equally natural, since the lion and the death on the pyre were features common to both. Our conclusion then is that it was the divine Son, the lion-god, who was burned in effigy or in the person of a human representative at Tarsus, and perhaps at Boghaz-Keui. Semitic parallels suggest that the victim who played the part of the Son of God in the fiery furnace ought in strictness to be the king’s son.(431) But no doubt in later times an effigy would be substituted for the man.
(M106) Unfortunately we know next to nothing of the kings and priests of Tarsus. In Greek times we hear of an Epicurean philosopher of the city, Lysias by name, who was elected by his fellow-citizens to the office of Crown-wearer, that is, to the priesthood of Hercules. Once raised to that dignity, he would not lay it down again, but played the part of tyrant, wearing a white robe edged with purple, a costly cloak, white shoes, and a golden wreath of laurel. He truckled to the mob by distributing among them the property of the wealthy, while he put to death such as refused to open their money-bags to him.(432) Though we cannot distinguish in this account between the legal and the illegal exercise of authority, yet we may safely infer that the priesthood of Hercules, that is of Sandan, at Tarsus continued down to late times to be an office of great dignity and power, not unworthy to be held in earlier times by the kings themselves. Scanty as is our information as to the kings of Cilicia, we hear of two whose names appear to indicate that they stood in some special relation to the divine Sandan. One of them was Sandu’arri, lord of Kundi and Sizu, which have been identified with Anchiale and Sis in Cilicia.(433) The other was Sanda-sarme, who gave his daughter in marriage to Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria.(434) It would be in accordance with analogy if the kings of Tarsus formerly held the priesthood of Sandan and claimed to represent him in their own person.