population but also the Hittite immigrants from Cappadocia. The latter
indeed may for a time have furnished rulers to the vigorous North Syrian
principalities which resulted from this racial combination, but the
Aramaean element, thanks to continual reinforcement, was numerically
dominant, and their art may legitimately be regarded as in great measure
a Semitic product. Fortunately we have recovered examples of sculpture
which prove that tendencies already noted in the Persian period were
at work, though in a minor degree, under the later Assyrian empire.
The discoveries made at Zenjirli, for example, illustrate the gradually
increasing effect of Assyrian influence upon the artistic output of a
small North Syrian state.

(1) Cf. Bevan, _House of Seleucus_, Vol. I, pp. 5, 260 f.
The artistic influence of Mesopotamia was even more widely
spread than that of Egypt during the Persian period. This is
suggested, for example, by the famous lion-weight discovered
at Abydos in Mysia, the town on the Hellespont famed for the
loves of Hero and Leander. The letters of its Aramaic
inscription (_C.I.S._, II. i, tab. VII, No. 108) prove by
their form that it dates from the Persian period, and its
provenance is sufficiently attested. Its weight moreover
suggests that it was not merely a Babylonian or Persian
importation, but cast for local use, yet in design and
technique it is scarcely distinguishable from the best
Assyrian work of the seventh century.

This village in north-western Syria, on the road between Antioch and
Mar'ash, marks the site of a town which lay near the southern border or
just within the Syrian district of Sam'al. The latter is first mentioned
in the Assyrian inscriptions by Shalmaneser III, the son and successor