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CLEOPATRAS NEEDLE.
With an Exposition of the
Hieroglyphics. 2 6

FRESH LIGHT FROM THE
ANCIENT MONUMENTS.
ByAHSAYCE.LLD 3 0

RECENT DISCOVERIES ON
THE TEMPLE HILL AT
JERUSALEM.By the Rev
J.Kmg.M.A. 2.6

BABYLONIAN LIFE AND
HISTORY By E.A.Wallis
Budge, MA. 3.0

GALILEE IN THE TIME
OF CHRIST. By Selah
Merrill RD 2 6

EGYPT AND SYRIA.Their
Physical Features m Relation
to Bihle History. By Sir J.
WDawson FR.S

ASSYRIA. ITS PRINCES,
PRIESTS, AND PEOPLE.
Bu A.H.Sayce.LL.D.

aSg^atJs of Mbh mnotoUUst.
XII.

THE HITTITES

THE STORY OF A FORGOTTEN EMPIRE.

BY

A. H. SAYCE, LL.D.

DEPUTY PROFESSOR OF PHILOLOGY, OXFORD ;

AUTHOR OF ' FRESH LIGHT FROM THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS,

'ASSYRIA, ITS PRINCES, PRIESTS AND PEOPLE,' ETC., ETC.

Second Edition

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY,

56 Paternoster Row, 65 St. Paul's Churchyard, and 164 Piccadilly.
189O.

HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE

The discovery of the important place once occupied
by the Hittites has been termed ' the romance of ancient
history/ Nothing can be more interesting than the
resurrection of a forgotten people, more especially when
that people is so intimately connected with Old Testa-
ment story, and with the fortunes of the Chosen Race.
How the resurrection has been accomplished, by putting
together the fragmentary evidence of Egyptian and
Assyrian inscriptions, of strange-looking monuments in
Asia Minor, and of still undeciphered hieroglyphics,
will be described in the following pages. It is marvellous
to think that only ten years ago 'the romance' could
not have been written, and that the part played by the
Hittite nations in the history of the world was still
unsuspected. Yet now we have become, as it were,
familiar with the friends of Abraham and the race to
which Uriah belonged.

Already a large and increasing literature has been
devoted to them. The foundation stone, which was
laid by my paper ' On the Monuments of the Hittites'
in 1880, has been crowned with a stately edifice in
Dr. Wright's Empire of the Hittites, of which the
second edition appeared in 1886, and in the fourth
volume of the magnificent work of Prof. Perrot and

6 PREFACE.

M. Chipiez, VHistoire de VArt dans VAntiqttite, pub-
lished at Paris a year ago. Profusely illustrated, the
latter work sets before us a life-like picture of Hittite
architecture and art.

It cannot be long before the inscriptions left to us by
the Hittites, in their peculiar form of hieroglyphic
writing, are also made to reveal their secrets. All that
is required are more materials upon which to work, and
we shall then know which, if any, of the attempts
hitherto made to explain them has hit the truth.
Major Conder's system of decipherment has not yet
obtained the adhesion of other scholars ; neither has
the rival system of Mr. Ball, ingenious and learned as
it is. But if we may judge from the successes of the
last few years, it cannot be long before we know as
much about the Hittite language and writing as we
now know about Hittite art and civilisation. To quote
the words of Dr. Wright : ' We must labour to unloose
the dumb tongue of these inscriptions, and to unlock
their mysteries, not with the view of finding something
sensational in them, or for the purpose of advancing
some theory, but for the love of knowing what they
really contain ; and I doubt not that, proceeding in the
right method of investigation, we shall reach results
satisfactory to the Oriental scholar, and confirmatory
of Divine truth/

A. H. SAYCE.
Queen's College, Oxford.
October 1888.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAP.

I. The Hittites of the Bible . . .

II. The Hittites on the Monuments of Egypt and
Assyria ....

PAGE
I 1

*9

III. The Hittite Monuments ...... 54

IV. The Hittite Emigre 73

V. The Hittite Cities and Race 97

VI. Hittite Religion and Art I04

VII. The Inscriptions I22

VIII. Hittite Trade axd Industry I36

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Slabs with Hittite Sculpture at Keller near Aintab

Frontispiece

Map illustrating the extent of the Hittite Empire . 10

A Slab found at Merash 54

Slabs with Hittite Sculptures found at Keller near

Aintab 63

The Pseudo-Sesostris carved on the rock in the Pass of

Karabel 67

Monument of a Hittite King found at Carchemish . 72

The Double-headed Eagle of Eyuk 84

Sculptures at Boghaz Keui 88

Sculptures at Boghaz Keui 91

An Inscription found at Carchemish {now destroyed) . .122

The Bilingual Boss of Tarkondemos 127

The Lion of Merash * ... 131

D L Ac

MAP ILLUSTRATING THE EXTENT OF THE HITTITE EMPIRE.

(Copied by permission from ' The Entfiire of the Hittites.)

THE HITTITES

THE STORY OF A FORGOTTEN EMPIRE.

CHAPTER I.
THE HITTITES OF THE BIBLE.

WE are told in the Second Book of Kings (vii. 6) that
when the Syrians were encamped about Samaria
and the Lord had sent a panic upon them, ' they said
one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against
us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the
Egyptians, to come tipon us.' Nearly forty years ago
a distinguished scholar selected this passage for his
criticism. Its ' unhistorical tone,' he declared, ' is too
manifest to allow of our easy belief in it.' ■ No Hittite
kings can have compared in power with the king of
Judah, the real and near ally, who is not named at
all . . . nor is there a single mark of acquaintance with
the contemporaneous history.'

Recent discoveries have retorted the critic's objections
upon himself. It is not the Biblical writer but the
modern author who is now proved to have been un-
acquainted with the contemporaneous history of the
time. The Hittites were a very real power. Not very
many centuries before the age of Elisha they had
contested the empireof Western Asia with the Egyptians,
and though their power had waned in the days of

12 THE HITTITES.

Jehoram they were still formidable enemies and useful
allies. They were still worthy of comparison with the
divided kingdom of Egypt, and infinitely more powerful
than that of Judah.

But we hear no more about them in the subsequent
records of the Old Testament. The age of Hittite
supremacy belongs to an earlier date than the rise of
the monarchy in Israel ; earlier, we may even say, than
the Israelitish conquest of Canaan. The references to
them in the later historical books of the Old Testament
Canon are rare and scanty. The traitor who handed
over Beth-el to the house of Joseph fled ' into the land
of the Hittites' (Judg. i. 26), and there built a city which
he called Luz. Mr. Tomkins thinks he has found it
in the town of Latsa, captured by the Egyptian king
Ramses II., which he identifies with Qalb Luzeh, in
Northern Syria. However this may be, an emended
reading of the text, based upon the Septuagint, trans-
forms the unintelligible Tahtim-hodshi of 2 Sam. xxiv.
6 into 'the Hittites of Kadesh/ a city which long
continued to be their chief stronghold in the valley
of the Orontes. It was as far as this city, which lay
at ' the entering in of Hamath,' on the northern frontier
of the Israelitish kingdom, that the officers of David
made their way when they were sent to number Israel.
Lastly, in the reign of Solomon the Hittites are again
mentioned (1 Kings x. 28, 29) in a passage where the
authorised translation has obscured the sense. It runs
in the Revised Version : ' And the horses which Solomon
had were brought out of Egypt ; and the king's mer-
chants received them in droves, each drove at a price.
And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt for
six hundred shekels of silver, and an horse for an

THE HITTITES OF THE BIBLE. 1 3

hundred and fifty : and so for all the kings of the
Hittites, and for the kings of Syria, did they bring
them out by their means.' The Hebrew merchants,
in fact, were the mediatories between Egypt and the
north, and exported the horses of Egypt not only for
the king of Israel but for the kings of the Hittites
as well.

The Hittites whose cities and princes are thus referred
to in the later historical books of the Old Testament
belonged to the north, Hamath and Kadesh on the
Orontes being their most southernly points. But the
Book of Genesis introduces us to other Hittites — 'the
children of Heth,' as they are termed — whose seats
were in the extreme south of Palestine. It was from
'Ephron the Hittite' that Abraham bought the cave
of Machpelah at Hebron (Gen. xxiii.), and Esau ' took
to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and
Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite' (Gen.
xxvi. 34), or, as it is given elsewhere, ' Adah the daughter
of Elon the Hittite' (Gen. xxxvi. 2). It must be to
these Hittites of the south that the ethnographical
table in the tenth chapter of Genesis refers when it is
said that ' Canaan begat Sidon his first-born, and Heth'
(ver. 15), and in no other way can we explain the state-
ment of Ezekiel (xvi. 3, 45) that * the father' of Jerusalem
' was an Amorite and ' its ' mother a Hittite.' ' Uriah
the Hittite,' too, the trusty officer of David, must have
come from the neighbourhood of Hebron, where David
had reigned for seven years, rather than from among
the distant Hittites of the north. Besides the latter
there was thus a Hittite population which clustered
round Hebron, and to whom the origin of Jerusalem
was partly due.

14 THE HITTITES.

Now it will be noticed that the prophet ascribes the
foundation of Jerusalem to the Amorite as well as the
Hittite. The Jebusites, accordingly, from whose hands
the city was wrested by David, must have belonged
to one or other of these two great races ; perhaps,
indeed, to both. At all events, we find elsewhere that
the Hittites and Amorites are closely interlocked to-
gether. It was so at Hebron, where in the time of
Abraham not only Ephron the Hittite dwelt, but also
the three sons of the Amorite Mamre (Gen. xiv. 13).
The Egyptian monuments show that the two nations
were similarly confederated together at Kadesh on the
Orontes. Kadesh was a Hittite stronghold ; nevertheless
it is described as being 'in the land of the Amaur' or
Amorites, and its king is depicted with the physical
characteristics of the Amorite, and not of the Hittite.
Further north, in the country which the Hittites had
made peculiarly their own, cities existed which bore
names, it would seem, compounded with that of the
Amorite, and the common Assyrian title of the district
in which Damascus stood, Gar-emeris, is best explained
as 'the Gar of the Amorites.' Shechem was taken
by Jacob ' out of the hand of the Amorite' (Gen. xlviii.
22), and the Amorite kingdom of Og and Sihon included
large tracts on the eastern side of the Jordan. South
of Palestine the block of mountains in which the
sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea stood was an Amorite
possession (Gen. xiv. 7, Deut i. 19, 20) ; and we learn
from Numb. xiii. 29, that while the Amalekites dwelt
'in the land of the south' and the Canaanites by the
sea and in the valley of the Jordan, the Hittites and
Jebusites and Amorites lived together in the mountains
of the interior. Among the five kings of the Amorites

THE HITTITES OF THE BIBLE. 1 5

against whom Joshua fought (Josh. x. 5) were the king
of Jerusalem and the king of Hebron.

The Hittites and Amorites were therefore mingled
together in the mountains of Palestine like the two
races which ethnologists tell us go to form the modern
Kelt. But the Egyptian monuments teach us that they
were of very different origin and character. The Hittites
were a people with yellow skins and 'Mongoloid'
features, whose receding foreheads, oblique eyes, and
protruding upper jaws, are represented as faithfully
on their own monuments as they are on those of Egypt,
so that we cannot accuse the Egyptian artists of cari-
caturing their enemies. If the Egyptians have made
the Hittites ugly, it was because they were so in reality.
The Amorites, on the contrary, were a tall and handsome
people. They are depicted with white skins, blue eyes,
and reddish hair, all the characteristics, in fact, of the
white race. Mr.. Petrie points out their resemblance
to the Dardanians of Asia Minor, who form an inter-
mediate link between the white-skinned tribes of the
Greek seas and the fair-complexioned Libyans of
Northern Africa. The latter are still found in large
numbers in the mountainous regions which stretch
eastward from Morocco, and are usually known among
the French under the name of Kabyles. The traveller
who first meets with them in Algeria cannot fail to
be struck by their likeness to a certain part of the
population in the British Isles. Their clear-white
freckled skins, their blue eyes, their golden-red hair
and tall stature, remind him of the fair Kelts of an
Irish village ; and when we find that their skulls, which
are of the so-called dolichocephalic or 'long-headed'
type, are the same as the skulls discovered in the

l6 THE HITTITES.

prehistoric cromlechs of the country they still inhabit,
we may conclude that they represent the modern
descendants of the white-skinned Libyans of the
Egyptian monuments.

In Palestine also we still come across representatives
of a fair-complexioned blue-eyed race, in whom we may
see the descendants of the ancient Amorites, just as we
see in the Kabyles the descendants of the ancient
Libyans. We know that the Amorite type continued
to exist in Judah long after the Israelitish conquest
of Canaan. The captives taken from the southern
cities of Judah by Shishak in the time of Rehoboam,
and depicted by him upon the walls of the great temple
of Karnak, are people of Amorite origin. Their ' regular
profile of sub-aquiline cast,' as Mr. Tomkins describes it,
their high cheek-bones and martial expression, are the
features of the Amorites, and not of the Jews.

Tallness of stature has always been a distinguishing
characteristic of the white race. Hence it was that the
Anakim, the Amorite inhabitants of Hebron, seemed
to the Hebrew spies to be as giants, while they them-
selves were but ' as grasshoppers ' by the side of them
(Numb. xiii. 33). After the Israelitish invasion remnants
of the Anakim were left in Gaza and Gath and Ash-
kelon (Josh. xi. 22), and in the time of David Goliath
of Gath and his gigantic family were objects of dread
to their neighbours (2 Sam. xxi. 15-22).

It is clear, then, that the Amorites of Canaan belonged
to the same white race as the Libyans of Northern
Africa, and like them preferred the mountains to the
hot plains and valleys below. The Libyans themselves
belonged to a race which can be traced through the
peninsula of Spain and the western side of France into

THE HITTITES OF THE BIBLE. I J

the British Isles. Now it is curious that wherever this
partioular branch of the white race has extended it has
been accompanied by a particular form of cromlech,
or sepulchral chamber built of large uncut stones. The
stones are placed upright in the ground and covered
over with other large slabs, the whole chamber being
subsequently concealed under a tumulus of small stones
or earth. Not unfrequently the entrance to the crom-
lech is approached by a sort of corridor. These crom-
lechs are found in Britain, in France, in Spain, in
Northern Africa, and in Palestine, more especially on
the eastern side of the Jordan, and the skulls that have
been exhumed from them are the skulls of men of the
dolichocephalic or long-headed type.

It has been necessary to enter at this length into what
has been discovered concerning the Amorites by recent
research, in order to show how carefully they should
be distinguished from the Hittites with whom they
afterwards intermingled. They must have been in pos-
session of Palestine long before the Hittites arrived
there. They extended over a much wider area, since
there are no traces of the Hittites at Shechem or on the
eastern side of the Jordan, where the Amorites estab-
lished two powerful kingdoms ; while the earliest mention
of the Amorites in the Bible (Gen. xiv. 7) describes
them as dwelling at Hazezon-tamar, or En-gedi, on the
shores of the Dead Sea, where no Hittites are ever
known to have settled. The Hittite colony in Palestine,
moreover, was confined to a small district in the moun-
tains of Judah : their strength lay far away in the north,
where the Amorites were comparatively weak. It is
true that Kadesh on the Orontes was in the hands of
the Hittites ; but it is also true that it was ' in the land

B

J 8 THE HITTITES.

of the Amorites,' and this implies that they were its
original occupants. We must regard the Amorites as
the earlier population, among a part of whom the Hittites
in later days settled and intermarried. At what epoch
that event took place we are still unable to say.

CHAPTER II.

THE HITTITES ON THE MONUMENTS OF EGYPT
AND ASSYRIA.

IN the preceding chapter we have seen what the
Bible has to tell us about ' the children of Heth.5
They were an important people in the north of Syria who
were ruled by ' kings ' in the days of Solomon, and
whose power was formidable to their Syrian neighbours.
But there was also a branch of them established in the
extreme south of Palestine, where they inhabited the
mountains along with the Amorites, and had taken a
share in the foundation of Jerusalem. It was from one
of the latter, Ephron the son of Zohar, that Abraham
had purchased the cave of Machpelah at Hebron ; and
one of the wives of Esau was of Hittite descent. In
later times Uriah the Hittite was one of the chief
officers of David, and his wife Bath-sheba was not only
the mother of Solomon, but also the distant ancestress
of Christ. For us, therefore, these Hittites of Judaea
have a very special and peculiar interest.

The decipherment of the inscriptions of Egypt and
Assyria has thrown a new light upon their origin and
history, and shown that the race to which they belonged
once played a leading part in the history of the civilised
East. On the Egyptian monuments they are called
Kheta (or better Khata), on those of Assyria Khatta
or Khate, both words being exact equivalents of the
Hebrew Kheth and Khitti.

The Kheta or Hittites first appear upon the scene
B 2

20 THE HITTITES.

in the time of the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty. The
foreign rule of the Hyksos or Shepherd princes had
been overthrown, Egypt had recovered its independence,
and its kings determined to retaliate upon Asia the suf-
ferings brought upon their own country by the Asiatic
invader. The war, which commenced with driving the
Asiatic out of the Delta, ended by attacking him in his
own lands of Palestine and Syria. Thothmes I. (about
B.C. 1600) marched to the banks of the Euphrates and
set up ' the boundary of the empire ' in the country of
Naharina. Naharina was the Biblical Aram Naharaim
or ' Syria of the two rivers,' better known, perhaps, as
Mesopotamia, and its situation has been ascertained by
recent discoveries. It was the district called Mitanni
by the Assyrians, who describe it as being ' in front of
the land of the Hittites,' on the eastern bank of the
Euphrates, between Carchemish and the mouth of the
river Balikh. In the age of Thothmes I., it was the
leading state in Western Asia. The Hittites had not
as yet made themselves formidable, and the most
dangerous enemy the Egyptian monarch was called
upon to face were the people over whom Chushan-risha-
thaim was king in later days (Judg. iii. 8). It is not
until the reign of his son, Thothmes III., that the
Hittites come to the front. They are distinguished as
' Great ' and * Little/ the latter name perhaps denoting
the Hittites of the south of Judah. However this may
be, Thothmes received tribute from 'the king of the
great land of the Kheta/ which consisted of gold, negro-
slaves, men-servants and maid-servants, oxen and ser-
vants. Whether the Hittites were as yet in possession
of Kadesh we do not know. If they werej they would
have taken part in the struggle against the Egyptians

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. %\

which took place around the walls of Megiddo, and was
decided in favour of Thothmes only after a long series
of campaigns.

Before Thothmes died, he had made Egypt mistress
of Palestine and Syria as far as the banks of the
Euphrates and the land of Naharina. One of the bravest
of his captains tells us on the walls of his tomb how
he had captured prisoners in the neighbourhood of
Aleppo, and had waded through the waters of the
Euphrates when his master assaulted the mighty Hittite
fortress of Carchemish. Kadesh on the Orontes had
already fallen, and for a time all Western Asia did
homage to the Egyptian monarch, even the king of
Assyria sending him presents and courting, as it would
seem, his alliance. The Egyptian empire touched the
land of Naharina on the east and the ' great land of the
Hittites ' on the north.

But neighbours so powerful could not remain long at
peace. A fragmentary inscription records that the first
campaign of Thothmes IV., the grandson of Thothmes
III., was directed against the Hittites, and Amenophis
III., the son and successor of Thothmes IV., found it
necessary to support himself by entering into matri-
monial alliance with the king of Naharina. The marriage
had strange consequences for Egypt. The new queen
brought with her not only a foreign name and foreign
customs, but a foreign faith as well. She refused to
worship Amun of Thebes and the other gods of Egypt,
and clung to the religion of her fathers, whose supreme
object of adoration was the solar disk. The Hittite
monuments themselves bear witness to the prevalence
of this worship in Northern Syria. The winged solar
disk appears above the figure of a king which has been

22 THE HITTITES.

brought from Birejik on the Euphrates to the British
Museum ; and even at Boghaz Keui, far away in Northern
Asia Minor, the winged solar disk has been carved by
Hittite sculptors upon the rock.

Amenophis IV., the son of Amenophis III., was edu-
cated in the faith of his mother, and after his accession
to the throne endeavoured to impose the new creed
upon his unwilling subjects. The powerful priesthood
of Thebes withstood him for a while, but at last he
assumed the name of Khu-n-Aten. 'the refulgence of
the solar disk/ and quitting Thebes and its ancient
temples he built himself a new capital dedicated to the
new divinity. It stood on the eastern bank of the Nile,
to the north of Assiout, and its long line of ruins is now
known to the natives under the name of Tel el-Amarna.
The city was filled with the adherents of the new creed,
and their tombs are yet to be found in the cliffs that
enclose the desert on the east. Its existence, however,
was of no long duration. After the death of Khu-n-
Aten, 'the heretic king/ his throne was occupied by one
or two princes who had embraced his faith ; but their
reigns were brief, and they were succeeded by a monarch
who returned once more to the religion of his fore-
fathers. The capital of Khu-n-Aten was deserted, and
the objects found upon its site show that it was never
again inhabited.

Among its ruins a discovery has recently been made
which casts an unexpected light upon the history of the
Oriental world in the century before the Exodus. A
large collection of clay tablets has been found, similar
to those disinterred from the mounds of Nineveh and
Babylonia, and like the latter inscribed in cuneiform
characters and in the Assyro-Babylonian language.

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 2$

They consist for the most part of letters and despatches
sent to Khu-n-Aten and his father, Amenophis III., by
the governors and rulers of Palestine, Syria, Mesopo-
tamia and Babylonia, and they prove that at that time
Babylonian was the international language, and the
complicated cuneiform system of writing the common
means of intercourse, of the educated world. Many of
them were transferred by Khu-n-Aten from the royal
archives of Thebes to his new city at Tel el-Amarna ;
the rest were received and stored up after the new city
had been built. We learn from them that the Hittites
were already pressing southward, and were causing
serious alarm to the governors and allies of the Egyptian
king. One of the tablets is a despatch from Northern
Syria, praying the Egyptian monarch to send assistance
against them as soon as possible.

The 'heresy' of Khu-n-Aten brought trouble and dis-
union into Egypt, and his immediate successors seem
to have been forced to retire from Syria. So far from
being able to aid their allies, the Egyptian generals
found themselves no match for the Hittite armies.
Ramses I., the founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, was
compelled to conclude a treaty, defensive and offensive,
with the Hittite king Saplel, and thus to recognise that
Hittite power was on an equality with that of Egypt.

From this time forward it becomes possible to speak
of a Hittite empire. Kadesh was once more in Hittite
hands, and the influence formerly enjoyed by Egypt
in Palestine and Syria was now enjoyed by its rival.
The rude mountaineers of the Taurus had descended
into the fertile plains of the south, interrupting the in-
tercourse between Babylonia and Canaan, and super-
seding the cuneiform characters of Chaldaea by their

24 THE HITTITES.

own hieroglyphic writing. From henceforth the Baby-
lonian language ceased to be the language of diplomacy
and education.

