popular belief of his time, were deeply indebted to Lydia for their
civilization. The larger part of this debt (if real) was incurred
probably after 600 B.C.; but some constituent items of the account must
have been of older date--the coining of money, for example. There is,
however, much to be set on the other side of the ledger, more than
Herodotus knew, and more than we can yet estimate. Too few monuments of
the arts of the earlier Lydians and too few objects of their daily use
have been found in their ill-explored land for us to say whether they
owed most to the West or to the East. From the American excavation of
Sardes, however, we have already learned for certain that their script
was of a Western type, nearer akin to the Ionian than even the Phrygian
was; and since their language contained a great number of Indo-European
words, the Lydians should not, on the whole, be reckoned an Eastern
people. Though the names given by Herodotus to their earliest kings are
Mesopotamian and may be reminiscent of some political connection with
the Far East at a remote epoch--perhaps that of the foreign relations of
Ur, which seem to have extended to Cappadocia--all the later royal and
other Lydian names recorded are distinctly Anatolian. At any rate all
connection with Mesopotamia must have long been forgotten before
Ashurbanipal's scribes could mention the prayer of "Guggu King of Luddi"
as coming from a people and a land of which their master and his
forbears had not so much as heard. As the excavation of Sardes and of
other sites in Lydia proceeds, we shall perhaps find that the higher
civilization of the country was a comparatively late growth, dating
mainly from the rise of the Mermnads, and that its products will show an
influence of the Hellenic cities which began not much earlier than 600
B.C., and was most potent in the century succeeding that date.

We know nothing of the extent of Lydian power towards the east, unless
the suggestions already based on the passage of Herodotus concerning the