Tedious as all these details may seem to be, it has been necessary to give them, since they tell us what was the appearance and construction of a Hittite city, a Hittite palace, and the interior of a Hittite temple. The discoveries recently made in the Hittite districts south of the Taurus, show us that here too the palaces and temples were like those of Eyuk and Boghaz Keui. Here too we find the same dados sculptured with the same figures dressed in the same costume; here too we meet with the same lions, and the same winged deities standing on the backs of animals. A photograph of a piece of sculpture on a block of basalt at Carchemish, taken by Dr. Gwyther, might have been taken at Boghaz Keui. The art, the forms, and the symbolism are all the same.
The high-road from Boghaz Keui to Merash must have passed through the defile of Ghurun, where Sir Charles Wilson discovered Hittite inscriptions carved upon the cliff. But there may have been a second road which led through Kaisariyeh, the modern capital of Kappadokia, southward to Bor or Tyana, where Prof. Ramsay found a Hittite text, and from thence to the silver mines of the Bulgar Dagh. The bas-reliefs of Ibreez are not far distant from the famous Cilician gates which led the traveller from the great central plateau of Asia Minor to Tarsus and the sea.
It would seem that the silver mines of the Bulgar Dagh were first worked by Hittite miners. Silver had a special attraction for the Hittite race. The material on which the Hittite version of the treaty between the Hittite king of Kadesh and the Egyptian Pharaoh was written was a tablet of that metal. That such tablets were in frequent use, results from the fact that nearly all the Hittite inscriptions known to us are not incised, but cut in relief upon the stone. It is therefore obvious that the Hittites must have first inscribed their hieroglyphs upon metal, rather than upon wood or stone or clay; it is only in the case of metal that it is less laborious to hammer or cast in relief than to cut the metal with a graving tool, and nothing can prove more clearly how long accustomed the Hittite scribes must have been to doing so, than their imitation of this work in relief when they came to write upon stone. It is possible that most of the silver of which they made use came from the Bulgar Dagh. The Hittite inscription found near the old mines of these mountains by Mr. Davis, proves that they had once occupied the locality. It is even possible that their settlement for a time in Lydia was also connected with their passion for 'the bright metal.' At all events the Gumush Dagh, or 'Silver Mountains,' lie to the south of the Pass of Karabel, and traces of old workings can still be detected in them.