With Seti I., the son and successor of Ramses, the
power of Egypt again revived. He drove the Beduin
and other marauders across the frontiers of the desert
and pushed the war into Syria itself. The cities of the
Philistines again received Egyptian garrisons ; Seti
marched his armies as far as the Orontes, fell suddenly
upon Kadesh and took it by storm. The war was now
begun between Egypt and the Hittites, which lasted for
the next half-century. It left Egypt utterly exhausted,
and, in spite of the vainglorious boasts of its scribes
and poets, glad to make a peace which virtually handed
over to her rivals the possession of Asia Minor.

But at first success waited on the arms of Seti. He
led his armies once more to the Euphrates and the bor-
ders of Naharina, and compelled Mautal, the Hittite
monarch, to sue for peace. The natives of the Lebanon
received him with acclamations, and cut down their
cedars for his ships on the Nile.

When Seti died, however, the Hittites were again in
possession of Kadesh, and war had broken out between
them and his son Ramses II. The long reign of Ram-
ses II. was a ceaseless struggle against his formidable
foes. The war was waged with varying success. Some-
times victory inclined to the Egyptians, sometimes to
their Hittite enemies. Its chief result was to bring
ruin and disaster upon the cities of the Canaanites.
Their land was devastated by the hostile armies which
traversed it ; their towns were sacked, now by the
Hittite invaders from the north, now by the soldiers
of Ramses from the south. It was little wonder that

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 2,$

their inhabitants fled to island fastnesses, like Tyre, de-
serting the city on the mainland, which an Egyptian
traveller of the age of Ramses tells us had been burnt
not long before. We can understand now why they
offered so slight a resistance to the invading Israelites.
The Exodus took place shortly after the death of
Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression ; and when
Joshua entered Palestine he found there a disunited
people and a country exhausted by the long and
terrible wars of the preceding century. The way had
been prepared by the Hittites for the Israelitish con-
quest of Canaan.

Pentaur, a sort of Egyptian poet laureate, has left
us an epic which records the heroic deeds of Ramses
in his first campaign against the Hittites. The actual
event which gave occasion to it was an act of bravery
performed by the Egyptian monarch before the walls
of Kadesh ; but the poet has transformed him into a
hero capable of superhuman deeds, and has thus pro-
duced an epic poem which reminds us of the Greek
Iliad. Its details, however, afford a welcome insight
into the history of the time, and show to what a height
of power the Hittite empire had advanced. Its king
could summon to his aid vassal-allies not only from
Syria, but from the distant regions of Asia Minor as
well. The merchants of Carchemish, the islanders of
Arvad, acknowledged his supremacy along with the
Dardanians of the Troad and the Maeonians of Lydia.
The Hittite empire was already a reality, extending
from the banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the
iEgean, and including both the cultured Semites of
Syria and the rude barbarians of the Greek seas.

It was in the fifth year of the reign of Ramses (b. C.

26 THE HITTITES.

1383) that the event occurred which was celebrated
by the Egyptian Homer. The Egyptian armies had
advanced to the Orontes and the neighbourhood of
Kadesh. There two Beduin spies were captured, who
averred that the Hittite king was far away in the north
with his forces, encamped at Aleppo. But the in-
telligence was false. The Hittites and their allies, multi-
tudinous as the sand on the sea-shore, were really lying
in ambush hard by. In their train were the soldiers
of Naharina, of the Dardanians and of Mysia, along
with numberless other peoples who now owned the
Hittite sway. The Hittite monarch 'had left no people
on his road without bringing them with him. Their
number was endless ; nothing like it had ever been
before. They covered mountains and valleys like
grasshoppers for their number. He had not left silver
or gold with his people ; he had taken away all their
goods and possessions to give it to the people who
accompanied him to the war.'

The whole host was concealed in ambush on the
north-west side of Kadesh. Suddenly they arose and
fell upon the terrified Egyptians by the waters of the
Lake of the Amorites, the modern Lake of Horns.
The chariots and horses charged 'the legion of Ra-
Hormakhis,' and ' foot and horse gave way before them.'
The news was carried to the Pharaoh. ' He arose like
his father Month, he grasped his weapons, and put on
his armour like Baal.' His steed 'Victory in Thebes'
bore him in his chariot into the midst of the foe. Then
he looked behind him, and behold he was alone. The
bravest heroes of the Hittite host beset his retreat,
and 2500 hostile chariots were around him. He was
abandoned in the midst of the enemy : not a prince,

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 2 J

not a captain was with him. Then in his extreme
need the Pharaoh called upon his god Amun. ' Where
art thou, my father Amun? If this means that the
father has forgotten his son, have I done anything
without thy knowledge, or have I not gone and followed
the precepts of thy mouth? Never were the precepts
of thy mouth transgressed, nor have I broken thy com-
mandments in any respect. Sovran lord of Egypt, who
makest the peoples that withstand thee to bow down,
what are these people of Asia to thy heart? Amun
brings them low who know not God. . . . Behold now,
Amun, I am in the midst of many unknown peoples
in great number. All have united themselves, and I am
all alone : no other is with me ; my warriors and my
charioteers have deserted me. I called to them, and
not one of them heard my voice.'

The petition of Ramses was heard. Amun ' reached
out his hand,' and declared that he was come to help
the Pharaoh against his foes. Then Ramses was
inspired with supernatural strength. \ I hurled,' he is
made to say, ' the dart with my right hand, I fought with
my left hand. I was like Baal in his hour before their
sight. I had found 2500 chariots ; I was in the midst
of them ; but they were dashed in pieces before my
horses.' The ground was covered with the slain, and the
Hittite king fled in terror. His princes again gathered
round the Pharaoh, and again Ramses scattered them
in a moment. Six times did he charge the Hittite host,
and six times they broke and were slaughtered. The
strength of Baal was ' in all the limbs ' of the Egyptian
king.

Now at last his servants came to his aid. But the
victory had already been won, and all that remained

% 8 THE HITTITES.

was for the Pharaoh to upbraid his army for their
cowardice and sloth. ' Have I not given what is good
to each of you/ he exclaims, ' that ye have left me, so
that I was alone in the midst of hostile hosts ? For-
saken by you, my life Was in peril, and you breathed
tranquilly, and I was alone. Could you not have said
in your hearts that I was a rampart of iron to you ? '
It was the horses of the royal chariot and not the troops
who deserved reward, and who would obtain it when the
king arrived safely home. So Ramses 'returned in
victory and strength ; he had smitten hundreds of
thousands all together in one place with his arm.'

At daybreak the following morning he desired to
renew the conflict. The serpent that glowed on the
front of his diadem 'spat fire' in the face of his
enemies. They were overawed by the deeds of valour
he had accomplished single-handed the day before, and
feared to resume the fight. 'They remained afar off,
and threw themselves down on the earth, to entreat the
king in the sight [of his army]. And the king had
power over them and slew them without their being
able to escape. As bodies tumbled before his horses,
so they lay there stretched out all together in their
blood. Then the king of the hostile people of the
Hittites sent a messenger to pray piteously to the great
name of the king, speaking thus : " Thou art Ra-Hor-
makhis. Thy terror is upon the land of the Hittites,
for thou hast broken the neck of the Hittites for ever
and ever." '

The army of Ramses seconded the prayer of the
herald that the Egyptians and Hittites should hence-
forward be 'brothers together.' A treaty was accord-
ingly made ; but it was soon broken, and it was not

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 20.

until sixteen years later that peace was finally estab-
lished between the two rival powers.

The act of personal prowess upon which the heroic
poem of Pentaur was built may have covered what had
really been a check to the Egyptian arms. At all
events, it is significant that no attempt was made to
capture Kadesh, and that even the poet acknowledges
how ready the Egyptian soldiers were to come to terms
with their enemies. Equally significant is the fact that
the war against the Hittites still went on ; in the eighth
year of the Pharaoh's reign Palestine was overrun and
certain cities captured, including Dapur or Tabor 'in
the land of the Amorites/ while other campaigns were
directed against Ashkelon, in the south, and the city of
Tunep or Tennib, in the north. When a lasting treaty
of peace was at last concluded in the twenty-first year
of Ramses, its conditions show that ' the great king
of the Hittites ' treated on equal terms with the great
king of Egypt, and that even Ramses himself, whom
later legend magnified into the Sesostris of the Greeks,
was fain to acknowledge the power of his Hittite ad-
versaries. The treaty was sealed by the marriage of
the Pharaoh with the daughter of the Hittite king.

The treaty, of which we possess the Egyptian text in
full, was a very remarkable one, not only because it
is the first treaty of the kind of which we know, but
also on account of its contents. It ran as follows 1 : —

' In the year twenty-one, in the month Tybi, on the
aist day of the month, in the reign of King Ramessu
Miamun, the dispenser of life eternally and for ever,
the worshipper of the divinities Amon-Ra (of Thebes),

1 This translation is the one given by Bnigsch in the second edition of
the English translation of his History of Egypt.

30 THE HITTITES.

Hormakhu (of Heliopolis), Ptah (of Memphis), Mut the
lady of the Asher-lake (near Karnak), and Khonsu, the
peace-loving, there took place a public sitting on the
throne of Horus among the living, resembling his father
Hormakhu in eternity, in eternity, evermore.

1 On that day the king was in the city of Ramses,
presenting his peace-offerings to his father Amon-Ra,
and to the gods Hormakhu-Tum, to Ptah of Ramessu-
Miamun, and to Sutekh, the strong, the son of the god-
dess of heaven Nut, that they might grant to him many
thirty years' jubilee feasts, and innumerable happy years,
and the subjection of all peoples under his feet for ever.

1 Then came forward the ambassador of the king, and
the Adon [of his house, by name . . . . , and presented the
ambassadors] of the great king of Kheta, Kheta-sira,
who were sent to Pharaoh to propose friendship with
the king Ramessu Miamun, the dispenser of life eter-
nally and for ever, just as his father the Sun-god [dis-
penses it] each day.

1 This is the copy of the contents of the silver tablet,
which the great king of Kheta, Kheta-sira, had caused
to be made, and which was presented to the Pharaoh
by the hand of his ambassador Tartisebu and his am-
bassador Ra-mes, to propose friendship with the king
Ramessu Miamun, the bull among the princes, who
places his boundary-marks where it pleases him in all
lands.

'The treaty which had been proposed by the great
king of Kheta, Kheta-sira, the powerful, the son of
Maur-sira, the powerful, the son of the son of Sapalil,
the great king of Kheta, the powerful, on the silver
tablet, to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt,
the powerful, the son of Meneptah Seti, the great prince

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 3 1

of Egypt, the powerful, the son's son of Ramessu L, the
great king of Egypt, the powerful, — this was a good
treaty for friendship and concord, which assured peace
[and established concord] for a longer period than was
previously the case, since a long time. For it was the
agreement of the great prince of Egypt in common with
the great king of Kheta, that the god should not allow
enmity to exist between them, on the basis of a treaty.

'To wit, in the times of Mautal, the great king of
Kheta, my brother, he was at war with [Meneptah Seti]
the great prince of Egypt.

1 But now, from this very day forward, Kheta-sira, the
great king of Kheta, shall look upon this treaty, so that
the agreement may remain, which the god Ra has made,
which the god Sutekh has made, for the people of Egypt
and for the people of Kheta, that there should be no
more enmity between them for evermore.'

And these are the contents : —

1 Kheta-sira, the great king of Kheta, is in covenant
with Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, from
this very day forward, that there may subsist a good
friendship and a good understanding between them for
evermore.

' He shall be my ally ; he shall be my friend : I will
be his ally ; I will be his friend : for ever.

1 To wit, in the time of Mautal, the great king of Kheta,
his brother, after his murder Kheta-sira placed himself
on the throne of his father as the great king of Kheta.
I strove for friendship with Ramessu Miamun, the great
prince of Egypt, and it is [my wish] that the friendship
and the concord may be better than the friendship and
the concord which before existed, and which was broken.

' I declare : I, the great king of Kheta, will hold to-

32 THE HITTITES.

gether with [Ramessu Miamun], the great prince of
Egypt, in good friendship and in good concord. The
sons of the sons of the great king of Kheta will hold
together and be friends with the sons of the sons of
Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt.

* In virtue of our treaty for concord, and in virtue of
our agreement [for friendship, let the people] of Egypt
[be united in friendship] with the people of Kheta.
Let a like friendship and a like concord subsist in such
manner for ever.

' Never let enmity rise between them. Never let the
great king of Kheta invade the land of Egypt, if any-
thing shall have been plundered from it. Never let
Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, over-step
the boundary of the land [of Kheta, if anything shall
have been plundered] from it.

1 The just treaty, which existed in the times of Sapalil,
the great king of Kheta, likewise the just treaty which
existed in the times of Mautal, the great king of Kheta,
my brother, that will I keep.

' Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, de-
clares that he will keep it. [We have come to an un-
derstanding about it] with one another at the same time
from this day forward, and we will fulfil it, and will act
in a righteous manner.

1 If another shall come as an enemy to the lands of
Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, then let
him send an embassy to the great king of Kheta to this
effect : " Come ! and make me stronger than him."
Then shall the great king of Kheta [assemble his war-
riors], and the king of Kheta [shall come] to smite his
enemies. But if it should not be the wish of the great
king of Kheta to march out in person, then he shall

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 33

send his warriors and his chariots, that they may smite
his enemies. Otherwise [he would incur] the wrath of
Ramessu Miamun, [the great prince of Egypt. And
if Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, should
banish] for a crime subjects from his country, and they
should commit another crime against him, then shall
he (the king of Kheta) come forward to kill them. The
great king of Kheta shall act in common with [the great
prince of Egypt.

' If another should come as an enemy to the lands
of the great king of Kheta, then shall he send an em-
bassy to the great prince of Egypt with the request
that] he would come in great power to kill his enemies ;
and if it be the intention of Ramessu Miamun, the great
prince of Egypt, to come (himself), he shall [smite the
enemies of the great king of Kheta. If it is not the
intention of the great prince of Egypt to march Out
in person, then he shall send his warriors and his two-]
horse chariots, while he sends back the answer to the
people of Kheta.

1 If any subjects of the great king of Kheta have of-
fended him, then Ramessu Miamun, [the great prince
of Egypt, shall not receive them in his land, but shall
advance to kill them] .... the oath, with the wish to
say : I will go ... . until .... Ramessu Miamun, the
great prince of Egypt, living for ever .... that he may
be given for them (?) to the lord, and that Ramessu
Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, may speak accord-
ing to his agreement evermore. . . .

' [If servants shall flee away] out of the territories of
Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, to betake
themselves to the great king of Kheta, the great king of
Kheta shall not receive them, but the great king of Kheta

C

34 THE HITTITES.

shall give them up to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince
of Egypt, [that they may receive their punishment.

1 If servants of Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of
Egypt, leave his country], and betake themselves to the
land of Kheta, to make themselves servants of another,
they shall not remain in the land of Kheta ; [they shall
be given up] to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of
Egypt.

' If, on the other hand, there should flee away [servants
of the great king of Kheta, in order to betake them-
selves to] Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt,
[in order to stay in Egypt], then those who have come
from the land of Kheta in order to betake themselves
to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, shall
not be [received by] Ramessu Miamun, the great prince
of Egypt, [but] the great prince of Egypt, Ramessu
Miamun, [shall deliver them up to the great kingof Kheta].

' [And if there shall leave the land of Kheta persons]
of skilful mind, so that they come to the land of Egypt
to make themselves servants of another, then Ramessu
Miamun will not allow them to settle, he will deliver
them up to the great king of Kheta.

1 When this [treaty] shall be known [by the inhabit-
ants of the land of Egypt and of the land of Kheta,
then shall they not offend against it, for all that stands
written on] the silver tablet, these are words which will
have been approved by the company of the gods among
the male gods and among the female gods, among those
namely of the land of Egypt. They are witnesses for
me [to the validity] of these words, [which they have
allowed.

'This is the catalogue of the gods of the land of
Kheta :—

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 3$

(1) * Sutekh of the city] of Tunep *,

(2) ' Sutekh of the land of Kheta,

(3) ' Sutekh of the city of Arnema,

(4) ' Sutekh of the city of Zaranda,

(5) ' Sutekh of the city of Pilqa,

(6) ' Sutekh of the city of Khisasap,

(7) ' Sutekh of the city of Sarsu,

(8) ' Sutekh of the city of Khilip (Aleppo),

(9) ' Sutekh of the city of . . . .,

(10) ' Sutekh of the city of Sarpina,

(11) ' Astarta2 of the land of Kheta,

(12) ' The god of the land of Zaiath-khirri,

(13) ' The god of the land of Ka . . .,

(14) - The god of the land of Kher . . .,

(15) ' The goddess of the city of Akh . . .,

(16) ' [The goddess of the city of . . .] and of the land

of A . . ua,

(17) cThe goddess of the land of Zaina,

(18) ' The god of the land of . . nath . . er.

1 [I have invoked these male and these] female [gods
of the land of Kheta, these are the gods] of the land,
[as witnesses to] my oath. [With them have been asso-
ciated the male and the female gods] of the mountains
and of the rivers of the land of Kheta, the gods of the
land of Qazauadana, Amon, Ra, Sutekh, and the male
and female gods of the land of Egypt, of the earth, of
the sea, of the winds, and of the storms.

'With regard to the commandment which the silver
tablet contains for the people of Kheta and for the
people of Egypt, he who shall not observe it shall be
given over [to the vengeance] of the company of the

1 Now Tennib in Northern Syria.

2 Also read Antarata.

C 2

36 THE HITTITES.

gods of Kheta, and shall be given over [to the ven-
geance] of the gods of Egypt, [he] and his house and
his servants.

'But he who shall observe these commandments
which the silver tablet contains, whether he be of the
people of Kheta or [of the people of Egypt], because
he has not neglected them, the company of the gods
of the land of Kheta and the company of the gods of
the land of Egypt shall secure his reward and preserve
life [for him] and his servants and those who are with
him and who are with his servants.

\ If there flee away of the inhabitants [one from the
land of Egypt], or two or three, and they betake them-
selves to the great king of Kheta [the great king of
Kheta shall not] allow them [to remain, but he shall]
deliver them up, and send them back to Ramessu
Miamun, the great prince of Egypt.

' Now with respect to the [inhabitant of the land of
Egypt], who is delivered up to Ramessu Miamun, the
great prince of Egypt, his fault shall not be avenged
upon him, his [house] shall not be taken away, nor his
[wife] nor his [children]. There shall not be [put to
death his mother, neither shall he be punished in his
eyes, nor on his mouth, nor on the soles of his feet],
so that thus no crime shall be brought forward against
him.

1 In the same way shall it be done if inhabitants of
the land of Kheta take to flight, be it one alone, or two,
or three, to betake themselves to Ramessu Miamun, the
great prince of Egypt. Ramessu Miamun, the great
prince of Egypt, shall cause them to be seized, and
they shall be delivered up to the great king of Kheta.

1 [With regard to] him who [is delivered up, his crime

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. $J

shall not be brought forward against him]. His [house]
shall not be taken away, nor his wives, nor his children,
nor his people ; his mother shall not be put to death ;
he shall not be punished in his eyes, nor on his mouth,
nor on the soles of his feet, nor shall any accusation
be brought forward against him.

1 That which is in the middle of this silver tablet and
on its front side is a likeness of the god Sutekh ....
surrounded by an inscription to this effect : " This is
the [picture] of the god Sutekh, the king of heaven
and [earth]." At the time (?) of the treaty which Kheta-
sira, the great king of the Kheta, made . . . .'

This compact of offensive and defensive alliance proves
more forcibly than any description the position to which
the Hittite empire had attained. It ranked side by side
with the Egypt of Ramses, the last great Pharaoh who
ever ruled over the land of the Nile. With Egypt it
had contested the sovereignty of Western Asia, and
had compelled the Egyptian monarch to consent to
peace. Egypt and the Hittites were now the two lead-
ing powers of the world.

The treaty was ratified by the visit of the Hittite
prince Kheta-sira to Egypt in his national costume,
and the marriage of his daughter to Ramses in the
thirty- fourth year of the Pharaoh's reign (b. C. 1354).
She took the Egyptian name of Ur-maa Noferu-Ra,
and her beauty was celebrated by the scribes of the
court. Syria was handed over to the Hittites as their
legitimate possession ; Egypt never again attempted
to wrest it from them, and if the Hittite yoke was to
be shaken off it must be through the efforts of the
Syrians themselves. For a while, however, 'the great
king of the Hittites' preserved his power intact; his

38 THE HITTITES.

supremacy was acknowledged from the Euphrates in
the east to the ^Egean Sea in the west, from Kappa-
dokia in the north to the tribes of Canaan in the south.
Even Naharina, once the antagonist of the Egyptian
Pharaohs, acknowledged his sovereignty, and Pethor,
the home of Balaam, at the, junction of the Euphrates
and the Sajur, became a Hittite town. The cities of
Philistia, indeed, still sent tribute to the Egyptian ruler,
but northwards the Hittite sway seems to have been
omnipotent. The Amorites of the mountains allied
themselves with ' the children of Heth,' and the Canaan-
ites in the lowlands looked to them for protection. The
Israelites had not as yet thrust themselves between the
two great powers of the Oriental world : it was still pos-
sible for a Hittite sovereign to visit Egypt, and for an
Egyptian traveller to explore the cities of Canaan.

After sixty-six years of vainglorious splendour the
long reign of Ramses II. came to an end (B.C. 1322).
The Israelites had toiled for him in building Pithom and
Raamses, and on the accession of his son and successor,
Meneptah, they demanded permission to depart from
Egypt. The history of the Exodus is too well known
to be recounted here ; it marks the close of the period
of conquest and prosperity which Egypt had enjoyed
under the kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth
dynasties. Early in his reign Meneptah had sent corn
by sea to the Hittites at a time when there was a famine
in Syria, showing that the peaceful relations established
during the reign of his father were still in force. De-
spatches dated in his third year also exist, which speak
of letters and messengers passing to and fro between
Egypt and Phoenicia, and make it clear that Gaza was
still garrisoned by Egyptian troops. But in the fifth

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 39

year of his reign Egypt was invaded by a confederacy
of white-skinned tribes from Libya and the shores of
Asia Minor, who overran the Delta and threatened the
very existence of the Egyptian monarchy. Egypt,
however, was saved by a battle in which the invading
host was almost annihilated, but not before it had itself
been half drained of its resources, and weakened
correspondingly.

Not many years afterwards the dynasty of Ramses
the Oppressor descended to its grave in bloodshed and
disaster. Civil war broke out, followed by foreign
invasion, and the crown was seized by ' Arisu the
Phoenician.' But happier times again arrived. Once
more the Egyptians obeyed a native prince, and the
Twentieth Dynasty was founded. Its one great king was
Ramses III., who rescued his country from two invasions
more formidable even than that which had been beaten
back by Meneptah. Like the latter, they were conducted
by the Libyans and the nations of the Greek seas, and
the invaders were defeated partly on the land, partly on
the water. The maritime confederacy included the
Teukrians of the Troad, the Lykians and the Philistines,
perhaps also the natives of Sardinia and Sicily. They
had flung themselves in the first instance on the coasts
of Phoenicia, and spread inland as far as Carchemish.
Laden with spoil, they fixed their camp ' in the land of
the Amorites/ and then descended upon Egypt. The
Hittites of Carchemish and the people of Matenau of
Naharina came in their train, and a long and terrible
battle took place on the sea-shore between Raphia and
Pelusium. The Egyptians were victorious ; the ships
of the enemy were sunk, and their soldiers slain or
captured. Egypt was once more filled with captives,

40 THE HITTITES.

and the flame of its former glory flickered again for a
moment before finally going out.

The list of prisoners shows that the Hittite tribes had
taken part in the struggle, Carchemish, Aleppo, and
Pethor being specially named as having sent contingents
to the war. They had probably marched by land, while
their allies from Asia Minor and the islands of the
Mediterranean had attacked the Egyptian coast in
ships. So far as we can gather, the Hittite populations
no longer acknowledged the suzerainty of an imperial
sovereign, but were divided into independent states.
It would seem, too, that they had lost their hold upon
Mysia and the far west. The Tsekkri and the Leku,
the Shardaina and the Shakalsha are said to have
attacked their cities before proceeding on their south-
ward march. If we can trust the statement, we must
conclude that the Hittite empire had already broken
up. The tribes of Asia Minor it had conquered were in
revolt, and had carried the war into the homes of their
former masters. However this may be, it is certain that
from this time forward the power of the Hittites in Syria
began to wane. Little by little the Aramaean population
pushed them back into their northern fastnesses, and
throughout the period of the Israelitish judges we never
hear even of their name. The Hittite chieftains advance
no longer to the south of Kadesh ; and though Israel
was once oppressed by a king who had come from the
north, he was king of Aram-Naharaim, the Naharina of
the Egyptian texts, and not a Hittite prince.

Where the Egyptian monuments desert us, those of
Assyria come to our help. The earliest notices of the
Hittites found in the cuneiform texts are contained in a
great work on astronomy and astrology, originally com-

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA, 4 1

piled for an early king of Babylonia. The references
to ■ the king of the Hittites,' however, which meet us in
it, cannot be ascribed to a remote date. One of the
chief objects aimed at by the author (or authors) of the
work was to foretell the future, it being supposed that a
particular event which had followed a certain celestial
phenomenon would be repeated when the phenomenon
happened again. Consequently it was the fashion to
introduce into the work from time to time fresh notices
of events ; and some of these glosses, as we may term
them, are probably not older than the seventh century
B. C. It is, therefore, impossible to determine the exact
date to which the allusions to the Hittite king belong,
but there are indications that it is comparatively late.
The first clear account that the Assyrian inscriptions
give us concerning the Hittites, to which we can attach
a date, is met with in the annals of Tiglath-pileser I.

Tiglath-pileser I. was the most famous monarch of the
first Assyrian empire, and he reigned about 1110B.C.
He carried his arms northward and westward, pene-
trating into the bleak and trackless mountains of
Armenia, and forcing his way as far as Malatiyeh in
Kappadokia. His annals present us with a very full
and interesting picture of the geography of these regions
at the time of his reign. Kummukh or Komagene,
which at that epoch extended southward from Malatiyeh
in the direction of Carchemish, was one of the first
objects of his attack. ' At the beginning of my reign,'
he says, ' 20,000 Moschians (or men of Meshech) and
their five kings, who for fifty years had taken possession
of the countries of Alzi and Purukuzzi, which had
formerly paid tribute and taxes to Assur my lord — no
king (before me) had opposed them in battle — trusted

42 THE HITTITES.

to their strength, and came down and seized the land of
Kummukh.' The Assyrian king, however, marched
against them, and defeated them in a pitched battle
with great slaughter, and then proceeded to carry fire
and sword through the cities of Kummukk Its ruler
Kili-anteru, the son of Kali-anteru, was captured along
with his wives and family ; and Tiglath-pileser next
proceeded to besiege the stronghold of Urrakhinas. Its
prince Sadi-anteru, the son of Khattukhi, ' the Hittite,'
threw himself at the conqueror's feet ; his life was
spared, and 'the wide-spreading land of Kummukh'
became tributary to Assyria, objects of bronze being the
chief articles it had to offer. About the same time,
4000 troops belonging to the Kaska or Kolkhians and
the people of Uruma, both of whom are described as
'soldiers of the Hittites' and as having occupied the
northern cities of Mesopotamia, submitted voluntarily
to the Assyrian monarch, and were transported to
Assyria along with their chariots and their property.
Uruma was the Urima of classical geography, which
lay on the Euphrates a little to the north of Birejik, so
that we know the exact locality to which these ' Hittite
soldiers ' belonged. In fact, ' Hittite ' must have been a
general name given to the inhabitants of all this district ;
the modern Merash, for instance, lies within the limits
of the ancient Kummukh ; and, as we shall see, it is from
Merash that a long Hittite inscription has come.

Tiglath-pileser attacked Kummukh a second time,
and on this occasion penetrated still further into the
mountain fastnesses of the Hittite country. In a third
campaign his armies came in sight of Malatiyeh itself,
but the king contented himself with exacting a small
yearly tribute from the city, ' having had pity upon it,

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 43

as he tells us, though more probably the truth was that
he found himself unable to take it by storm. But he
never succeeded in forcing his way across the fords of
the Euphrates, which were commanded by the great
fortress of Carchemish. Once he harried the land of
Mitanni or Naharina, slaying and spoiling ' in one day '
from Carchemish southwards to a point that faced the
deserts of the nomad Sukhi, the Shuhites of the Book
of Job. It was on this occasion that he killed ten
elephants in the neighbourhood of Harran and on the
banks of the Khabour, besides four wild bulls which he
hunted with arrows and spears ! in the land of Mitanni
and in the city of Araziqi1, which lies opposite to the
land of the Hittites/

Towards the end of the twelfth century before our
era, therefore, the Hittites were still strong enough to
keep one of the mightiest of the Assyrian kings in
check. It is true that they no longer obeyed a single
head ; it is also true that that portion of them which
was settled in the land of Kummukh was overrun by
the Assyrian armies, and forced to pay tribute to the
Assyrian invader. But Carchemish compelled the
respect of Tiglath-pileser; he never ventured to approach
its walls or to cross the river which it was intended to
defend. His way was barred to the west, and he never
succeeded in traversing the high road which led to
Phoenicia and Palestine.

After the death of Tiglath-pileser I. the Assyrian
inscriptions fail us. His successors allowed the empire
to fall into decay, and more than two hundred years
elapsed before the curtain is lifted again. These two
hundred years had witnessed the rise and fall of the

1 Called Eragiza in classical geography and in the Talmud.

44 THE HITT1TES.

kingdom of David and Solomon as well as the growth
of a new power, that of the Syrians of Damascus.

Damascus rose on the ruins of the empire of Solomon.
But its rise also shows plainly that the power of the
Hittites in Syria was beginning to wane. Hadad-ezer,
king of Zobah, the antagonist of David, had been able
to send for aid to the Arameans of Naharina, on the
eastern side of the Euphrates (2 Sam. x. 16), and with
them he had marched to Helam, in which it is possible
to see the name of Aleppo1. It is clear that the Hittites
were no longer able to keep the Aramean population
in subjection, or to prevent an Aramean prince of Zobah
from expelling them from the territory they had once
made their own. Indeed, it may be that in one passage
of the Old Testament allusion is made to an attack
which Hadad-ezer was preparing against them. When
it is stated that he was overthrown by David, ' as he was
going to turn his hand against the river Euphrates ' (2
Sam. viii. 3), it may be that it was against the Hittites
of Carchemish that his armies were about to be directed.
At any rate, support for this view is found in a further
statement of the sacred historian. ' When Toi king of
Hamath,' we learn, ' heard that David had smitten all
the host of Hadad-ezer, then Toi sent Joram his son
unto king David, to salute him, and to bless him,
because he had fought against Hadad-ezer and smitten
him; for Hadad-ezer had wars with Toi' (2 Sam. viii.
9, 10). Now we know from the monuments that have
been discovered on the spot that Hamath was once a
Hittite city, and there is no reason for not believing
that it was still in the possession of the Hittites in the

1 Called Khalman in the Assyrian texts. Josephus changes Helam into
the proper name Khalaman.

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 45

age of David. Its Syrian enemies would in that case
have been the same as the enemies of David, and a
common danger would thus have united it with Israel
in an alliance which ended only in its overthrow by the
Assyrians.

As late as the time of Uzziah, we are told by the
Assyrian inscriptions, the Jewish king was in league
with Hamath, and the last independent ruler of Hamath
was Yahu-bihdi, a name in which we recognise that
of the God of Israel. Indeed, the very fact that the
Syrians imagined that ' the kings of the Hittites ' were
coming to the rescue of Samaria, when besieged by the
forces of Damascus, goes to show that Israel and the
Hittites were regarded as natural friends, whose natural
adversaries were the Arameans of Syria. As the power
and growth of Israel had been built up on the conquest
and subjugation of the Semitic populations of Palestine,
so too the power of the Hittites had been gained at the
expense of their Semitic neighbours. The triumph of
Syria was a blow alike to the Hittites of Carchemish
and to the Hebrews of Samaria and Jerusalem.

With Assur-natsir-pal, whose reign extended from B.C.
885 to 860, contemporaneous Assyrian history begins
afresh. His campaigns and conquests rivalled those of
Tiglath-pileser I., and indeed exceeded them both in
extent and in brutality. Like his predecessor, he ex-
acted tribute from Kummukh as well as from the kings
of the country in which Malatiyeh was situated ; but
with better fortune than Tiglath-pileser he succeeded in
passing the Euphrates, and obliging Sangara of Carche-
mish to pay him homage. It is clear that Carchemish
was no longer as strong as it had been two centuries
before, and that the power of its defenders was gradually

46 THE HITTITES.

vanishing away. There was still, however, a small
Hittite population on the eastern bank of the Euphrates ;
at all events, Assur-natsir-pal describes the tribe of
Bakhian on that side of the river as Hittite, and it was
only after receiving tribute from them that he crossed
the stream in boats and approached the land of Gar-
gamis or Carchemish. But his threatened assault upon
the Hittite stronghold was bought off with rich and
numerous presents. Twenty talents of silver — the
favourite metal of the Hittite princes — 'cups of gold,
chains of gold, blades of gold, ioo talents of copper,
250 talents of iron, gods of copper in the form of wild
bulls, bowls of copper, libation cups of copper, a ring of
copper, the multitudinous furniture of the royal palace,
of which the like was never received, couches and
thrones of rare woods and ivory, 200 slave-girls, gar-
ments of variegated cloth and linen, masses of black
crystal and blue crystal, precious stones, the tusks of
elephants, a white chariot, small images of gold,' as well
as ordinary chariots and war-horses, — such were the
treasures poured into the lap of the Assyrian monarch
by the wealthy but unwarlike king of Carchemish. They
give us an idea of the wealth to which the city had
attained through its favourable position on the high-
road of commerce that ran from the east to the west.
The uninterrupted prosperity of several centuries had
filled it with merchants and riches ; in later days we
find the Assyrian inscriptions speaking of \ the maneh
of Carchemish' as one of the recognised standards of
value. Carchemish had become a city of merchants,
and no longer felt itself able to oppose by arms the
trained warriors of the Assyrian king.

Quitting Carchemish, Assur-natsir-pal pursued his

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 4 J

march westwards, and after passing the land of Akhanu
on his left, fell upon the town of Azaz near Aleppo,
which belonged to the king of the Patinians. The latter
people were of Hittite descent, and occupied the country
between the river Afrin and the shores of the Gulf of
Antioch. The Assyrian armies crossed the Afrin and
appeared before the walls of the Patinian capital.
Large bribes, however, induced them to turn away
southward, and to advance along the Orontes in the
direction of the Lebanon. Here Assur-natsir-pal re-
ceived the tribute of the Phoenician cities.

Shalmaneser II., the son and successor of Assur-natsir-
pal, continued the warlike policy of his father (B. C. 860-
825)- The Hittite princes were again a special object
of attack. Year after year Shalmaneser led his armies
against them, and year after year did he return home
laden with spoil. The aim of his policy is not difficult
to discover. He sought to break the power of the
Hittite race in Syria, to possess himself of the fords
across the Euphrates and the high-road which brought
the merchandise of Phoenicia to the traders of Nineveh,
and eventually to divert the commerce of the Mediter-
ranean to his own country. By the overthrow of the
Patinians he made himself master of the cedar forests
of Amanus, and his palaces were erected with the help
of their wood. Sangara of Carchemish, it is true, per-
ceived his danger, and a league of the Hittite princes
was formed to resist the common foe. Contingents
came not only from Kummukh and from the Patinians,
but from Cilicia and the mountain ranges of Asia Minor.
It was, however, of no avail. The Hittite forces were
driven from the field, and their leaders were compelled
to purchase peace by the payment of tribute. Once

48 THE HITTITES.

more Carchemish gave up its gold and silver, its bronze
and copper, its purple vestures and curiously-adorned
thrones, and the daughter of Sangara himself was carried
away to the harem of the Assyrian king. Pethor, the
city of Balaam, was turned into an Assyrian colony, its
very name being changed to an Assyrian one. The
way into Hamath and Phoenicia at last lay open to the
Assyrian host. At Aleppo Shalmaneser offered sacri-
fices to the native god Hadad, and then descended upon
the cities of Hamath. At Karkar he was met by a
great confederacy formed by the kings of Hamath and
Damascus, to which Ahab of Israel had contributed
2000 chariots and 10,000 men. But nothing could
withstand the onslaught of the Assyrian veterans. The
enemy were scattered like chaff, and the river Orontes
was reddened with their blood. The battle of Karkar
(in B.C. 854) brought the Assyrians into contact with
Damascus, and caused Jehu on a later occasion to send
tribute to the Assyrian king.

The subsequent history of Shalmaneser concerns us
but little. The power of the Hittites south of the
Taurus had been broken for ever. The Semite had
avenged himself for the conquest of his country by the
northern mountaineers centuries before. They no longer
formed a barrier which cut off the east from the west,
and prevented the Semites of Assyria and Babylon
from meeting the Semites of Phoenicia and Palestine.
The intercourse which had been interrupted in the age
of the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt could now be again
resumed. Carchemish ceased to command the fords of
the Euphrates, and was forced to acknowledge the su-
premacy of the Assyrian invader. In fact, the Hittites
of Syria had become little more than tributaries of the

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 49

Assyrian monarch. When an insurrection broke out
among the Patinians, in consequence of which the right-
ful king was killed and his throne seized by an usurper,
Shalmaneser claimed and exercised the right to inter-
fere. A new sovereign was appointed by him, and he
set up an image of himself in the capital city of the
Patinian people.

The change that had come over the relations between
the Assyrians and the Hittite population is marked by
a curious fact. From the time of Shalmaneser onwards,
the name of Hittite is no longer used by the Assyrian
writers in a correct sense. It is extended so as to
embrace all the inhabitants of Northern Syria on the
western side of the Euphrates, and subsequently came
to include the inhabitants of Palestine as well. Khatta
or 'Hittite' became synonymous with Syrian. How
this happened is not difficult to explain. The first
populations of Syria with whom the Assyrians had
come into contact were of Hittite origin. When their
power was broken, and the Assyrian armies had forced
their way past the barrier they had so long presented
to the invader, it was natural that the states next
traversed by the Assyrian generals should be supposed
also to belong to them. Moreover, many of these states
were actually dependent on the Hittite princes, though
inhabited by an Aramean people. The Hittites had
imposed their yoke upon an alien race of Aramean
descent, and accordingly in Northern Syria Hittite and
Aramean cities and tribes were intermingled together.
\ I took,' says Shalmaneser, ' what the men of the land
of the Hittites had called the city of Pethor (Pitru\
which is upon the river Sajur (Sagura), on the further
side of the Euphrates, and the city of Mudkinu, on the

D

50 THE HITTITES.

eastern side of the Euphrates, which Tiglath-pileser (I.),
the royal forefather who went before me, had united
to my country, and Assur-rab-buri king of Assyria and
the king of the Arameans had taken (from it) by a
treaty.' At a later date Shalmaneser marched from
Pethor to Aleppo, and there offered sacrifices to ' the
god of the city,' Hadad-Rimmon, whose name betrays
the Semitic character of its population. The Hittites,
in short, had never been more than a conquering upper
class in Syria, like the Normans in Sicily; and as time
went on the subject population gained more and more
upon them. Like all similar aristocracies, they tended
to die out or to be absorbed into the native population
of the country.

They still held possession of Carchemish, however,
and the decadence of the first Assyrian empire gave
them an unexpected respite. But the revolution which
placed Tiglath-pileser III. on the throne of Assyria, in
B. C. J2$, brought with it the final doom of Hittite
supremacy. Assyria entered upon a new career of
conquest, and under its new rulers established an empire
which extended over the whole of Western Asia. In
B.C. JiJ Carchemish finally fell before the armies of
Sargon, and its last king Pisiris became the captive of
the Assyrian king. Its trade and wealth passed into
Assyrian hands, it was colonised by Assyrians and
placed under an Assyrian satrap. The great Hittite
stronghold on the Euphrates, which had been for so
many centuries the visible sign of their power and
southern conquests, became once more the possession
of a Semitic people. The long struggle that had been
carried on between the Hittites and the Semites was
at an end ; the Semite had triumphed, and the Hittite

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. $l

was driven back into the mountains from whence he
had come.

But he did not yield without a struggle. The year
following the capture of Carchemish saw Sargon con-
fronted by a great league of the northern peoples,
Meshech, Tubal, Melitene and others, under the leader-
ship of the king of Ararat. The league, however, was
shattered in a decisive battle, the king of Ararat
committed suicide, and in less than three years
Komagene was annexed to the Assyrian empire. The
Semite of Nineveh was supreme in the Eastern world.

Ararat was the name given by the Assyrians to the
district in the immediate neighbourhood of Lake Van,
as well as to the country to the south of it. It was
not until post-Biblical days that the name was extended
to the north, so that the modern Mount Ararat obtained
a title which originally belonged to the Kurdish range
in the south. But Ararat was not the native name
of the country. This was Biainas or Bianas, a name
which still survives in that of Lake Van. Numerous
inscriptions are scattered over the country, written in
cuneiform characters borrowed from Nineveh in the
time of Assur-natsir-pal or his son Shalmaneser, but
in a language which bears no resemblance to that of
Assyria. They record the building of temples and
palaces, the offerings made to the gods, and the cam-
paigns of the Vannic kings. Among the latter mention
is made of campaigns against the Khate or Hittites.

The first of these campaigns was conducted by a
king called Menuas, who reigned in the ninth century
before our era. He overran the land of Alzi, and then
found himself in the land of the Hittites. Here he
plundered the cities of Surisilis and Tarkhi-gamass

D 2

52 THE HITTITES.

belonging to the Hittite prince Sada-halis, and captured
a number of soldiers, whom he dedicated to the service
of his god Khaldis. On another occasion he marched
as far as the city of Malatiyeh, and after passing through
the country of the Hittites, caused an inscription com-
memorating his conquests to be engraved on the cliffs
of Palu. Palu is situated on the northern bank of the
Euphrates, about midway between Malatiyeh and Van,
and as it lies to the east of the ancient district of Alzi,
we can form some idea of the exact geographical
position to which the Hittites of Menuas must be
assigned. His son and successor, Argistis I, again made
war upon them, and we gather from one of his in-
scriptions that the city of Malatiyeh was itself included
among their fortresses. The 'land of the Hittites/
according to the statements of the Vannic kings, stretched
along the banks of the Euphrates from Palu on the
east as far as Malatiyeh on the west.

The Hittites of the Assyrian monuments lived to the
south-west of this region, spreading through Komagene
to Carchemish and Aleppo. The Egyptian records
bring them yet further south to Kadesh on the Orontes,
while the Old Testament carries the name into the
extreme south of Palestine. It is evident, therefore,
that we must see in the Hittite tribes fragments of a
race whose original seat was in the ranges of the Taurus,
but who had pushed their way into the warm plains
and valleys of Syria and Palestine. They belonged
originally to Asia Minor, not to Syria, and it was
conquest only which gave them a right to the name
of Syrians. ' Hittite' was their true title, and whether
the tribes to which it belonged lived in Judah or on
the Orontes, at Carchemish or in the neighbourhood of

MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. $<$

Palu, this was the title under which they were known.
We must regard it as a national name, which clung to
them in all their conquests and migrations, and marked
them out as a peculiar people, distinct from the other
races of the Eastern world. It is now time to see what
their own monuments have to tell us regarding them,
and the influence they exercised upon the history of
mankind.

A SLAB FOUND AT MERASH.

CHAPTER III.

THE HITTITE MONUMENTS.

IT was a warm and sunny September morning when
I left the little town of Nymphi near Smyrna with
a strong escort of Turkish soldiers, and made my way
to the Pass of Karabel. The Pass of Karabel is a
narrow defile, shut in on either side by lofty cliffs,
through which ran the ancient road from Ephesos in
the south to Sardes and Smyrna in the north. The
Greek historian Herodotos tells us that the Egyptian
conqueror Sesostris had left memorials of himself in
this place. 'Two images cut by him in the rock' were
to be seen beside the roads which led ' from Ephesos

THE HITTITE MONUMENTS. 55

to Phokaea and from Sardes to Smyrna. On either
side a man is carved, a little over three feet in height,
who holds a spear in the right hand and a bow in the
left. The rest of his accoutrement is similar, for it is
Egyptian and Ethiopian, and from one shoulder to the
other, right across the breast, Egyptian hieroglyphics
have been cut which declare : " I have won this land
with my shoulders.'"

These two images were the object of my journey.
One of them had been discovered by Renouard in 1839,
and shortly afterwards sketched by Texier ; the other
had been found by Dr. Beddoe in 1856. But visitors
to the Pass in which they were engraved were few and
far between ; the cliffs on either side were the favourite
haunt of brigands, and thirty soldiers were not deemed
too many to protect my safety. My work of exploration
had to be carried on under the shelter of their guns, for
more than twenty bandits were lurking under the
brushwood above.

The sculpture sketched by Texier had subsequently
been photographed by Mr. Svoboda. It represents a
warrior whose height is rather more than life-size, and
who stands in profile with the right foot planted in front
of him, in the attitude of one who is marching. In his
right hand he holds a spear, behind his left shoulder
is slung a bow, and the head is crowned with a high
peaked cap. He is clad in a tunic which reaches to
the knees, and his feet are shod with boots with turned-
up ends. The whole figure is cut in deep relief in an
artificial niche, and between the spear and the face are
three lines of hieroglyphic characters. The figure faces
south, and is carved on the face of the eastern cliff of
Karabel.

$6 THE HETTITES.

It had long been recognised that the hieroglyphics
were not those of Egypt, and Professor Perrot had also
drawn attention to the striking resemblance between
the style of art represented by this sculpture and that
represented by certain rock-sculptures in Kappadokia,
as well as by the sculptured image of a warrior dis-
covered by himself at a place called Ghiaur-kalessi,
' the castle of the infidel/ in Phrygia, which is practically
identical in form and character with the sculptured
warrior of Karabel.

What was the origin of this art, or who were the
people it commemorated, was a matter of uncertainty.
A few weeks, however, before my visit to the Pass of
Karabel, I announced1 that I had come to the con-
clusion that the art was Hittite, and that the hiero-
glyphics accompanying the figure at Karabel would
turn out, when carefully examined, to be Hittite also.
The primary purpose of my visit to the pass was to
verify this conclusion.

Let us now see how I had arrived at it. The story
is a long one, and in order to understand it, it is
necessary to transport ourselves from the Pass of
Karabel in Western Asia Minor to Hamah, the site of
the ancient Hamath, in the far east. It was here that
the first discovery was made which has led by slow
degrees to the reconstruction of the Hittite empire,
and a recognition of the important part once played
by the Hittites in the history of the civilised world.

As far back as the beginning of the present century
(in 1 812) the great Oriental traveller Burckhardt had
noticed a block of black basalt covered with strange-
looking hieroglyphics built into the corner of a house
1 In the Academy of Aug. 16th, 1879.

THE HITTITE MONUMENTS. tf

in one of the bazaars of Hamah1. But the discovery
was forgotten, and the European residents in Hamah,
like the travellers who visited the city, were convinced
that ' no antiquities ' were to be found there. Nearly
sixty years later, however, when the American Pales-
tine Exploration Society was first beginning its work,
the American consul, Mr. Johnson, and an American
missionary, Mr. Jessup, accidentally lighted again upon
this stone, and further learned that three other stones of
similar character, and inscribed with similar hierogly-
phics, existed elsewhere in Hamah. One of them, of
very great length, was believed to be endowed with
healing properties. Rheumatic patients, Mohammedans
and Christians alike, were in the habit of stretching them-
selves upon it, in the firm belief that their pains would
be absorbed into the stone. The other inscribed stones
were also regarded with veneration, which naturally
increased when it was known that they were being
sought after by the Franks ; and the two Americans
found it impossible to see them all, much less to take
copies of the inscriptions they bore. They had to be
content with the miserable attempts at reproducing
them made by a native painter, one of which was after-
wards published in America. The publication served
to awaken the interest of scholars in the newly dis-
covered inscriptions, and efforts were made by Sir
Richard Burton and others to obtain correct impressions
of them. All was in vain, however, and it is probable
that the fanaticism or greed of the people of Hamah
would have successfully resisted all attempts to procure
trustworthy copies of the texts, had not a lucky accident
brought Dr. William Wright to the spot. It is to his

1 Travels in Syria, p. 146.

58 THE HITTITES.

energy and devotion that the preservation of these
precious relics of Hittite literature may be said to be
due. 'On the ioth of November, 1872/ he tells us,
he 'set out from Damascus, intent on securing the
Hamah inscriptions. The Sublime Porte, seized by
a periodic fit of reforming zeal, had appointed an honest
man, Subhi Pasha, to be governor of Syria. Subhi Pasha
brought a conscience to his work, and, not content with
redressing wrongs that succeeded in forcing their way
into his presence, resolved to visit every district of his
province, in order that he might check the spoiler and
discover the wants of the people. He invited me to
accompany him on a tour to Hamah, and I gladly
accepted the invitation.' Along with Mr. Green, the
English Consul, accordingly, Dr. Wright joined the
party of the Pasha ; and, fearing that the same fate might
befall the Hamath stones as had befallen the Moabite
Stone, which had been broken into pieces to save it
from the Europeans, persuaded him to buy them, and
send them as a present to the Museum at Constan-
tinople. When the news became known in Hamah,
there were murmurings long and deep against the
Pasha, and it became necessary, not only to appeal
to the cupidity and fear of the owners of the stones,
but also to place them under the protection of a guard
of soldiers the night before the work of removing them
was to commence.

The night was an anxious one to Dr. Wright ; but
when day dawned, the stones were still safe, and the
labour of their removal was at once begun. It ' was
effected by an army of shouting men, who kept the
city in an uproar during the whole day. Two of them
had to be taken out of the walls of inhabited houses,

THE HITTITE MONUMENTS. 59

and one of them was so large that it took fifty men
and four oxen a whole day to drag it a mile. The
other stones were split in two, and the inscribed parts
were carried on the backs of camels to the' court of
the governor's palace. Here they could be cleaned and
copied at leisure and in safety.

But the work of cleaning them from the accumulated
dirt of ages occupied the greater part of two days.
Then came the task of making casts of the inscriptions,
with the help of gypsum which some natives had been
bribed to bring from the neighbourhood. At length,
however, the work was completed, and Dr. Wright
had the satisfaction of sending home to England two
sets of casts of these ancient and mysterious texts, one
for the British Museum, the other for the Palestine
Exploration Fund, while the originals themselves were
safely deposited in the Museum of Constantinople. It
was now time to inquire what the inscriptions meant,
and who could have been the authors of them.

Dr. Wright at once suggested that they were the work
of the Hittites, and that they were memorials of Hittite
writing. But his suggestion was buried in the pages of a
periodical better known to theologians than to Oriental-
ists, and the world agreed to call the writing by the
name of Hamathite. It specially attracted the notice of
Dr. Hayes Ward of New York, who discovered that the
inscriptions were written in boustrophedon fashion, that
is to say, that the lines turned alternately from right
to left and from left to right, like oxen when plowing
a field, the first line beginning on the right and the line
following on the left. The lines read, in fact, from the
direction towards which the characters look.

Dr. Hayes Ward also made another discovery. In

60 THE HITTITES.

the ruins of the great palace of Nineveh Sir A. H. Layard
had discovered numerous clay impressions of seals once
attached to documents of papyrus or parchment. The
papyrus and parchment have long since perished, but
the seals remain, with the holes through which the strings
passed that attached them to the original deeds. Some
of the seals are Assyrian, some Phoenician, others again
are Egyptian, but there are a few which have upon them
strange characters such as had never been met with
before. It was these characters which Dr. Hayes Ward
perceived to be the same as those found upon the stones
of Hamah, and it was accordingly supposed that the
seals were of Hamathite origin.

In 1876, two years after the publication of Dr. Wright's
article, of which I had never heard at the time, I read a
Paper on the Hamathite inscriptions before the Society
of Biblical Archaeology. In this I put forward a number
of conjectures, one of them being that the Hamathite
hieroglyphs were the source of the curious syllabary used
for several centuries in the island of Cyprus, and another
that the hieroglyphs were not an invention of the early
inhabitants of Hamath, but represented the system of
writing employed by the Hittites. We know from the
Egyptian records that the Hittites could write, and that
a class of scribes existed among them, and, since Hamath
lay close to the borders of the Hittite kingdoms, it
seemed reasonable to suppose that the unknown form of
script discovered on its site was Hittite rather than
Hamathite. The conjecture was confirmed almost imme-
diately afterwards by the discovery of the site of Car-
chemish, the great Hittite capital, and of inscriptions
there in the same system of writing as that found on the
stones of Hamah.

THE HITTITE MONUMENTS. 6 1

It was not long, therefore, before the learned world
began to recognise that the newly-discovered script was
the peculiar possession of the Hittite race. Dr. Hayes
Ward was one of the first to do so, and the Trustees of
the British Museum determined to institute excavations
among the ruins of Carchemish. Meanwhile notice was
drawn to a fact which showed that the Hittite characters,
as we shall now call them, were employed, not only at
Hamath and Carchemish, but in Asia Minor as well.

More than a century ago a German traveller had
observed two figures carved on a wall of rock near
Ibreez, or Ivris, in the territory of the ancient Lykaonia.
One of them was a god, who carried in his hand a stalk
of corn and a bunch of grapes, the other was a man, who
stood before the god in an attitude of adoration. Both
figures were shod with boots with upturned ends, and
the deity wore a tunic that reached to his knees, while
on his head was a peaked cap ornamented with horn-
like ribbons. A century elapsed before the sculpture
was again visited by an European traveller, and it was
again a German who found his way to the spot. On
this occasion a drawing was made of the figures, which
was published by Ritter in his great work on the
geography of the world. But the drawing was poor
and imperfect, and the first attempt to do adequate
justice to the original was made by the Rev. E. J. Davis
in 1875. He published his copy, and an account of the
monument, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical
Archceology the following year. He had noticed that
the figures were accompanied by what were known at
the time as Hamathite characters. Three lines of these
were inserted between the face of the god and his uplifted
left arm, four lines more were engraved behind his wor-

62 THE HITTITES.

shipper, while below, on a level with an aqueduct which
fed a mill, were yet other lines of half-obliterated
hieroglyphs. It was plain that in Lykaonia also, where
the old language of the country still lingered in the days
of St. Paul, the Hittite system of writing had once been
used.

Another stone inscribed with Hittite characters had
come to light at Aleppo. Like those of Hamath, it was
of black basalt, and had been built into a modern wall.
The characters upon it were worn by frequent attrition,
the people of Aleppo believing that whoever rubbed his
eyes upon it would be immediately cured of ophthalmia.
More than one copy of the inscription was taken, but
the difficulty of distinguishing the half-obliterated charac-
ters rendered the copies of little service, and a cast of
the stone was about to be made when news arrived that
the fanatics of Aleppo had destroyed it. Rather than
allow its virtue to go out of it — to be stolen, as they
fancied, by the Europeans — they preferred to break it in
pieces. It is one of the many monuments that have
perished at the very moment when their importance
first became known.

This, then, was the state of our knowledge in the
summer of 1879. We knew that the Hittites, with
whom Hebrews and Egyptians and Assyrians had once
been in contact, possessed a hieroglyphic system of
writing, and that this system of writing was found on
monuments in Hamath, Aleppo, Carchemish, and Ly-
kaonia. We knew, too, that in Lykaonia it accompanied
figures carved out of the rock in a peculiar style of art,
and represented as wearing a peculiar kind of dress.

Suddenly the truth flashed upon me. This peculiar
style of art, this peculiar kind of dress, was the same as

« ^

< W

THE HITTITE MONUMENTS. 6$

that which distinguished the sculptures of Karabel, of
Ghiaur-kalessi, and of Kappadokia. In all alike we had
the same characteristic features, the same head-dresses
and shoes, the same tunics, the same clumsy massiveness
of design and characteristic attitude. The figures carved
upon the rocks of Karabel and Kappadokia must be
memorials of Hittite art. The clue to their origin and
history was at last discovered ; the birthplace of the
strange art which had produced them was made manifest
A little further research made the fact doubly sure. The
photographs Professor Perrot had taken of the monuments
of Boghaz Keui in Kappadokia included one of an in-
scription in ten or eleven lines. The characters of this
inscription were worn and almost illegible, but not only
were they in relief, like the characters of all other Hittite
inscriptions known at the time, among them two or
three hieroglyphs stood out clearly, which were identical
with those on the stones of Hamath and Carchemish.
All that was needed to complete the verification of my
discovery was to visit the Pass of Karabel, and see
whether the hieroglyphs Texier and others had found
there likewise belonged to the Hittite script.

More than three hours did I spend in the niche wherein
the figure is carved which Herodotos believed was a
likeness of the Egyptian Sesostris. It was necessary to
take 'squeezes' as well as copies, if I would recover the
characters of the inscription and ascertain their exact
forms. My joy was great at finding that they were
Hittite, and that the conclusion I had arrived at in my
study at home was confirmed by the monument itself.
The Sesostris of Herodotos turned out to be, not the
great Pharaoh who contended with the Hittites of
Kadesh, but a symbol of the far-reaching power and

E

66 THE HITTITES.

influence of his mighty opponents. Hittite art and
Hittite writing, if not the Hittite name, were proved to
have been known from the banks of the Euphrates to
the shores of the y£gean Sea.

The stone warrior of Karabel stands in his niche in
the cliff at a considerable height above the path, and
the direction in which he is marching is that which
would have led him to Ephesos and the Maeander.
His companion lies below, the block of stone out of
which the second figure has been carved having been
apparently shaken by an earthquake from the rocks
above. This second figure is a duplicate of the first.
Both stand in the same position, both are shod with the
same snow-shoes, and both are armed with spear and
bow. But the second figure has suffered much from the
ill-usage of man. The upper part has been purposely
chipped away, and it is not many years ago since a
Yuruk's tent was pitched against the block of stone out
of which it is carved, the niche in which the old warrior
stands conveniently serving as the fire-place of the
family. No trace of inscription remains, if indeed it
ever existed. At any rate, it could not have run across
the breast, as Herodotos asserts.

The account, indeed, given by Herodotos of these two
figures can hardly have been that of an eye-witness.
Instead of being little over three feet in height, they
are more than life-size, and they hold their spears not in
the right but in the left hand. Their accoutrement,
moreover, is as unlike that of an ' Egyptian and Ethiopian'
as it well could be, while the inscription is not traced
across the breast, but between the face and the arm.
Nor was the Greek historian correct in saying that the
pass which the two warriors seem to guard leads not

THE rSEUDO-SESOSTRIS, CARVED ON THE ROCK IN THE PASS OF KARABEL.

E 2

THE HITTITE MONUMENTS. 69

only from Ephesos to Phokaea, but also from Sardes
to Smyrna. It is not until the pass is cleared at its
northern end that the road which runs through it — the
Karabel-de're, as the Turks now call it — joins the Bel-
kaive, or road from Sardes to Smyrna. It is evident that
Herodotos must have received his account of the figures
from another authority, though his identification of them
with the Egyptian Sesostris is his own.

Not far from Karabel another monument of Hittite
art has been discovered. Hard by the town of Magnesia,
on the lofty cliffs of Sipylos, a strange figure has been
carved out of the rock. It represents a woman with
long locks of hair streaming down her shoulders, and
a jewel like a lotus-flower upon the head, who sits on
a throne in a deep artificial niche. Lydian historians
narrate that it was the image of the daughter of Assaon,
who had sought death by casting herself down from
a precipice ; but Greek legend preferred to see in it the
figure of 'weeping Niobe' turned to stone. Already
Homer told how Niobe, when her twelve children had
been slain by the gods, ' now changed to stone, broods
over the woes the gods had brought, there among the
rocks, in lonely mountains, even in Sipylos, where they
say are the couches of the nymphs who dance on the
banks of the Akheloios.' But it was only after the
settlement of the Greeks in Lydia that the old monu-
ment on Mount Sipylos was held to be the image of
Niobe. The limestone rock out of which it was carved
dripped with moisture after rain, and as the water flowed
over the face of the figure, disintegrating and disfiguring
the stone as it ran, the pious Greek beheld in it the
Niobe of his own mythology. The figure was originally
that of the great goddess of Asia Minor, known some-

;o THE HITTITES.

times as Atergatis or Derketo, sometimes as Kybele,
sometimes by other names. It is difficult for one who
has seen the image of Nofert-ari, the favourite wife of
Ramses II., seated in the niche of rock on the cliffs of
Abu-simbel, not to believe that the artist who carved
the image on Mount Sipylos had visited the Nile. At
a little distance both have the same appearance, and a
nearer examination shows that, although the Egyptian
work is finer than the Lydian, it resembles it in a striking
manner. We now know, however, that the ' Niobe ' of
Sipylos owes its origin to Hittite art. On the wall of
rock out of which the niche is cut wherein the goddess
sits Dr. Dennis discovered a cartouche containing Hittite
characters. By tying some ladders together he and I
succeeded in ascending to it, and taking paper impres-
sions of the hieroglyphs. Among them is a character
which has the meaning of 'king'1.

How came these characters and these creations of
Hittite art in a region so remote from that in which the
Hittite kingdoms rose and flourished? How comes it
that we find figures of Hittite warriors in the Pass of
Karabel and on the rocks of Ghiaur-kalessi, and the
image of a Hittite goddess on the cliffs of Sipylos?
Whose was the hand that engraved the characters that
accompany them, — characters which are the same as those
which meet us on the stones of Hamath and Carchemish?
We have now to learn what answers can be given to
these questions.

1 A copy of the inscription made from the squeeze is given in the
Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology , VII. Pt. 3, PI. v. An
eye-copy, made from the ground by Dr. Dennis, on the occasion of his
discovery of the cartouche, was published in the Proceedings of the same
Society for January 1881, and is necessarily imperfect.

MONUMENT OF A HITTITE KING FOUND AT CARCHEMISH.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HITTITE EMPIRE.

WE have seen that the Egyptian monuments bear
witness to an extension of Hittite power into
the distant regions of Asia Minor. When the kings
of Kadesh contended with the great Pharaoh of the
Oppression they were able to summon to their aid allies
from the Troad, as well as from Lydia and the shores
of the Cilician sea. A century later Egypt was again
invaded by a confederacy, consisting partly of the
Hittite rulers of Carchemish and Aleppo, partly of
Libyans and Teukrians, and other populations of Asia
Minor. If any trust can be placed in the identifica-
tions proposed by Egyptian scholars for the countries
from whence the vassals and allies of the Hittites came
it is clear that memorials of Hittite power and conquest
ought to be found in Asia Minor.

And they were found as soon as it was recognised
that the curious monuments of Asia Minor, of which the
warriors of Karabel and the sculptures of Ibreez are
examples, were actually inspired by Hittite art. As
soon as it was known that the art these monuments
represented, and the peculiar form of writing which
accompanied them, had their earliest home in the
Syrian cities of the Hittite tribes, a new light broke
over the prehistoric past of Asia Minor. These Hittite
monuments can be traced in two continuous lines from

74 THE HITTITES.

Northern Syria and Kappadokia to the western ex-
tremity of the peninsula. They follow the two highways
which once led out of Asia to Sardes and the shores of
the JEgean. In the south they form as it were a series
of stations at Ibreez and Bulgar Maden in Lykaonia, at
Fassiler and Tyriaion between Ikonion and the Lake
of Beyshehr, and finally in the Pass of Karabel. North-
wards the line runs through the Taurus by Merash,
and carries us first to the defile of Ghurun, and then to
the great Kappadokian ruins of Boghaz Keui and
Eyuk, from whence we pass by Ghiaur-kalessi and the
burial-place of the old Phrygian kings, until we again
reach the Lydian capital and the Pass of Karabel.

Westward of the Halys and Kappadokia they are
marked by certain peculiarities. They are found either
in the vicinity of silver mines, like those of Lykaonia, or
else on the line of the ancient roads, which finally con-
verged in Lydia. None have been discovered in the
central plateau of Asia Minor, in the mountains of
Lykia in the south, or the wide-reaching coast-lands of
the north. They mark the sites of small colonies, or
else the lines of road that connected them. Moreover,
with the exception of the image of the goddess who
sits on her throne in Mount Sipylos, the western monu-
ments represent the figures of warriors who are in the
act of marching forward. This is the case at Karabel ;
it is also the case at Ghiaur-kalessi, where the rock on
which the two Hittite warriors are carved lies close
below the remains of a pre-historic fortress.

Such facts admit of only one explanation. The
Hittite monuments of Western Asia Minor must be
memorials of military conquest and supremacy. In the
warriors whose figures stood on either side of the Pass

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 75

of Karabel, the sculptor must have seen the visible
symbols of Hittite power. They showed that the
Hittite had won and kept the pass by force of arms.
They are emblems of conquest, not creations of native
art.

But it was inevitable that conquest should bring with
it a civilising influence. The Hittites could not carry
with them the art and culture they had acquired in the
East without influencing the barbarous populations over
whom they claimed to rule. The vassal chieftains of
Lydia and the Troad could not lead their forces into
Syria, or assist in the invasion of Egypt, without learn-
ing something of that ancient civilisation with which
they had come in contact. The Hittites, in fact, must
be regarded as the first teachers of the rude populations
of the West. They brought to them a culture the first
elements of which had been inspired by Babylonia ; they
brought also a system of writing out of which, in all
probability, the natives of Asia Minor afterwards
developed a writing of their own.

It is possible, therefore, that some of the Hittite
monuments of Asia Minor are the work, not of the
Hittites themselves, but of the native populations whom
they had civilised and instructed. It may be that this
is the case at Ibreez, where the faces of the god and
his worshipper have Jewish features very unlike those
found on monuments of purely Hittite origin. But
apart from such instances, where the monument is due
to Hittite influence rather than to Hittite artists, it is
certain that most of the Hittite memorials of Asia
Minor are the productions of the Hittites themselves.
This is proved by the hieroglyphs which are attached to
them, as well as by the uniform type of feature and

J 6 THE HITTITES.

dress which prevails from Carchemish to the ^Egean.
It is impossible to explain such an uniformity, and still
more the extraordinary resemblance between the
characters engraved at Karabel, or on Mount Sipylos,
and those which meet us in the inscriptions of Hamath
and Carchemish, except on the supposition that the
monuments were executed by men who belonged to the
same race and spoke the same language. Wherever
Hittite inscriptions occur, we find in them the same
combinations of hieroglyphs as well as the use of the
same characters to denote grammatical suffixes.

We may, then, rest satisfied with the conclusion that
the existence of a Hittite empire extending into Asia
Minor is certified, not only by the records of ancient
Egypt, but also by Hittite monuments which still exist.
In the days of Ramses II., when the children of Israel
were groaning under the tasks allotted to them, the
enemies of their oppressors were already exercising a
power and a domination which rivalled that of Egypt.
The Egyptian monarch soon learned to his cost that the
Hittite prince was as 'great' a king as himself, and
could summon to his aid the inhabitants of the unknown
north. Pharaoh's claim to sovereignty was disputed by
adversaries as powerful as the ruler of Egypt, if indeed
not more powerful, and there was always a refuge
among them for those who were oppressed by the
Egyptian king.

When, however, we speak of a Hittite empire we
must understand clearly what that means. It was not
an empire like that of Rome, where the subject provinces
were consolidated together under a central authority,
obeying the same laws and the same supreme head.
It was not an empire like that of the Persians, or of the

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 77

Assyrian successors of Tiglath-pileser III., which re-
presented the organised union of numerous states and
nations under a single ruler. Such a conception of
empire was due to Tiglath-pileser III., and his successor
Sargon ; it was a new idea in the world, and had never
been realised before. The first Assyrian empire, like
the foreign empire of Egypt, was of an altogether
different character. It depended on the military enter-
prise and strength of individual monarchs. As long as
the Assyrian or Egyptian king could lead his armies
into distant territories, and compel their inhabitants to
pay him tribute and homage, his empire extended over
them. But hardly had he returned home laden with
spoil than we find the subject populations throwing off
their allegiance and asserting their independence, while
the death of the conqueror brought with it almost
invariably the general uprising of the tribes and cities
his arms had subdued. Before the days of Tiglath-
pileser, in fact, empire in Western Asia meant the
power of a prince to force a foreign people to submit to
his rule. The conquered provinces had to be subdued
again and again ; but as long as this could be done, as
long as the native struggles for freedom could be crushed
by a campaign, so long did the empire exist.

It was an empire of this sort that the Hittites esta-
blished in Asia Minor. How long it lasted we cannot
say. But so long as the distant races of the West
answered the summons to war of the Hittite princes,
it remained a reality. The fact that the tribes of the
Troad and Lydia are found fighting under tne command
of the Hittite kings of Kadesh, proves that they acknow-
ledged the supremacy of their Hittite lords, and followed
them to battle like the vassals of some feudal chief.

78 THE HITTITES.

If Hittite armies had not marched to the shores of the
^Egean, and Hittite princes been able from time to time
to exact homage from the nations of the far west,
Egypt would not have had to contend against the
populations of Asia Minor in its wars with the Hittites,
and the figures of Hittite warriors would not have been
sculptured on the rocks of Karabel. There was a time
when the Hittite name was feared as far as the western
extremity of Asia Minor, and when Hittite satraps had
their seat in the future capital of Lydia.

Traditions of this period lingered on into classical
days. The older dynasty of Lydian kings traced its
descent from Bel and Ninos, the Babylonian or Assyrian
gods, whose names had been carried by the Hittites into
the remote west. The Lydian hero Kayster, who gave
his name to the Kaystrian plain, was fabled to have
wandered into Syria, and there, after wooing Semiramis,
to have been the father of Derketo, the goddess of
Carchemish. A Lydian was even said to have drowned
Derketo in the sacred lake of Ashkelon ; and Eusebius
declares that Sardes, the Lydian capital, was captured
for the first time in B. C. 1078, by a horde of invaders
from the north-western regions of Asia.

But it is in the famous legend of the Amazons that
we must look for the chief evidence preserved to us by
classical antiquity of the influence once exercised by the
Hittites in Asia Minor. The Amazons were imagined
to be a nation of female warriors, whose primitive home
lay in Kappadokia, on the banks of the Thermodon, not
far from the ruins of Boghaz Keui. From hence they
had issued forth to conquer the people of Asia Minor
and to found an empire which reached to the ^Egean
Sea. The building of many of the most famous cities

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 79

on the yEgean coast was ascribed to them, — Myrina and
Kyme, Smyrna and Ephesos, where the worship of the
great Asiatic goddess was carried on with barbaric cere-
monies into the later age of civilised Greece.

Now these Amazons are nothing more than the
priestesses of the Asiatic goddess, whose cult spread
from Carchemish along with the advance of the Hittite
armies. She was served by a multitude of armed priest-
esses and eunuch priests ; under her name of Ma, for
instance, no less than six thousand of them waited on
her at Komana in Kappadokia. Certain cities, in fact,
like Komana and Ephesos, were dedicated to her service,
and a large part of the population accordingly became
the armed ministers of the mighty goddess. Generally
these were women, as at Ephesos in early days, where
they obeyed a high-priestess, who called herself 'the
queen-bee.' When Ephesos passed into Greek hands,
the goddess worshipped there was identified with the
Greek Artemis, and a high-priest took the place of the
high-priestess. But the priestess of Artemis still con-
tinued to be called ' a bee/ reminding us that Deborah
or ' Bee ' was the name of one of the greatest of the
prophetesses of ancient Israel; and the goddess herself
continued to be depicted under the same form as that
which had belonged to her in Hittite days. On her
head was the so-called mural crown, the Hittite origin
of which has now been placed beyond doubt by the
sculptures of Boghaz Keui, while her chariot was drawn
by lions. It was from the Hittites, too, that Artemis
received her sacred animal, the goat.

The ' spear-armed host ' of the Amazons, which came
from Kappadokia, which conquered Asia Minor, and was
so closely connected with the worship of the Ephesian

80 THE HITTITES,

Artemis, can be no other than the priestesses of the
Hittite goddess, who danced in her honour armed with
the shield and bow. In ancient art the Amazons
are represented as clad in the Hittite tunic and brand-
ishing the same double-headed axe that is held in the
hands of some of the Hittite deities on the rocks of
Boghaz Keui, while the ' spear ' lent to them by the
Greek poet brings to our recollection the spear held
by the warriors of Karabel. We cannot explain the myth
of the Amazons except on the supposition that they
represented the armed priestesses of the Hittite goddess,
and that a tradition of the Hittite empire in Asia Minor
has entwined itself around the story of their arrival in
the West. The cities they are said to have founded
must have been the seats of Hittite rule.

The Hittites were intruders in Syria as well as in
Western Asia Minor. Everything points to the con-
clusion that they had descended from the ranges of the
Taurus. Their costume was that of the inhabitants of
a cold and mountainous region, not of the warm valleys
of the south. In place of the trailing robes of the
Syrians, the national costume was a tunic which did
not quite reach to the knees. It was only after their
settlement in the Syrian cities that they adopted
the dress of the country ; the sculptured rocks of Asia
Minor represent them with the same short tunic as that
which distinguished the Dorians of Greece or the ancient
inhabitants of Ararat. But the most characteristic por-
tion of the Hittite garb were the shoes with upturned
ends. Wherever the figure of a Hittite is portrayed,
there we find this peculiar form of boot. It reappears
among the hieroglyphs of the inscriptions, and the
Egyptian artists who adorned the walls of the Rames-

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 8 1

seum at Thebes have placed it on the feet of the Hittite
defenders of Kadesh. The boot is really a snow-shoe,
admirably adapted for walking over snow, but ill-suited
for the inhabitants of a level or cultivated country.
The fact that it was still used by the Hittites of Kadesh
in the warm fertile valley of the Orontes proves better
than any other argument that they must have come
from the snow-clad mountains of the north. It is like
the shoe of similar shape which the Turks have carried
with them in their migrations from the north and intro-
duced amongst the natives of Syria and Egypt. It in-
dicates with unerring certainty the northern origin of
the Turkish conqueror. He stands in the same relation
to the modern population of Syria that the Hittites
stood to the Arameans of Kadesh three thousand years
ago.

Equally significant is the long fingerless glove which
is one of the most frequent of Hittite hieroglyphs. The
thumb alone is detached from the rest of the bag in
which the fingers were enclosed. Such a glove is an
eloquent witness to the wintry cold of the regions from
which its wearers came, and a similar glove is still used
during the winter months by the peasants of modern
Kappadokia.

We may find another evidence of the northern descent
of the Hittite tribes in the hieroglyph which is used in
the sense of ' country.' It represents two, or sometimes
three, pointed mountains, whose forms, as was remarked
some years ago, resemble those of the mountains about
Kaisariyeh, the Kappadokian capital.

If we leave Kadesh and proceed northwards, the
local names bear more and more the peculiar stamp
of a Hittite origin. We leave Semitic names like

F

82 THE HITTITES.

Kadesh, ' the sanctuary,' behind us, and at length find
ourselves in a district where the geographical names
no longer admit of a Semitic etymology. It is just
this district, moreover, in which Hittite inscriptions
first become plentiful. The first met with to the south
are the stones of Hamath and the lost inscription of
Aleppo ; but from Carchemish northwards we now know
that numbers of them still exist. The territory covered
by them is a square, the base of which is formed by
a line running from Carchemish through Antioch into
Lykaonia, while the remains at Boghaz Keui and Eyuk
constitute its northern limit. We must regard this
region as having been the primeval home and starting-
point of the Hittite race. They will have been a popu-
lation which clustered round the two flanks of the
Taurus range, extending far into Kappadokia on the
north, and towards Armenia on the east.

They preserved their independence on the banks of
the Halys in Kappadokia for nearly two hundred
years after the fall of Carchemish. It was not long
before the overthrow of Lydia by Cyrus that Krcesos,
the Lydian king, destroyed the cities of Pteria, where
the ruins of Boghaz Keui and Eyuk now stand, and
enslaved their inhabitants, thus avenging upon them
the conquest of his own country by their ancestors
so many centuries before. Herodotos calls them
1 Syrians/ a name which is qualified as ' White Syrians '
by the Greek geographer Strabo. It was in this way
that the Greek writer wished to distinguish them from
the dark-coloured Syrians of Aramean or Jewish birth,
with whom he was otherwise acquainted ; and it re-
minds us that, whereas the Egyptian artists painted the
Hittites with yellow skins, they painted the Syrians

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 85

with red. It is an interesting fact that the memory
of their relationship to the population on the Syrian
side of the Taurus should have been preserved so long
among these Hittites of Kappadokia.

Boghaz Keui and Eyuk are situated in the district
known as Pteria to the Greeks. At Eyuk there are
remains of a vast palace, which stood on an artificial
platform of earth, like the palaces of Assyria and
Babylon. The walls of the palace, formed of huge
blocks of cut stone, can still be traced in many places.
It was approached by an avenue of sculptured slabs,
on which lions were represented, some of them in the
act of devouring a ram. The head and attitude of
one that is preserved remind us of the avenue of ram-
headed sphinxes which led to the temple of Karnak
at Thebes. The entrance of the palace was flanked
on either side by two enormous monoliths of granite,
on the external faces of which were carved in relief the
images of a sphinx. But though the artist had clearly
gone to Egypt for his model, it is also clear that he
had modified the forms he imitated in accordance with
national ideas. The head-dress, like the feet, of the
sphinxes is non-Egyptian, the necklace passes under
the chin instead of falling across the breast, and the
sphinx itself is erect, not recumbent, as in Egypt. On
the right hand the same block of stone which bears
the figure of the sphinx bears also, on the inner side,
the figure of a double-headed eagle, with an animal
which Professor Perrot believes to be a hare in either
talon, and a man standing upon its twofold head.
The same double-headed eagle, supporting the figure
of a man or a god, is met with at Boghaz Keui, and
must be regarded as one of the peculiarities of Hittite

86 THE HITTITES.

symbolism and art. The symbol was adopted in later
days by the Turkoman princes, who had perhaps first
seen it on the Hittite monuments of Kappodokia ; and
the Crusaders brought it to Europe with them in the
14th century. Here it became the emblem of the
German Emperors, who have passed it on to the modern
kingdoms of Russia and Austria. It is not the only heir-
loom of Hittite art which has descended to us of to-day.
The lintel of the palace gate at Eyuk was of solid
stone, and, if Professor Perrot is right, the huge stone
lintel, adorned with a lion's head, still lies in fragments
on the ground. The entrance was flanked with walls
on which bas-reliefs were carved, as in the palaces which
were built by the kings of Assyria. They formed, in
fact, a dado, the rest of the wall above them being
probably of brick covered with stucco and painted with
bright colours. Many of the sculptured blocks still lie
scattered on the ground. Here we have the picture of
a priest before an altar, there of a sacred bull mounted
on a pedestal. Hard by is the likeness of two men,
one of whom carries a lyre, the other a goat ; while on
another stone a man is represented with little regard
to perspective in the act of climbing a ladder. Another
relief introduces to us three rams and a goat whose
horn is grasped by a shepherd ; elsewhere again we
see a goddess seated in a chair of peculiar construction,
with her feet upon a stool and objects like flowers in
her hand. A similar piece of sculpture has been found
at Merash, on the southern side of the Taurus, within
the limits of the ancient Komagene, even such details
as the form of the chair and stool being alike in the
two cases. The two reliefs might have been executed
by the same hand.

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 87

The sphinxes which guarded the entrance of the
palace of Eyuk and the avenue which led up to them
bear unmistakable testimony to the influence of Egyptian
art upon its builders. They take us back to a period
when the Hittites of Kappadokia were in contact with
the people of the Nile, and thus confirm the evidence
of the Egyptian records. There must have been a
time when the population of distant Kappadokia held
intercourse with that of Egypt, and this time, as we
learn from the Egyptian monuments, was the age of
Ramses II. It is perhaps not going too far to assume
that the palace of Eyuk was erected in the 13th century
before our era, and is a relic of the period when the
sway of the Hittite princes of Kadesh or Carchemish
extended as far north as the neighbourhood of the
Halys. It is indeed possible that the palace was
originally the summer residence of the kings whose
homes were in the south. The plateau on which Eyuk
and Boghaz Keui stand is more than 2000 feet above
the level of the sea, and the winters there are in-
tensely cold. From December onwards the ground
is piled high with snow. It is well known that the
descendants of races which have originally come from
a cold climate endure the heats of a southern summer
with impatience ; and the same causes which make the
English rulers of India to-day retire during the summer
to the mountain heights, may have made the Hittite
lords of Syria build their summer palace in the Kap-
padokian highlands.

The sculptures of Boghaz Keui belong to a some-
what later date than those of Eyuk. Boghaz Keui is
five hours to the south-west of Eyuk, and marks the
site of a once populous town. A stream that runs past

88

THE HITTITES.

I

it separates the ruins of the city from a remarkable
series of sculptures carved on the rocks of the mountains
which overlooked the city. The city was surrounded

Nm

SCULPTURES AT BOGHAZ KEUI.

by a massive wall of masonry, and within it were two
citadels solidly built on the summits of two shafts of

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 89

rock. The wall was without towers, but at its foot
ran a moat cut partly through the rock, partly through
the earth, the earth being coated with a smooth and
slippery covering of masonry. The most important
building in the city was the palace, a plan of which
has been made by modern travellers. Like the palace
of Eyuk, it was erected on an artificial mound or terrace
of earth, and its ornamentation seems to have been
similar to that of Eyuk. But little is left of it save
the foundations of the walls and the overturned throne
of stone which once stood in the central court sup-
ported on the bodies of two lions. Lions' heads were
also carved on the columns which formed the door-
posts of the city-gate.

The interest of Boghaz Keui centres in the sculptures
which have been carved with so much care on the rocky
walls of the mountains. Here advantage has been taken
of two narrow recesses, the sides and floors of which
have been artificially shaped and levelled. The first
and largest recess may be described as of rectangular
shape. Along either side of it, as along the dado of
a room, run two long lines of figures in relief, which
eventually meet at the end opposite the entrance. On
the left-hand side we see a line of men, almost all clad
alike in the short tunic, peaked tiara, and boots with
upturned ends that characterise Hittite art. At times,
however, they are interrupted by other figures in the
long Syrian robe, who may perhaps be intended for
women. Among them are two dwarf-like creatures
upholding the crescent disk of the moon, and after a
while the procession becomes that of a number of deities,
each with his name written in Hittite hieroglyphs at
his side. After turning the corner of the recess, the

90 THE HITTITES.

procession consists of three gods, two of whom stand on
mountain-peaks, while the foremost (with a goat beside
him) is supported on the heads of two adoring priests.
Facing him is the foremost figure of the other procession,
which starts from the eastern side of the recess, and
finally meets the first on its northern wall. This figure
is that of the great Asiatic goddess, who wears on her
head the mural crown and stands upon a panther, while
beside her, as beside the god she is greeting, is the
portraiture of a goat. Behind her a youthful god, with
the double-headed battle-axe in his hand, stands upon
a panther, and behind him again are two priestesses
with mural crowns, whose feet rest upon the heads and
wings of a double-headed eagle. This eagle, whose
form is but a reproduction of that sculptured at Eyuk,
closes the series of designs represented on the northern
wall. The eastern wall is occupied with a long line,
first of goddesses and then of priestesses. Where the
line breaks off at last we come upon a solitary piece
of sculpture. This is the image of an eunuch-priest,
who stands on a mountain and holds in one hand a
curved augural wand, in the other a strange symbol
representing a priest with embroidered robes, who stands
upon a shoe with upturned ends, and supports a winged
solar disk, the two extremities of which rest upon
baseless columns.

The entrance to the second recess is guarded on either
side by two winged monsters, with human bodies and
the heads of dogs. It leads into an artificially exca-
vated passage of rectangular shape, on the rocky walls
of which detached groups of figures and emblems are
engraved. On the western wall is a row of twelve
priests or soldiers, each of whom bears a scythe upon

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 93

his shoulder ; facing them on the eastern wall are two
reliefs of strange character. One of them depicts the
youthful god, whose name perhaps was Attys, embracing
with his left arm the eunuch-priest, above whose head
is engraved the strange symbol that has been already
described. The other represents a god's head crowned
with the peaked tiara, and supported on a double-headed
lion, which again stands on the hinder feet of two other
lions, whose heads rest on a column or stem. All these
sculptures were once covered with stucco, and thus
preserved from the action of the weather.

It is evident that in these two mountain recesses we
have a sanctuary, the forms and symbols of whose
deities were sculptured on its walls of living rock. It
was a sanctuary too holy to be confined within the
walls of the city, and the supreme deities to whom it
was dedicated were a god and a goddess, served by
a multitude of male and female priests. In fact, as
Prof. Perrot remarks, Boghaz Keui must have been
a sacred city like Komana, whose citizens were con-
secrated to the chief divinities adored by the Hittites,
and were governed by a high-priest. It was as much
a ' Kadesh ' or ' Hierapolis,' as much a ' holy city,' as
Carchemish itself.

It is not its sculptures only which prove to us that
it was a city of the Hittites. The figures of the deities
have attached to them, as at Eyuk, the same hiero-
glyphs as those which meet us in the inscriptions of
Hamath and Aleppo, of Carchemish and Merash, and
within its walls, southward of the ruins of its palace,
Prof. Perrot discovered a long text of nine or ten lines
cut out of the rock, and though worn and disfigured
by time and weather, still showing the forms of many

94 THE HITTITES.

Hittite characters. So far as can be judged from a
photograph of it he has published, the forms are the
same as those which are found on the Hittite monu-
ments of Syria.

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 Car-
chemish, 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

THE HITTITE EMPIRE. 95

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.

However this may be, the Hittite monuments of Asia
Minor confirm in a striking way the evidence of the
Egyptian inscriptions. They show us that the Hittites
worked for silver in the mountains which looked down
upon the Cilician plain, from whence the influence of
their art and writing extended into the plain itself.
They further show that the central point of Hittite
power was a square on either side of the Taurus range,
which included Carchemish and Komagene in the south,

g6 THE HITTITES.

the district eastwards of the Halys on the north, and
the country of which Malatiyeh was the capital in the
east. The Hittite tribes, in fact, were mountaineers
from the plateau of Kappadokia who had spread them-
selves out in all directions. A time came when, under
the leadership of powerful princes, they marched along
the two high-roads of Asia Minor and established their
supremacy over the coast-tribes of the far west. The
age to which this military empire belongs is indicated
by the Egyptian character of the so-called image of
Niobe on the cliff of Sipylos, as well as by the sphinxes
which guarded the entrance to the palace of Eyuk. It
goes back to the days when the rulers of Kadesh could
summon to their aid the vassal-chieftains of the iEgean
coast. The monuments the Hittites have left behind
them in Asia Minor thus bear the same testimony as
the records of Egypt. The people to whom Uriah, and
it may be Bath-sheba, belonged, not only had contended
on equal terms with one of the greatest of Egyptian
kings ; they had carried their arms through the whole
length of Asia Minor, they had set up satraps in the
cities of Lydia, and had brought the civilisation of the
East to the barbarous tribes of the distant West.

CHAPTER V.

THE HITTITE CITIES AND RACE.

OF the history of the ' White Syrians ' or Hittites who
lived in the land of Pteria, near the Halys, we know
nothing at present beyond what we can gather from the
ruins of their stronghold at Boghaz Keui and their
palace at Eyuk. The same is the case with the Hittite
tribes of Malatiyeh and Komag£ne\ When the inscrip-
tion which adorns the body of a stone lion found at
Merash can be deciphered, it will doubtless cast light on
the early history of the city ; at present we do not know
even its ancient name. It is not until we leave the
mountainous region originally occupied by the Hittite
race, and descend into the valleys of Syria, that the annals
of their neighbours begin to tell us something about
their fortunes and achievements. The history of their
two southern capitals, Carchemish and Kadesh, broken
and imperfect though it may be, is not an utter blank.

The site of Carchemish had long been looked for in
vain. At one time it was identified with the Kirkesion or
Circesium of classical geography, built at the confluence
of the Khabour and the Euphrates. But the Assyrian
name of Kirkesion was Sirki, and its position did not
agree with that assigned to ' Gargamis ' or Carchemish
in the Assyrian texts. Professor Maspero subsequently
placed the latter at Membij, the ancient Mabog or
Hierapolis, on the strength of the evidence furnished by

G

98 THE HITTITES.

classical authors and the Egyptian monuments ; but the
ruins of Membij contain nothing earlier than the Greek
period, and their position on a rocky plateau at a dis-
tance from the Euphrates, is inconsistent with the fact
known to us from the Assyrian inscriptions, that Car-
chemish commanded the fords over the Euphrates.

To Mr. Skene, for many years the English consul at
Aleppo, is due the credit of first discovering the true
site of the old Hittite capital. On the western bank of
the Euphrates, midway between Birejik and the mouth
of the Sajur, rises an artificial mound of earth, under
which ruins and sculptured blocks of stone had been
found from time to time. It was known as Jerablus,
or Kalaat Jerablus, ' the fortress of Jerablus,' sometimes
wrongly written Jerabis ; and in the name of Jerablus Mr.
Skene had no difficulty in recognising an Arab corruption
of Hierapolis. In the Roman age the name of Hierapolis
or ' Holy City ' had been transferred to its neighbour
Membij, which inherited the traditions and religious
fame of the older Carchemish ; but when the triumph of
Christianity in Syria brought with it the fall of the
great temple of Membij, the name disappeared from the
later city, and was remembered only in connection with
the ruins of the ancient Carchemish.

Two years after Mr. Skene's discovery, Mr. George
Smith visited Carchemish on his last ill-fated journey
from which he never returned, and recognised at once
that Mr. Skene's identification was right. The position
of Jerablus suited the requirements of the Assyrian texts,
it lay on the high-road which formerly led from east to
west, and among its ruins was an inscription in Hittite
characters. Not long afterwards there were brought to
the British Museum the bronze bands which once adorned

THE HITTITE CITIES AND RACE. 99

the gates of an Assyrian temple, and on one of these is
a picture in relief of Carchemish as it looked in the days
of Jehu of Israel. The Euphrates is represented as
running past its walls, thus conclusively showing that
Jerablus, and not Membij, must be the site on which it
stood.

The site was bought by Mr. Henderson, Mr. Skene's
successor at Aleppo, and the money was invested by
the former owner in the purchase of a cow. The mighty
were fallen indeed, when the Hittite capital which had
resisted the armies of Egypt and Assyria was judged
to be worth no more than the price of a beast of the
field. In 1878 Mr. Henderson was employed by the
Trustees of the British Museum in excavating on the
spot ; but no sufficient supervision was exercised over
the workmen, and though a few remains of Hittite
sculpture and writing found their way to London, much
was left to be burned into lime by the natives or em-
ployed in the construction of a mill.

The ancient city was defended on two sides by the
Euphrates, and was exposed only on the north and
west. Here, however, an artificial canal had been cut,
on either side of which was a fortified wall. The mound
which had first attracted Mr. Skene's attention marks
the site of the royal palace, where the excavators found
the remains of a dado like that of Eyuk, the face of the
stones having been sculptured into the likeness of gods
and men. The men were shod with boots with up-
turned ends, that unfailing characteristic of Hittite art.

Carchemish enjoyed a long history. When first we
hear of it in the Egyptian records it was already in
Hittite hands. Thothmes III. fought beneath its walls,
and his bravest warriors plunged into the Euphrates in

G 2

100 THE HITTITES.

their eagerness to capture the foe. Tiglath-pileser I.
had seen its walls from the opposite shore of the Eu-
phrates, but had not ventured to approach them. Assur-
natsir-pal and his son Shalmaneser had received tribute
from its king, and when it finally surrendered to the
armies of Sargon it was made the seat of an Assyrian
satrap. The trade which had flowed through it con-
tinued to pour wealth into the hands of its merchants,
and the ' maneh of Carchemish ' remained a standard of
value. When Egypt made her final struggle for su-
premacy in Asia, it was under the walls of Carchemish
that the decisive struggle was fought. The battle of
Carchemish in B.C. 604 drove Necho out of Syria and
Palestine, and placed the destinies of the chosen people
in the hands of the Babylonian king. It is possible
that the ruin of Carchemish dates from the battle.
However that may be, long before the beginning of the
Christian era it had been supplanted by Mabog or
Membij, and the great sanctuary which had made it a
1 holy city ' was transferred to its rival and successor.

Like Carchemish, Kadesh on the Orontes, the most
southern capital the Hittites possessed, was also a ' holy
city.' Pictures of it have been preserved on the monu-
ments of Ramses II. We gather from them that it
stood on the shore of the Lake of Horns, still called the
' Lake of Kadesh/ at the point where the Orontes flowed
out of the lake. The river was conducted round the
city in a double channel, across which a wide bridge
was thrown, the space between the two channels being
apparently occupied by a wall.

Kadesh must have been one of the last conquests
made by the Hittites in Syria, and their retention of it
was the visible sign of their supremacy over Western

THE HITTITE CITIES AND RACE. lOI

Asia. We do not know when they were forced to yield
up its possession to others. As has been pointed out,
the correct reading of 2 Sam. xxiv. 6 informs us that
the northern limit of the kingdom of David was formed
by ' the Hittites of Kadesh/ ! the entering in of Hamath,'
as it seems to be called elsewhere. In the age of David,
accordingly, Kadesh must still have been in their hands,
but it had already ceased to be so when the Assyrian
king Shalmaneser III. led his armies to the west. No
allusion to the city and its inhabitants occurs in the
Assyrian inscriptions, and we may conjecture that it
had been destroyed by the Syrians of Damascus. As
Membij took the place of Carchemish, so Emesa or
Horns took the place of Kadesh.

We have seen that the Hittites were a northern race.
Their primitive home probably lay on the northern side
of the Taurus. What they were like we can learn both
from their own sculptures and from the Egyptian monu-
ments, which agree most remarkably in the delineation
of their features. The extraordinary resemblance be-
tween the Hittite faces drawn by the Egyptian artists
and those depicted by themselves in their bas-reliefs
and their hieroglyphs, is a convincing proof of the faith-
fulness of the Egyptian representations, as well as of
the identity of the Hittites of the Egyptian inscriptions
with the Hittites of Carchemish and Kappadokia.

It must be confessed that they were not a handsome
people. They were short and thick of limb, and the
front part of their faces was pushed forward in a curious
and somewhat repulsive way. The forehead retreated,
the cheek-bones were high, the nostrils were large, the
upper lip protrusive. They had, in fact, according to
the craniologists, the characteristics of a Mongoloid race.

102 THE HITTITES.

Like the Mongols, moreover, their skins were yellow
and their eyes and hair were black. They arranged the
hair in the form of a ' pig-tail,' which characterises them
on their own and the Egyptian monuments quite as
much as their snow-shoes with upturned toes.

In Syria they doubtless mixed with the Semitic race,
and the further south they advanced the more likely
they were to become absorbed into the native popula-
tion. The Hittites of Southern Judah have Semitic
names, and probably spoke a Semitic language. Kadesh
continued to bear to the last its Semitic title, and among
the Hittite names which occur further north there are
several which display a Semitic stamp. In the neigh-
bourhood of Carchemish Hittites and Arameans were
mingled together, and Pethor was at once a Hittite
and an Aramean town. In short, the Hittites in Syria
were like a conquering race everywhere ; they formed
merely the governing and upper class, which became
smaller and smaller the further removed they were from
their original seats. Like the Normans in Sicily or the
Etruscans in ancient Italy, they tended gradually to
disappear or else to be absorbed into the subject race.
It was only in their primitive homes that they survived
in their original strength and purity, and though even
in Kappadokia they lost their old languages, adopting
in place of them first Aramaic, then Greek, and lastly
Turkish, we may still observe their features and char-
acteristics in the modern inhabitants of the Taurus
range. Even in certain districts of Kappadokia their
descendants may still be met with. ' The type,' says
Sir Charles Wilson, ' which is not a beautiful one, is still
found in some parts of Kappadokia, especially amongst
the people living in the extraordinary subterranean

THE HITTITE CITIES AND RACE. 103

towns which I discovered beneath the great plain north-
west of Nigdeh.' The characteristics of race, when once
acquired, seem almost indelible ; and it is possible that,
when careful observations can be made, it will be found
that the ancient Hittite race still survives, not only in
Eastern Asia Minor, but even in the southern regions
of Palestine.

CHAPTER VI.

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART.

LUCIAN, or some other Greek writer who has usurped
his name, has left us a minute account of the great
temple of Mabog as it existed in the second century
of the Christian era. Mabog, as we have seen, was the
successor of Carchemish ; and there is little reason to
doubt that the pagan temple of Mabog, with all the
rites and ceremonies that were carried on in it, differed
but little from the pagan temple of the older Carche-
mish.

It stood, we are told, in the very centre of the ' Holy
City.' It consisted of an outer court and an inner
sanctuary, which again contained a Holy of Holies,
entered only by the high-priest and those of his com-
panions who were ' nearest the gods.' The temple was
erected on an artificial mound or platform, more than
twelve feet in height, and its walls and ceiling within
were brilliant with gold. Its doors were also gilded,
but the Holy of Holies or innermost shrine was not
provided with doors, being separated from the rest of
the building, it would seem, like the Holy of Holies in
the Jewish temple, by a curtain or veil. On either side
of the entrance was a cone-like column of great height,
a symbol of the goddess of fertility, and in the outer
court a large altar of brass. To the left of the latter
was an image of ' Semiramis,' and not far off a great

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. 105

'sea' or Make,' containing sacred fish. Oxen, horses,
eagles, bears, and lions were kept in the court, as being
sacred to the deities worshipped within.

On entering the temple the visitor saw on his left the
throne of the Sun-god, but no image, since the Sun and
Moon alone of the gods had no images dedicated to
them. Beyond, however, were the statues of various
divinities, among others the wonder-working image of
a god who was believed to deliver oracles and prophecies.
At times, it was said, the image moved of its own
accord, and if not lifted up at once by the priests, began
to perspire. When the priests took it in their hands,
it led them from one part of the temple to the other,
until the high-priest, standing before it, asked it ques-
tions, which it answered by driving its bearers forward.
The central objects of worship, however, were the golden
images of two deities, whom Lucian identifies with the
Greek Hera and Zeus, another figure standing between
them, on the head of which rested a golden dove. The
gcddess, who blazed with precious stones, bore in her
hand a sceptre and on her head that turreted or mural
crown which distinguishes the goddesses of Boghaz
Keui. Like them, moreover, she was supported on
lions, while her consort was carried by bulls. In him
we may recognise the god who at Boghaz Keui is
advancing to meet the supreme Hittite goddess.

In the Egyptian text of the treaty between Ramses
and the king of Kadesh, the supreme Hittite god is
called Sutekh, the goddess being Antarata, or perhaps
Astarata. In later days, however, the goddess of Car-
chemish was known as Athar-'Ati, which the Greeks
transformed into Atargatis and Derketo. Derketo was
fabled to be the mother of Semiramis, in whom Greek

106 THE HITTITES.

legend saw an Assyrian queen ; but Semiramis was
really the goddess Istar, called Ashtoreth in Canaan,
and Atthar or Athar by the Arameans, among whom
Carchemish was built. Derketo was, therefore, but
another form of Semiramis, or rather but another name
under which the great Asiatic goddess was known. The
dove was sacred to her, and this explains why an image
of the dove was placed above the head of the third
image in the divine triad of Mabog.

The temple was served by a multitude of priests.
More than 300 took part in the sacrifices on the day
when Lucian saw it. The priests were dressed in v/hite,
and wore the skull-cap which we find depicted on the
Hittite monuments. The high-priest alone carried on
his head the lofty tiara, which the sculptures indicate was
a prerogative of gods and kings. Prominent among
the priests were the Galli or eunuchs, who on the days
of festival cut their arms and scourged themselves in
honour of their deities. Such actions remind us of those
priests of Baal who ( cut themselves after their manner
with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon
them.'

Twice a year a solemn procession took place to a
small chasm in the rock under the temple, where, it was
alleged, the waters of the deluge had been swallowed
up, and water from the sea was poured into it. It is to
this pit that Melito, a Christian writer of Syria, alludes
when he says that the goddess Simi, the daughter of
the supreme god Hadad, put an end to the attacks of
a demon by filling with sea water the pit in which he
lived. But in Lucian's time the demon was regarded as
the deluge, and the account of the deluge given to the
Greek writer agrees so closely with that which we read

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. 107

in Genesis as to make it clear that it had been borrowed
by the priests of Hierapolis from the Hebrew Scriptures.
It is probable, however, that the tradition itself was of
much older standing, and had originally been imported
from Babylonia. At all events the hero of the deluge
was called Sisythes, a modification of the name of the
Chaldaean Noah, while Major Conder found a place in
the close neighbourhood of Kadesh which is known as
' the Ark of the Prophet Noah/ and close at hand a
spring termed the Tannur or ' Oven,' out of which,
according to Mohammedan belief, the waters of the
flood gushed forth.

But there were many other festivals at Mabog besides
that which commemorated the subsidence of the deluge.
Pilgrims flocked to it from all parts — Arabia, Palestine,
Kappadokia, Babylonia, even India. They were re-
quired to drink water only, and to sleep on the ground.
Numerous and rich were the offerings which they
brought to the shrine, and once arrived there were
called upon to offer sacrifices. Goats and sheep were
the most common victims, though oxen were also
offered. The only animal whose flesh was forbidden to
be either sacrificed or eaten was the swine ; as among
the Jews, it was regarded as unclean. After being
dedicated in the court of the temple the animal was
usually led to the house of the offerer, and there put to
death ; sometimes, however, it was killed by being
thrown from the entrance to the temple. Even children
were sacrificed by their parents in this way, after first
being tied up in skins and told that they were 'not
children but oxen.'

Different stories were current as to the foundation of
the temple. There were some who affirmed that

108 THE HITTITES.

Sisythes had built it after the deluge over the spot
where the waters of the flood had been swallowed up by
the earth. It is possible that this was the legend
originally believed in Mabog before the traditions of
Carchemish had been transferred to it. It seems to be
closely connected with the local peculiarities of the site.
The other legends had doubtless had their origin in the
older Hierapolis. According to one of them, the temple
had been founded by Semiramis in honour of her
mother Derketo, half woman and half fish, to whom the
fish in the neighbouring lake were sacred. Another
account made Attys its founder, and the goddess to whom
it was dedicated the divinity called Rhea by the Greeks.
Derketo and Rhea, however, are but different names
of the same deity, who was known as Kybele or Kybebe
in Phrygia, and honoured with the title of 'the Great
Mother.' Her images were covered with breasts, to
symbolise that she was but mother-earth, from whom
mankind derived their means of life. Her attributes
were borrowed from those of the Babylonian Istar, the
Ashtoreth of Canaan ; even the form assigned to her
was that of the Babylonian Istar, as we learn from a
bas-relief discovered at Carchemish, where she is repre-
sented as naked, a lofty tiara alone excepted, with the
hands upon the breasts and a wing rising behind each
shoulder. She was, in fact, a striking illustration of the
influence exerted upon the Hittites, and through them
upon the people of Asia Minor, by Babylonian religion
and worship. Even in Lydia a stone has been found
on which her image is carved in a rude style of art, but
similar in form to the representations of her in the bas-
relief of Carchemish and the cylinders of ancient
Chaldaea.

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. 109

This stone, like the seated figure on Mount Sipylos,
is a witness that her cult was carried westward by the
Hittite armies. Later tradition preserved a reminis-
cence of the fact. The Lydian hero Kayster was said
to have gone to Syria, and there had Derketo for his
bride, while on the other hand it was a Lydian, Mopsos,
who was believed to have drowned the goddess Derketo
in the sacred lake of Ashkelon. We have here, it may
be, recollections of the days when Lydian soldiers
marched against Egypt under the leadership of Hittite
princes, and learnt to know the name and the character
of Athar-'Ati, the goddess of Carchemish.

The Babylonian Istar was accompanied by her son
and bridegroom Tammuz, the youthful Sun-god, the
story of whose untimely death made a deep impression
on the popular mind. Even in Jerusalem Ezekiel saw
the women weeping for the death of Tammuz within
the precincts of the temple itself ; and for days together
each year in the Phoenician cities the festival of his
death and resurrection were observed with fanatic zeal.
In Syria he was called Hadad, and identified with the
god Rimmon, so that Zechariah (xii. 11) speaks of the
mourning for Hadad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo.
At Hierapolis and Aleppo also he was known as
Hadad or Dadi, while throughout Asia Minor he was
adored under the name of Attys, ' the shepherd of the
bright stars/ The myth which told of his death under-
went a slight change of form among the Hittites, and
through them among the tribes of Asia Minor. He is
doubtless the young god who on the rocks of Boghaz
Keui appears behind the mother-goddess, riding like her
on the back of a panther or lion.

The people of Mabog did not forget that their temple

IIO THE HITTITES.

was but the successor of an older one, and that Carchemish
had once been the ' Holy City' of Northern Syria. The
legends, therefore, which referred to the foundation of
the sanctuary were said to relate to one which had
formerly existed, but had long since fallen into decay.
The origin of the temple visited by Lucian was ascribed
to a certain ' Stratonike, the wife of the Assyrian king.'
But Stratonike is merely a Greek transformation of some
Semitic epithet of 'Ashtoreth,' and marks the time when
the Phoenician Ashtoreth took the place of the earlier
Athar-'Ati. A strange legend was told of the youthful
Kombabos, who was sent from Babylon to take part in
the building of the shrine. Kombabos was but Tammuz
under another name, just as Stratonike was Istar, and
the legend is chiefly interesting as testifying to the
religious influence once exercised by the Babylonians
upon the Hittite people.

Semiramis may turn out to have been the Hittite name
of the goddess called Athar-'Ati by the Aramean
inhabitants of Hierapolis. In this case the difficulty of
accounting for the existence of the two names would
have been solved in the old myths by making her the
daughter of Derketo. But while Derketo was a fish-
goddess, Semiramis was associated with the dove, like the
Ashtoreth or Aphrodite who was worshipped in Cyprus.
The symbol of the dove had been carried to the distant
West at an early period. Among the objects found by
Dr. Schliemann in the prehistoric tombs of Mykenae
were figures in gold-leaf, two of which represented a
naked goddess with the hands upon the breasts and
doves above her, while the third has the form of a temple,
on the two pinnacles of which are seated two doves.
Considering how intimately the prehistoric art of My-

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. Ill

kense seems to have been connected with that of Asia
Minor, it is hardly too much to suppose that the symbol
of the dove had made its way across the ^Egean through
the help of the Hittites, and that in the pinnacled temple
of Mykenae, with its two doves, we may see a picture of
a Hittite temple in Lydia or Kappadokia.

The legends reported by Lucian about the foundation
of the temple of Mabog all agreed that it was dedicated
to a goddess. The ' Holy City' was under the protection,
not of a male but of a female divinity, which explains why
it was that it was served by eunuch priests. If Attys
or Hadad was worshipped there, it was in right of his
mother ; the images of the other gods stood in the
temple on sufferance only. The male deity whom the
Greek author identified with Zeus must have been
regarded as admitted by treaty or marriage to share
in the honours paid to her. It must have been the
same also at Boghaz Keui. Here, too, the most pro-
minent figure in the divine procession is that of the
Mother-goddess, who is followed by her son Attys, while
the god, whose name may be read Tar or Tarku, 'the
king,' and who is the Zeus of Lucian, advances to meet
her.

In Cilicia and Lydia this latter god seems to have
been known as Sandan. He is called on coins the
' Baal of Tarsos,' and he carries in his hand a bunch
of grapes and a stalk of corn. We may see his figure
engraved on the rock of Ibreez. Here he wears on his
head the pointed Hittite cap, ornamented with horn-
like ribbons, besides the short tunic and boots with
upturned ends. On his wrists are bracelets, and ear-
rings hang from his ears.

Sandan was identified with the Sun, and hence it

112 THE HITTITES.

happened that when a Semitic language came to prevail
in Cilicia he was transformed into a supreme Baal. The
same transformation had taken place centuries before in
the Hittite cities of Syria. Beside the Syrian goddess
Kes, who is represented as standing upon a lion, like
the great goddess of Carchemish, the Egyptian monu-
ments tell us of Sutekh, who stands in the same relation
to his Hittite worshippers as the Semitic Baal stood to
the populations of Canaan. Sutekh was the supreme
Hittite god, but at the same time he was localised in
every city or state in which the Hittites lived. Thus
there was a Sutekh of Carchemish and a Sutekh of
Kadesh, just as there was a Baal of Tyre and a Baal
of Tarsos. The forms under which he was worshipped
were manifold, but everywhere it was the same Sutekh,
the same national god.

It would seem that the power of Sutekh began to
wane after the age of Ramses, and that the goddess began
to usurp the place once held by the god. It is possible
that this was due to Babylonian and Assyrian influence.
At any rate, whereas it is Sutekh who appears at the
head of the Hittite states in the treaty with Ramses, in
later days the chief cult of the ' Holy Cities' was paid to
the Mother-goddess. His place was taken by the goddess
at Carchemish as well as at Mabog, at Boghaz Keui as
well as at Komana.

In the Kappadokian Komana the goddess went under
the name of Ma. She was served by 6000 priests and
priestesses, the whole city being dedicated to her service.
The place of the king was occupied by the Abakles
or high-priest. We have seen that the sculptures of
Boghaz Keui give us reason to believe that the same
was also the case in Pteria; we know that it was so in

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. 113

other 'Holy Cities' of Asia Minor. At Pessinus in
Phrygia, where lions and panthers stood beside the
goddess, the whole city was given up to her worship,
under the command of the chief Gallos or priest ; and
on the shores of the Black Sea the Amazonian priestesses
of Kybele, who danced in armour in her honour, were
imagined by the Greeks to constitute the sole population
of an entire country. At Ephesos, in spite of the Greek
colony which had found its way there, the worship of the
Mother-goddess continued to absorb the life of the
inhabitants, so that it still could be described in the
time of St. Paul as a city which was 'a worshipper
of the great goddess.' Here, as at Pessinus, she was
worshipped under the form of a meteoric stone 'which
had fallen from heaven.'

We may regard these ' Holy Cities,' placed under the
protection of a goddess and wholly devoted to her wor-
ship, as peculiarly characteristic of the Hittite race.
Their two southern capitals, Kadesh and Carchemish,
were cities of this kind, and their stronghold at Boghaz
Keui was presumably also a consecrated place. Their
progress through Asia Minor was characterised by the
rise of priestly cities and the growth of a class of armed
priestesses. Komana in Kappadokia, and Ephesos on
the shores of the yEgean, are typical examples of such
holy towns. The entire population ministered to the
divinity to whom the city was dedicated, the sanctuary
of the deity stood in its centre, and the chief authority
was wielded by a high-priest. If a king existed by the
side of the priest, he came in course of time to fill a merely
subordinate position.

These 'Holy Cities' were also ' Asyla' or Cities of
Refuge. The homicide could escape to them, and be

H

114 THE HITTITES.

safe from his pursuers. Once within the precincts of
the city and the protection of its deity, he could not be
injured or slain. But it was not only the man who had
slain another by accident who could thus claim an
' asylum' from his enemies. The debtor and the poli-
tical refugee were equally safe. Doubtless the right
of asylum was frequently abused, and real criminals
took advantage of regulations which were intended to
protect the unfortunate in an age of lawlessness and
revenge. But the institution on the whole worked
well, and, while it strengthened the power of the priest-
hood, it curbed injustice and restrained violence.

Now the institution of Cities of Refuge did not exist
only in Asia Minor and in the region occupied by the
Hittites. It existed also in Palestine, and it seems
not unlikely that it was adopted by the great Hebrew
lawgiver, acting under divine guidance, from the older
population of the country. The Hebrew cities of refuge
were six in number. Gne of them was ' Kedesh in
Galilee,' whose very name declares it to have been a
' Holy City,' like Kadesh on the Orontes, while another
was the ancient sanctuary of Hebron, once occupied
by Hittites and Amorites. Shechem, the third city of
refuge on the western side of the Jordan, had been
taken by Jacob ' out of the hand of the Amorite' (Gen.
xlviii. 22) ; and the other three cities were all on the
eastern side of the Jordan, in the region so long held by
Amorite tribes. We are therefore tempted to ask whether
these cities had not already been 'asyla' or cities of
refuge long before Moses was enjoined by God to make
them such for the Israelitish conquerors of Palestine.

Closely connected with Hittite religion was Hittite
art. Religion and art have been often intertwined to-

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. 115

gether in the history of the world, and we can often
infer the religion of a people from its art, as in the case
of the sculptures of Boghaz Keui. Hittite art was a
modification of that of Babylonia, and bears testimony
to the same Babylonian influence as the worship of
the ' Mother-goddess.' The same Chaldaean culture is
presupposed by both.

But while the art of the Hittites was essentially
Babylonian in origin, it was profoundly modified in the
hands of the Hittite artists. The deities, indeed, were
made to ride on the backs of animals, as upon Baby-
lonian cylinders, the walls of the palaces were adorned
with long rows of bas-reliefs, as in Chaldaea and Assyria,
and there was the same tendency to arrange animals
face to face in heraldic style ; but nevertheless the
workmanship and the details introduced into it were
purely native. Even a symbol like the winged solar
disk assumes in Hittite sculpture a special character
which can never be mistaken. The Hittite artist ex-
celled in the representation of animal forms, but the
lion, which he seems to have never wearied of designing,
is treated in a peculiar way which marks it sharply off
from the sculptured lions either of Babylonia or of any
other country. So, too, in the case of the human figure,
though the general conception has been derived from
Babylonian art, the conception is worked out in a
new and original manner. Those who have once seen
the sculptured image of a Hittite warrior or a Hittite
god, can never confuse it with the artistic productions
of another race. The figure is clearly drawn from the
daily experience of the sculptor's own life. The dress
with its peaked shoes, the thick rounded form, the
strange protrusive profile, were copied from the costume

H %

Il6 THE HITTITES.

and appearance of his fellow-countrymen, and the striking
agreement that exists between his representation of them
and that which we find on the Egyptian monuments
proves how faithfully he must have worked. The ele-
ments, in short, of Babylonian art are present in the art
of the Hittite, but the treatment and selection are his
own.

It is in his selection and combination of these elements
that he exhibits most clearly his originality. Monsters,
half human, half bestial, were known to the Babylonians,
but it was left to the Hittite to invent a double-headed
eagle, or to plant a human head on a column of lions.
The so-called rope-pattern occurs once or twice on
Babylonian gems, but it became a distinguishing char-
acteristic of Hittite art, like the employment of the
heads only of animals instead of their entire forms.

So, again, the heraldic arrangement of animals face
to face, or more rarely back to back, had its first home
in Chaldaea, but it was the Hittites who raised it into
a principle of art. We may perhaps trace their doing
so to their love of animal forms.

The influence of Babylonian culture may have made
itself first felt in the age of the eighteenth Egyptian
dynasty, when the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna
represent the Hittite tribes as descending southward into
the Syrian plains. It may on the other hand go back to
a much earlier epoch. We have no materials at present
for deciding the question. One fact, however, is clear ;
there was a time when the Hittites were profoundly
affected by Babylonian civilisation, religion and art.
Before this could have been the case they must have
been already settled in Syria.

It is more easy to fix the period when the Hittite

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. uj

sculptor received that inspiration from Egyptian art
which produced the sphinxes of Eyuk and the seated
image on Mount Sipylos. It can only have been the
age of Ramses II., and of the great wars between Egypt
and the Hittite princes in the fourteenth century before
our era. The influence of Egypt was but transitory,
but it was to it, in all probability, that the Hittites
owed the idea of hieroglyphic writing.

At a far later date Babylonian influence was super-
seded by that of Assyria. The later sculptures of
Carchemish betray the existence of Assyrian rather
than of Babylonian models. The winged figure of the
goddess of Carchemish now in the British Museum is
Assyrian in style and character, and it is possible that
other draped images of the goddess may be derived
from the same source. In Babylonian art Istar was
represented nude.

However this may be, Professor Perrot has made it
clear that the beginnings of Hittite art must be looked
for in Syria, on the southern slopes of the Taurus, from
whence it spread to the tribes of Kappadokia. It is
in Northern Syria that its rudest and most infantile
attempts have been found. The sculptors of Eyuk were
already advanced in skill.

To Professor Perrot we also owe the discovery of
bronze figures of Hittite manufacture. The execution
of them is at once conventional and barbarous. Nothing
can exceed the rudeness of a figure now in the Louvre,
which represents a god with a pointed tiara, standing
on the back of an animal. Though the face of the god
has evidently been modelled with care, it is impossible
to tell to what zoological species the animal which
supports him is intended to belong. Almost equally

Il8 THE HITTITES.

far removed from nature is the bronze image of a bull
which is also in the Louvre.

If these bronzes are to be regarded as the highest
efforts of Hittite metallurgic work, it is not to be re-
gretted that they are few in number. But it is quite
different with the engraved gems which we now know
to have been of Hittite workmanship. Many of them
are exceedingly fine ; a haematite cylinder, for instance,
which was discovered at Kappadokia, is equal to the
best products of Babylonian art. The gems and
cylinders were for the most part intended to be used as
seals, and some of them are provided with handles cut
out of the stone, the seal itself having designs on four,
and sometimes on five faces. These handles seem to be
a peculiarity of Hittite art, or at least of the art which
derived its inspiration from that of the Hittites.
Another peculiarity noticeable in many of the gems,
consists in enclosing the inner field of the engraved
design with one or more concentric circles, each circle
containing an elaborate series of ornaments or figures,
or even characters, though the characters are usually
placed in the central field. Thus two gems have been
found at Yuzghat, in Kappadokia, so much alike, that
they must have been the work of the same artist. On
the larger an inscription has been engraved in the
centre, round which runs a circle containing a large
number of beautifully-executed figures. The winged
solar disk rests upon the symbol of ' kingship/ on either
side of which kneels a figure, half man and half bull.
On the right and left is the figure of a standing priest,
behind whom we see on the left a man adoring what
seems to be the stump of a tree, while on the right are
a tree, two arrows and a quiver, a basket, a stag's head,

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. 119

and a seated deity, above whose hand is a bird. The
two groups are separated by the picture of a boot — the
symbol, it may be, of the earth — which rests, like the
winged solar disk, on the symbol of royalty. The smaller
seal has a different inscription in the centre, encircled
by two rings, one containing a row of ornaments, and
the other the same figures as those engraved on the
larger seal, excepting only that the arrangement of the
figures has been changed, and a tree introduced among
them. What is curious, however, is that a gem has
been found at A id in, far away towards the western
extremity of Asia Minor, containing a central inscrip-
tion almost identical with that of the smaller Yuzghat
seal, though the figures which surround it are not the
same.

These circular seals must be regarded not only as
characteristic of Hittite art, but also as a product of
Hittite invention. We meet with nothing resembling
them in Babylonia or Assyria.

The gems can be traced across the ^Egean to the
shores of Greece. Among the objects discovered by
Dr. Schliemann at Mykenae were two rings of gold, on
the chatons of which designs are engraved in what we
may now recognise as the Hittite style of art. On one
of them are two rows of animals' heads ; on the other
an elaborate picture, which reminds us of the elaborate
designs on the gems of Asia Minor. It represents a
woman under a tree, facing two other persons, who wear
the upturned boots and flounced dress that we find in
.Hittite sculptures, while the background is filled in
with the heads of animals.

These gems are not the only indication the ruins of
Mykenae have afforded that Hittite influence was

120 THE HITTITES.

spread beyond the coasts of Asia Minor. Allusion has
already been made to the figures of the Hittite goddess
and the doves that rested on the pinnacles of her
temple ; another figure in thin gold gives us a likeness
of the Hittite goddess seated on the cliff of Sipylos, as
she appeared before rain and tempest had changed her
into ' the weeping Niobe.' Perhaps, however, the most
striking illustration of the westward migration of Hittite
influence, is to be found in the famous lions which stand
fronting each other, carved on stone, above the great
gate of the ancient Peloponnesian city. The lions of
Mykenae have long been known as the oldest piece of
sculpture in Europe, but the art which inspired it was of
Hittite origin. A similar bas-relief has been discovered
at Kiimbet, in Phrygia, in the near vicinity of Hittite
monuments ; and we have just seen that the heraldic
position in which the lions are represented was a peculiar
feature of Hittite art.

Greek tradition affirmed that the rulers of Mykenae
had come from Lydia, bringing with them the civilisation
and the treasures of Asia Minor. The tradition has
been confirmed by modern research. While certain
elements belonging to the prehistoric culture of Greece,
as revealed at Mykenae and elsewhere, were derived
from Egypt and Phoenicia, there are others which
point to Asia Minor as their source. And the culture
of Asia Minor was Hittite. Mr. Gladstone, therefore,
may be right in seeing the Hittites in the Keteians of
Homer — that Homer who told of the legendary glories
of Mykenae and the Lydian dynasty which held it in
possession. Even the buckle, with the help of which
the prehistoric Greek fastened his cloak, has been
shown by a German scholar to imply an arrangement

HITTITE RELIGION AND ART. 12,1

of the dress such as we see represented on the Hittite
monument of Ibreez.

For us of the modern world, therefore, the resurrection
of the Hittite people from their long sleep of oblivion
possesses a double interest. They appeal to us not
alone because of the influence they once exercised on
the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because
a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of
Christ, but also on account of the debt which the
civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. Our
culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient
Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were
derived from the Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor.
The Hittite warriors who still guard the Pass of Karabel,
on the very threshold of Asia, are symbols of the
position occupied by the race in the education of man-
kind. The Hittites carried the time-worn civilisations
of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of
Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the
grey dawn of European history. But they never passed
the boundary themselves ; with the conquest of Lydia
their mission was accomplished, the work that had been
appointed them was fulfilled.

AN INSCRIPTION FOUND AT CARCHEMISH (uOW destroyed).

CHAPTER VII.

THE INSCRIPTIONS.

HOW can the history of a lost people be recovered,
it may be asked, except through the help of the
records they have left behind them ? How can we come
to know anything about the Hittites until their few and
fragmentary inscriptions are deciphered ? The answer to
this question will have been furnished by the preceding
pages. Though the Hittite, inscriptions are still unde-
ciphered, though the number of them is still very small,
there are other materials for reconstructing the history
of the race, and these materials have now found their

THE INSCRIPTIONS.

123

interpreter. The sculptured monuments the Hittites have
left behind them, the seals they engraved, the cities they
inhabited, the memorials of them preserved in the Old
Testament, in the cuneiform tablets of Assyria, and in the
papyri of Egypt, have all served to build up afresh the
fabric of a mighty empire which once exercised so pro-
found an influence on the destinies of the civilised world.

But the Hittite inscriptions have not been altogether
useless. They have helped to connect together the
scattered monuments of Hittite dominion, and to prove
that the peculiar art they display was of Hittite origin.
It was the Hittite hieroglyphs which accompany the
figure of the warrior in the Pass of Karabel, and of the
sitting goddess on Mount Sipylos, that proved these
sculptures to be of Hittite origin. It has similarly been
inscriptions containing Hittite characters which have
enabled us to trace the march of the Hittite armies
along the high-roads of Asia Minor, and to feel sure
that Hittite princes once reigned in the city of Hamath.

The Hittite texts are distinguished by two charac-
teristics. With hardly an exception, the hieroglyphs
that compose them are carved in relief instead of being
incised, and the lines read alternately from right to left
and from left to right. The direction in which the
characters look determines the direction in which they
should be read. This alternate or boustrophedon mode
of writing also characterises early Greek inscriptions,
and since it was not adopted by either Phoenicians,
Egyptians, or Assyrians, the question arises whether the
Greeks did not learn to write in such a fashion from
neighbours who made use of the Hittite script.

Another characteristic of Hittite writing is the fre-
quent employment of the heads of animals and men.

124 THE HITTITES.

It is very rarely that the whole body of an animal is
drawn ; the head alone was considered sufficient. This
peculiarity would of itself mark off the Hittite hiero-
glyphs from those of Egypt.

But a very short inspection of the characters is enough
to show that the Hittites could not have borrowed them
from the Egyptians. The two forms of writing are ut-
terly and entirely distinct. Two of the most common
Hittite characters represent the snow-boot and the
fingerless glove, which, as we have seen, indicate the
northern ancestry of the Hittite tribes, while the ideo-
graph which denotes a 'country' is a picture of the
mountain peaks of the Kappadokian plateau. It would
therefore seem that the system of writing was invented
in Kappadokia, and not in the southern regions of Syria
or Canaan.

We may gather, however, that the invention took
place after the contact of the Hittites with Egypt, and
their consequent acquaintance with the Egyptian form
of script. Similar occurrences have happened in modern
times. A Cheroki Indian in North America, who had
seen the books of the white man, was led thereby to
devise an elaborate mode of writing for his own country-
men, and the curious syllabary invented for the Vei
negroes by one of their tribe originated in the same
manner. So, too, we may imagine that the sight of the
hieroglyphs of Egypt, and the knowledge that thoughts
could be conveyed by them, suggested to some Hittite
genius the idea of inventing a similar means of inter-
communication for his own people.

At any rate, it is pretty clear that the Hittite charac-
ters are used like the Egyptian, sometimes as ideographs
to express ideas, sometimes phonetically to represent

THE INSCRIPTIONS. . 1 25

syllables and sounds, sometimes as determinatives to
denote the class to which the word belongs to which
they are attached. It is probable, moreover, that a word
or sound was often expressed by multiplying the cha-
racters which expressed the whole or part of it, just as
was the case in Egyptian writing in the age of Ramses
II. At the same time the number of separate characters
used by the Hittites was far less than that employed
by the Egyptian scribes. At present not 200 are known
to exist, though almost every fresh inscription adds to
the list.

The oldest writing material of the Hittites were their
plates of metal, on the surface of which the characters
were hammered out from behind. The Hittite copy
of the treaty with Ramses II. was engraved in this
manner on a plate of silver, its centre being occupied
with a representation of the god Sutekh embracing the
Hittite king, and a short line of hieroglyphs running
round him. This central ornamentation, surrounded
with a circular band of figures, was in accordance with
the usual style of Hittite art. The Egyptian monu-
ments show us what the silver plate was like. It was
of rectangular shape, with a ring at the top by which
it could be suspended from the wall. If ever the tomb
of Ur-Maa Noferu-Ra, the Hittite wife of Ramses, is
discovered, it is possible that a Hittite copy of the famous
treaty may be found among its contents.

At all events, it is clear that already at this period the
Hittites were a literary people. The Egyptian records
make mention of a certain Khilip-sira, whose name is
compounded with that of Khilip or Aleppo, and
describe him as ' a writer of books of the vile Kheta.'
Like the Egyptian Pharaoh, the Hittite monarch was

126 . THE HITTITES.

accompanied to battle by his scribes. If Kirjath-sepher
or ' Book-town/ in the neighbourhood of Hebron, was
of Hittite origin, the Hittites would have possessed
libraries like the Assyrians, which may yet be dug up.
Kirjath-sepher was also called Debir, 'the sanctuary,'
and we may therefore conclude that the library was
stored in its chief temple, as were the libraries of Baby-
lonia. There was another Debir or Dapur further north,
in the vicinity of Kadesh on the Orontes, which is men-
tioned in the Egyptian inscriptions ; and since this was
in the land of the Amorites, while Kirjath-sepher is
also described as an Amorite town, it is possible that
here too the relics of an ancient library may yet be
found. We must not forget that in the days of Deborah,
* out of Zebulon,' northward of Megiddo, came ' they
that handle the pen of the writer ' (Judg. v. 14).

The inscriptions recently discovered at Tel el-Amarna
in Egypt have shown that in the century before the
Exodus the common medium of literary intercourse in
Western Asia was the language and cuneiform script of
Babylonia. It was subsequently to this that the Hittites
forced their way southward, bringing with them their
own peculiar system of hieroglyphic writing. But the
cuneiform characters still continued to be used in the
Hittite region of the world. Cuneiform tablets have
been purchased at Kaisariyeh which come from some
old library of Kappadokia, the site of which is still un-
known, and Dr. Humann has lately discovered a long
cuneiform inscription among the Hittite sculptures of
Sinjirli in the ancient Komagene. If the Hittite texts
are ever deciphered, it will probably be through the help
of the cuneiform script.

A beginning has already been made. Within a month

THE INSCRIPTIONS.

127

after my Paper had been read before the Society of
Biblical Archaeology, which announced the discovery
of a Hittite empire and the connection of the curious
art of Asia Minor with that of Carchemish, I had fallen
across a bilingual inscription in Hittite and cuneiform
characters. This was on the silver boss of King Tarkon-
demos, the only key yet found to the interpretation
of the Hittite texts.

THE BILINGUAL BOSS OF TARKONDEMOS.

The story of the boss is a strange one. It was pur-
chased many years ago at Smyrna by M. Alexander
Jovanoff, a well-known numismatist of Constantinople,
who showed it to the Oriental scholar Dr. A. D. Mordt-
mann. Dr. Mordtmann made a copy of it, and found it
to be a round silver plate, probably the head of a dagger
or dirk, round the rim of which ran a cuneiform inscrip-
tion. Within, occupying the central field, was the figure
of a warrior in a new and unknown style of art. He
stood erect, holding a spear in the right hand, and
pressing the left against his breast. He was clothed
in a tunic, over which a fringed cloak was thrown ; a

128 THE HITTITES.

close-fitting cap was on the head, and boots with up-
turned ends on the feet, the upper part of the legs being
bare, while a dirk was fastened in the belt. On either
side of the figure was a series of ' symbols/ the series
on each side being the same, except that on the right
side the upper 'symbols' were smaller, and the lower
'symbols' larger than the corresponding ones on the
left side.

In an article published some years later on the cunei-
form inscriptions of Van, Dr. Mordtmann referred to the
boss, and it was his description of the figure in the
centre of it which arrested my attention. I saw at once
that the figure must be in the style of art I had just
determined to be Hittite, and I guessed that the 'sym-
bols ' which accompanied it would turn out to be Hittite
hieroglyphs. Dr. Mordtmann stated that he had given
a copy of the boss in 1863 in the 'Numismatic Journal
which appears in Hanover.' After a long and trouble-
some search I found that the publication meant by him
was not a Journal at all, and had appeared at Leipzig,
not at Hanover, in 1863, not in 1862. The copy of the
boss contained in it showed that I was right in believing
Dr. Mordtmann's 'symbols' to be Hittite characters.

It now became necessary to know how far the copy
was correct, and to ascertain whether the original were
still in existence. A reply soon came from the British
Museum. The boss had once been offered to the
Museum for sale, but rejected, as nothing like it had
ever been seen before, and it was therefore suspected
of being a forgery. Before its rejection, however, an
electrotype had been taken of it, an impression of which
was now sent to me.

Shortly afterwards came another communication from

THE INSCRIPTIONS. 129

M. Francois Lenormant, one of the most learned and
brilliant Oriental scholars of the present century. He
had seen the original at Constantinople some twenty
years previously, and had there made a cast of it, which
he forwarded to me. The cast and the electrotype
agreed exactly together.

There could accordingly be no doubt that we had
before us, if not the original itself, a perfect facsimile of
it. The importance of this fact soon became manifest,
for the original boss disappeared after M. Jovanoff s
death, and in spite of all enquiries no trace of it can be
discovered. It may be recovered hereafter in the bazaars
of Constantinople or in some private house at St. Peters-
burg ; at present there is no clue whatever to its actual
possessor.

The reading of the cuneiform legend offers but little
difficulty. It gives us the name and title of the king
whose figure is engraved within it — ' Tarqu-dimme king
of the country of Erme.'

The name Tarqu-dimme is evidently the same as
that of the Cilician prince Tarkondemos or Tarkon-
dimotos, who lived in the time of our Lord. The name
is also met with in other parts of Asia Minor under
the forms of Tarkondas and Tarkondimatos ; and
we may consider it to be of a distinctively Hittite
type. Where the district was over which Tarqu-dimme
ruled we can only guess. It may have been the range
of mountains called Arima by the classical writers,
which lay close under the Hittite monuments of the
Bulgar Dagh. In this case Tarkondemos would have
been a Cilician king.

The twice-repeated Hittite version of the cuneiform
legend has been the subject of much discussion. The

I

130 THE H1TTITES.

arrangement of the characters, due more to the necessity
of filling up the vacant space on the boss than to the
requirements of their natural order, allowed more than
one interpretation of them. But there were two facts
which furnished the key to their true reading. On
the one hand, the inscription is divided into two halves
by two characters whose form and position in other
Hittite texts show them to signify ' king' and 'country';
on the other hand, the first two characters are made,
as it were, to issue from the mouth of the king, and
thus to express his name. We thus obtain the reading :
'Tarku-dimme king of the country of Er-me,' the
syllables tarku and me being denoted by the head of
a goat and the numeral 'four,' while the ideographs
of ' king } and ' country ' are represented by the royal
tiara worn by gods and monarchs in the Hittite sculp-
tures, and by the picture of a mountainous land. In
the ideograph of 'country' Mordtmann had already
seen a likeness of the shafts of rock which rise out of
the Kappadokian plateau.

The bilingual boss accordingly furnishes us with two
important ideographs, and the phonetic values of four
other characters. Armed with these, we can attack
the other texts, and learn something about them. It
becomes clear that the inscriptions from Carchemish
now in the British Museum are the monuments of a
king whose name ends in -me-Tarku, and who records
the names of his father and grandfather. To the grand-
father belonged an inscription copied by Mr. Boscawen
among the ruins of Carchemish, but unfortunately
never brought to England, and probably long since
destroyed.

On the lion of Merash, moreover, a king similarly

THE INSCRIPTIONS.

J31

records his name along with those of his two immediate
ancestors. The same king's name is found at Hamath
as that of the father of the sovereign mentioned in
the other inscriptions that come from there, and we
may perhaps infer that the monuments of Hamath
are the memorials of a Komagenian monarch who
carried his victorious arms thus far to the south. The

THE LION OF MERASH.

time will doubtless come when we shall be able to read
these mysterious characters without difficulty, and we
shall then know whether or not our inference is correct.
Meanwhile we must be content to await the dis-
covery of another bilingual text. The legend on the
boss of Tarkondemos is not long enough to carry us

I 2

1 32 THE HITTITES.

far through the mazes of Hittite decipherment ; before
much progress can be made it must be supplemented
by another inscription of the same kind. But the fact
that one bilingual inscription has been found is an
earnest that other bilingual inscriptions have existed,
and may yet be brought to light. We may live in
confident expectation that the mute stones will yet
be taught to speak, and that we shall learn how the
empire of the Hittites was founded and preserved, not
from the annals of their enemies, but from their own lips.

It is not probable that the Hittite system of writing
passed away without leaving its influence behind it.
As the culture and art which the Hittites carried to
the barbarous nations of Asia Minor became implanted
among them and bore abundant fruit, so too we may
believe that the knowledge of the Hittite writing did
not perish utterly. There is reason to think that the
curious syllabary which continued to be used in Cyprus
as late as the age of Alexander the Great was derived
from the Hittite hieroglyphs. It was singularly un-
fitted to express the sounds of the Greek language, as it
was required to do in Cyprus, and it has been shown
that it was but a branch of a syllabary once employed
throughout a large part of Asia Minor, the very country
in which the Hittites engraved their own written
monuments. It seems likely, therefore, that the Hittite
characters became a syllabary in which each character
represented a separate syllable, and survived in this form
to a late age.

It is also possible that the names assigned to the
letters even of the Phoenician alphabet were influ-
enced by the hieroglyphs of the Hittites. When
the Phoenicians borrowed the letters of the Egyptian

THE INSCRIPTIONS. 1 33

alphabet they gave them names beginning in their own
language with the sound represented by each letter.
A was called aleph because the Phoenician word aleph
' an ox' began with that sound, k was kaph ' the hand '
because kaph in Phoenician began with k. It was but
an early application of the same principle which made
our forefathers believe that the child would learn his
alphabet more quickly if he was taught that ' A was an
archer who shot at a frog.'

But the names must have been assigned to the letters
not only because they commenced with corresponding
sounds, but also because of their fancied resemblance
to the objects denoted by the names. Now in some
instances the resemblance is by no means clear. The
earliest forms of the letters called kaph and yod, for
example, both of which words signify a 'hand,' have
little likeness to the human hand. If we turn to the
Hittite hieroglyphs, however, we find among them two
representations of the hand, encased in the long Hittite
glove, which are almost identical with the Phoenician
letters in shape. It is difficult, therefore, to resist the con-
viction that the letters kaph and ycd received their names
from Syrians who were familiar with the appearance of the
Hittite characters. It is the same in the case of aleph.
Here too the old Phoenician letter does not in any way
resemble an ox, but it bears a very close likeness to the
head of a bull, which occupies a prominent place in the
Hittite texts. Aleph became the Greek alpha when the
Phoenician alphabet was handed on to the Greeks, and
in the word alphabet has become part of our own
heritage. Like yod, which has passed through the
Greek iota into the English jot, it is thus possible that
there are still words in daily use among ourselves which

134

THE HITTITES.

can be traced, if not to the Hittite language, at all
events to the Hittite script.

What the language of the Hittites was we have yet
to learn. But the proper names preserved on the
Egyptian and Assyrian monuments show that it did not
belong to the Semitic family of speech, and an analysis
of the Hittite inscriptions further makes it evident that
it made large use of suffixes. But we must be on our
guard against supposing that the language was uniform
throughout the district in which the Hittite population
lived. Different tribes doubtless spoke different dialects,
and some of these dialects probably differed widely from
each other. But they all belonged to the same general
type and class of language, and may therefore be collec-
tively spoken of as the Hittite language, just as the
various dialects of England are collectively termed
English. Indeed, we find the same type of language
extending far eastward of Kappadokia, if we may trust
the proper names recorded in the Assyrian inscriptions.
Names of a distinctively Hittite cast are met with as far
as the frontiers of the ancient kingdom of Ararat, and it
may be that the language of Ararat itself, the so-called
Vannic, may belong to the same family of speech. As
the cuneiform inscriptions in which this language is
embodied have now been deciphered, we shall be able
to determine the question as soon as the Hittite texts
also render up their secrets.

In the south of Palestine the Hittites must have lost
their old language and have adopted that of their
Semitic neighbours at an early period. In Northern
Syria the change was longer in coming about. The
last king of Carchemish bears a non-Semitic name, but
a Semitic god was worshipped at Aleppo, and Kadesh

THE INSCRIPTIONS. 1 35

on the Orontes remained a Semitic sanctuary. The
Hittite occupation of Hamath seems to have lasted for
a short time only. Its king, who appears on the Assyrian
monuments as the contemporary of Ahab, has the Semitic
name of Irkhulena, 'the moon-god belongs to us'; and
his successors were equally of Semitic origin. It is
more doubtful whether Tou or Toi, whose son came
to David with an offer of alliance, bears a name which
can be explained from the Semitic lexicon.

In the fastnesses of the Taurus, however, the Hittite
dialects were slow in dying. In the days of St. Paul
the people of Lystra still spoke 'the speech of Ly-
kaonia,' although the official language of Kappadokia
had long since become Aramaic. But the Aramaic
was itself supplanted by Greek, and before the downfall
of the Roman empire Greek was the common language
of all Asia Minor. In its turn Greek has been superseded
in these modern times by Turkish.

Languages, however, may change and perish, but the
races that have spoken them remain. The character-
istics of race, once acquired, are slow to alter. Though
the last echoes of Hittite speech have died away centuries
ago, the Hittite race still inhabits the region from which
in ancient days it poured down upon the cities of the
south. We may still see in it all the lineaments of the
warriors of Karabel or the sculptured princes of Car-
chemish ; even the snow-shoe and fingerless glove are
still worn on the cold uplands of Kappadokia.

CHAPTER VIII.

HITTITE TRADE AND INDUSTRY.

THE Hittites shone as much in the arts of peace as
in the arts of war. The very fact that they invented
a system of writing speaks highly for their intellectual
capacities. It has been granted to but few among the
races of mankind to devise means of communicating
their thoughts otherwise than by words ; most of the
nations of the world have been content to borrow from
others not only the written characters they use but even
the conception of writing itself.

We know from the ruins of Boghaz Keui and Eyuk
that the Hittites were no mean architects. They un-
derstood thoroughly the art of fortification ; the great
moat outside the walls of Boghaz Keui, with its sides
of slippery stone, is a masterpiece in this respect, like
the fortified citadels within the city, to which the besieged
could retire when the outer wall was captured. The
well-cut blocks and sculptured slabs of which their
palaces were built prove how well they knew the art
of quarrying and fashioning stone. The mines of the
Bulgar Dagh are an equally clear indication of their
skill in mining and metallurgic work.

The metallurgic fame of the Khalybes, who bordered
on the Hittite territory, and may have belonged to the
same race, was spread through the Greek world. They

HITTITE TRADE AND INDUSTRY. 1 37

had the reputation of first discovering how to harden
iron into steel. It was from them, at all events,, that
the Greeks acquired the art.

Silver and copper appear, from the evidence of the
Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, to have been the
metals most in request, though gold and iron also figure
among the objects which the Hittites offered in tribute.
The gold and copper were moulded into cups and
images of .animals, and the copper was changed into
bronze by being mixed with tin. From whence the tin
was procured we have yet to learn.

Silver and iron were alike used as a medium of
exchange. The Assyrian king received from Carchemish
250 talents of iron ; and the excavations of Dr. Schliemann
among the ruins of Troy have afforded evidence that
silver also was employed by the Hittites in place of
money, and that its use for this purpose was com-
municated by them to the most distant nations of
Western Asia Minor.

In the so-called 'treasure of Priam,' disinterred among
the calcined ruins of Hissarlik or Troy, are six blade-
like ingots of silver, about seven or eight inches in
length and two in breadth. Mr. Barclay Head has
pointed out that each of these ingots weighs the third
part of a Babylonian maneh or mina, and further that
this particular maneh of 8656 grains Troy, was once
employed throughout Asia Minor for weighing bullion
silver. It differed from the standard of weight and
value used in Phoenicia, Assyria, and Asia Minor itself
in the later Greek age. But it corresponded with \ the
maneh of Carchemish ' mentioned in the Assyrian con-
tract tablets, which continued to hold its own even after
the conquest of Carchemish by Sargon. The maneh of

138 THE HITTITES.

Carchemish had, it is true, been originally derived from
Babylonia, like most of the elements of Hittite culture,
but it had made itself so thoroughly at home in the
Hittite capital as to be called after its name. Nothing
can show more clearly than this the leading position
held by the Hittites in general, and the city of Carche-
mish in particular, in regard to commerce and industry.

Carchemish was, in fact, the centre of the overland
trade in Western Asia. It commanded the high-road
which brought the products of Phoenicia and the West
to the civilised populations of Assyria and Babylon. It
was this which made its possession so greatly coveted
by the Assyrian kings. Its capture assured to Sargon
the command of the Mediterranean coast, and the trans-
ference to Assyrian hands of the commerce and wealth
which had flowed in to the merchant-princes of the
Hittite city.

The sumptuous furniture in which they indulged is
mentioned by Assur-natsir-pal. Like the luxurious
monarchs of Israel, they reclined on couches inlaid with
ivory, of which it is possible that they were the inven-
tors. At all events, elephants were still hunted by
Tiglath-pileser I., in the neighbourhood of Carchemish,
as they had been by Thothmes III. four centuries earlier,
and elephants' tusks were among the tribute paid by
the Hittites to the Assyrian kings. It may be that the
extinction of the elephant in this part of Asia was due
to Hittite huntsmen.

The ivory couches of Carchemish, however, were not
employed at meals, as they would have been in Assyria
or among the Greeks and Romans of a later day. Like
the Egyptians, the Hittites sat when eating, and their
chairs were provided with backs as well as with curiously-

HITTITE TRADE AND INDUSTRY. 1 39

formed footstools. The food was placed on low cross-
legged tables, which resembled a camp-stool in shape.

At times, as we may gather from a bas-relief at
Merash, they entertained themselves at a banquet with
the sounds of music. Several different kinds of musical
instruments are represented on the monuments, among
which we may recognise a lyre, a trumpet, and a sort
of guitar. It is evident that they were fond of music,
and had cultivated the art, as befitted a people to whom
wealth had given leisure. A curious indication of the
same leisured ease is to be found in a sculpture at Eyuk,
where an attendant is depicted carrying a monkey on
his shoulders. Those only who enjoyed the quiet of a
peaceful and wealthy life would have gratified the taste
for animals which the monuments reveal, by importing
an animal like the monkey from the distant south. The
Hittites were doubtless a warlike people when they first
swooped down upon the plains of Syria, but they soon
began to cultivate the arts of peace and to become one
of the great mercantile peoples of the ancient world.

We learn from the Books of Kings that horses and
chariots were exported from Egypt for the Hittite
princes, the Israelites serving as intermediaries in the
trade. But they must also have obtained horses from
the north, and perhaps have bred them for themselves.
The prophet Ezekiel tells us (xxvii. 14) that c they of
Togarmah traded ' in the fairs of Tyre ' with horses and
horsemen and mules,' and Togarmah has been identified
with the Tul-Garimmi of the Assyrian inscriptions,
which was situated in Komagene. In the wars between
Egypt and Kadesh a portion of the Hittite army fought
in chariots, each drawn by two horses, and holding
sometimes two, sometimes three men. The chariots

140 THE HITT1TES.

were of light make, and rested on two wheels, usually-
furnished with six spokes.

The army was well-disciplined and well-arranged. Its
nucleus was formed of native-born Hittites, who occupied
the centre and the posts of danger. Around them were
ranged their allies and mercenaries, under the command
of special generals. The native infantry and cavalry
also obeyed separate captains, but the whole host was
led by a single commander-in-chief.

We have yet to be made acquainted with the details
of their domestic architecture. The ground-plan of their
palaces has been given us at Boghaz Keui and Eyuk, at
Carchemish and Sinjirli, and we know that they were built
round a central court of quadrangular form. We know
too that the entrance to the palace was, like that to an
Egyptian temple, flanked by massive blocks of stone on
either side, and approached by an avenue of sculptured
slabs. We have learned, moreover, that the palace was
erected on raised terraces or mounds ; but beyond this
we know little except that use was made of a pillar
without a base, which had been originally derived from
Babylonia, the primitive home of columnar architecture.

About the Hittite dress we have fuller information.
Apart from the snow-shoes or mocassins which have
helped to identify their monumental remains, we have
found the Hittites wearing on their heads two kinds of
covering, one a close-fitting skull-cap, the other a lofty
tiara, generally pointed, but sometimes rounded at the
top or ornamented, as at Ibreez, with horn-like ribbons.
The pointed tiara was adorned with perpendicular lines
of embroidery. At Boghaz Keui the goddesses have
what has been termed the mural crown, resembling as it
does the fortified wall of a town.

HITTITE TRADE AND INDUSTRY. 141

The robes of the women descended to the feet. This
was also the case with the long sleeved garment of the
priests, but other men wore a tunic which left the knees
bare, and was fastened round the waist by a girdle. Over
this was thrown a cloak, which in walking left one leg
exposed. In the girdle was stuck a short dirk ; the
other arms carried being a spear and a bow, which was
slung behind the back. The double-headed battle-axe
was also a distinctively Hittite weapon, and was carried
by them to the coast of the JEgean, where in the Greek
age it became the symbol of the Karian Zeus, and of the
island of Tenedos. All these weapons were of bronze,
or perhaps of iron ; but there are indications that the
Hittite tribes had once contented themselves with tools
and weapons of stone. Near the site of Arpad Mr.
Boscawen purchased a large and beautiful axe-head
of highly polished green-stone, which could, however,
never have been intended for actual use. It was, in fact,
a sacrificial weapon, surviving in the service of the gods
from the days when the working of metal was not yet
known. Like other survivals in religious worship, it bore
witness to a social condition that had long since passed
away. A small axe-head, also of polished green-stone,
was obtained by myself from the neighbourhood of
Ephesos, and bears a remarkable resemblance in form
to the axe-head of Arpad. The importance of this fact
becomes manifest when we compare the numerous other
weapons or implements of polished stone found in
Western Asia Minor, which exhibit quite a different shape.
It permits the conclusion that both Arpad and Ephesos
were seats of Hittite influence, and that in both the same
form of stone implement — a survival from an earlier age
of stone — was dedicated to the service of the gods.

143 THE HITTITES.

The dresses of cloth and linen with which the Hittites
clothed themselves were dyed with various colours, and
were ornamented with fringes and rich designs. That of
the priest at Ibreez is especially worthy of study. Among
the patterns with which it is adorned are the same square
ornament as is met with on the tomb of the Phrygian
king Midas, and the curious symbol usually known as
the 'swastika/ which has become so famous since the
excavations of General di Cesnola in Cyprus, and of Dr.
Schliemann at Troy. The symbol recurs times without
number on the pre-historic pottery of Cyprus and the
Trojan plain ; but no trace of it has ever yet been found
in Egypt, in Assyria, or in Babylonia. Alone among
the remains of the civilised nations of the ancient East
the rock-sculpture of Ibreez displays it on the robe of
a Lykaonian priest. Was it an invention of the Hittite
people, communicated by them to the rude tribes of
Asia Minor, along with the other elements of a cultured
life, or was it of barbarous origin, adopted by the Hittites
from the earlier population of the West ?

Before we can answer this question we must know far
more than we do at present about that long-forgotten
but wonderful race, whose restoration to history has been
one of the most curious discoveries of the present age.
When the sites of the old Hittite cities have been
thoroughly explored, when the monuments they left
behind them have been disinterred, and their inscrip-
tions have been deciphered and read, we shall doubtless
learn the answers to this and many other questions that
are now pressing for solution. Meanwhile we must be
content with what has already been gained. Light
has been cast upon a dark page in the history of
Western Asia, and therewith upon the sacred record of

HITTITE TRADE AND INDUSTRY. 1 43

the Old Testament, and a people has advanced into the
forefront of modern knowledge who exercised a deep
influence upon the fortunes of Israel, though hitherto
they had been to us little more than a name. At the
very moment when every word of Scripture is being
minutely scrutinised, now by friends, now by foes, we
have learnt that the statement once supposed to impugn
the authority of the sacred narrative is the best witness
to its truth. The friends of Abraham, the allies of David,
the mother of Solomon, all belonged to a race which left
an indelible mark on the history of the world, though it
has been reserved in God's wisdom for our own genera-
tion to discover and trace it out.

INDEX.

Adah, Esau's Hittite wife, 13.

Aleppo, Hittite inscription at, 62.

Amanus, cedar forests of, 47.

Amazons, the, legend of, 78.

Amenophis III., wars of, 21; marriage
of, 21.

Amenophis IV., a heretic king,
founds a new capital, 22 ; dis-
covery of tablets of, 22.

Amorite captives taken by Shishak,
16.

Amorites interlocked with Hittites, 14 ;
possessions of, 14 ; physical descrip-
tion of, 15 ; descendants of, 16 ;
history of, 17.

Anakim, height of, 16.

Antarata, the Hittite goddess, 105.

Ararat, king of, suicide of, 51.

Architecture, Hittite, 136.

Argistis I. , campaign of, 52.

Arisu the Phoenician, a usurper, 39.

Ark of the prophet Noah, the, 107.

Army, Hittite, 140

Arpad, green-stone axe head from, 141.

Art, Hittite, 114 ; Babylonian influ-
ence on, 116 ; Assyrian, 117.

Artemis, worship of, 79.

Ashtoreth, myth of, no.

Assur-natsir-pal, conquests of, 45 ;
exacts tribute from Carchemish, 46 ;
attacks Azaz, 47.

Assyria, testimony of monuments of, to
Hittites, 40 ; decay of, 43 ; rise of,
45, 50 ; influence of, on Hittite art,
117.

Atargatis, the goddess, 105.

Athar-'Ati, the goddess of Carchemish,
105.

Attys, the god, in.

Axe-heads, green-stone, 141.

Baal of Tarsos, in.

Babylonian influence on Hittite art,

116.
Bashemath, Esau's Hittite wife, 13.

Beeri the Hittite, daughter of, 13.

Biainas or Van, inscriptions in, 51.

Boghaz Keui, inscription at, 65 ; Hit-
tite remains at, 87 ; position of,
87 ; palace at, 89 ; wall-sculptures
at, 89 ; a sanctuary, 93 ; texts at,

93-

Boots, Hittite, 80, 89.

Bor, Hittite text at, 94.

Boscawen, Mr., his purchase of green-
stone axe-head, 141.

Boss of Tarkondemos, 127 ; bilingual
inscription on, 129.

Bronze figures, Hittite, 117.

Buckle, origin of Greek, 120.

Bulgar Dagh, silver mines at, 94.

Burckhardt, his discovery at Hamah,
56.

Canaan, sons of, 13.

Carchemish, strength of, 43 ; pays
tribute to Assur-natsir-pal, 46;
maneh of, 46 ; fall of, 50 ; questions
as to site of, 97 ; identification of,
98 ; visited by Mr. George Smith,

98 ; the site bought, 99 ; remains of,

99 ; history of, 99 ; battle of, 100 ;
a holy city, 100 ; situation of,
100 ; the deities of, 104 ; trade of,
138.

Cedar, forests of Amanus, 47.

Chariots, Hittite, 139.

Cheroki Indian, syllabary of, 124.

Cities of Refuge, Hittite, 113 ; Hebrew,
114.

Cloth, Hittite, 142.

Conder, Major, on the Ark of the
prophet Noah, 107.

Country, Hittite hieroglyph repre-
senting, 81.

Cromlechs of Libyans, 17.

Cuneiform tablets, from Kaisarlyeh,
126.

Cylinders, Hittite, 118.

Cyprus, syllabary used in, 132.

K

146

INDEX.

Dados at Eyuk, 86 ; at Boghaz Keui,
89 ; in Taurus, 94.

Damascus, rise of, 44.

David, wars of, with Syria, 44.

Davis, Rev. E. J., on Ibreez sculp-
tures, 61.

Debir or Dapur, an Amorite town, 126.

Deities, Hittite, 104.

Deluge, the, fables concerning, 106.

Derketo, the myth of, 105, 108, no.
, Dove, the symbol of, no.

Dress, Hittite, 140, 142.

Eagle, double-headed, at Eyuk, 85.

Egypt, testimony of monuments to
Hittites and Amorites, 14 ; annals
of, 19 ; wars with Hittites, 23 ;
confederacy against, 39 ; civil wars
in, 39 ; invasions of, 39.

Elon the Hittite, daughter of, 13.

Ephesos, worship of the Mother-god-
dess at, 113 ; green-stone axe-head
from, 141.

Ephron the Hittite, 13.

Esau's Hittite wives, 13.

Exodus, the time of, 25, 38.

Eyuk, Hittite remains at, 85 ; palace,
85 ; avenue of lions, 85 ; sphinx at
85 ; double-headed eagle at, 85
palace gate at, 86 ; dado at, 86
sculptures at, 86 ; date of, 87
height of plateau, 87 ; climate of, 87.

Furniture, Hittite, 138.

Galli or eunuchs at Mabog, 106.
Gar-emeris, a district, 14.
Gargamis, see Carchemish.
Gaza, garrisoned by Egyptians, 38.
Gems, Hittite, 118.
Ghiaur-kalessi, sculpture at, 56.
Ghurun, Hittite inscriptions at, 94.
Gladstone, Mr., Qn Keteians of

Homer, 120.
Glove, Hittite, 81.
Gods, Hittite, 35, 104.
Great Mother, the, worship of, 108.

Hadad, worship of, 109.
Hadad-ezer, his war with David, 44.
Hamah, discovery of Hittite remains

in, 56.
Hamath, once a Hittite city, 44 ; last

ruler of, 45.
Hamathite inscriptions really Hittite,

60.

Hebron, inhabitants of, 14; a Hebrew
city of refuge, 114.

Henderson, Mr., buys site of Car-
chemish, 99.

Herodotos on Karabel sculptures, 54 ;
on Syrians, 82.

Heth, son of Canaan, 13.

Hittites, false criticisms about, n ;
Scripture references to, 12 ; North-
ern, 12 ; Southern, 13 ; testimony
of Egyptian monuments, 14 ; inter-
locked with Amorites, 14 ; physical
appearance of, 15 ; descendants of,
15 ; history of, 17 ; of Judaea, 19 ;
called Kheta by Egyptians, 19 ;
Great and Little, 20 ; pay tribute to
Thothmes III., 20 ; worship of
solar disk, 21 ; power of, 23 ; treaty
with Ramses I., 23 ; war with Seti
I., 24 ; with Ramses II., 24 ; at
Kadesh, 26 ; make treaty with him,
29 ; catalogue of gods, 35 ; supre-
macy of, 37 ; peaceful relations with
Meneptah, 38 ; invade Egypt, 39 ;
their empire broken up, 40 ; decay
of, 40 ; Assyrian references to, 40 ;
conquered by Tiglath-pileser I., 42 ;
pay tribute to Assur-natsir-pal, 46 ;
confederacy against Shalmaneser II.,
47 ; power of, broken, 48 ; change
of meaning of name, 49 ; doom of
empire of, 50 ; campaign against
Menuas, 51 ; against Argistis I., 52 ;
dominions of, 52 ; sculptures of, at
Karabel, 54 ; remains of, at
Hamah, 56 ; at Ibreez, 61 ; at Alep-
po, 62 ; at Sipylos, 69 ; position of
monuments of, 73 ; peculiarities of,
74 ; civilising influence of, 75 ; cha-
racter of empire of, jj ; dress of,
80 ; boots of, 80 ; gloves of, 81 ;
etymology of, 81 ; remains of, at
Eyuk, 85 ; at Boghaz Keui, 87 ;
text at, 93 ; at Merash, 94 ; silver
mines, 95 ; extent of their su-
premacy, 96 ; ignorance of history
of Southern, 97 ; Syrian conquest
of, 100 ; appearance of, 101 ; mix-
ture of, with Semites, 102 ; religion
of, 104 ; description of a temple of,
104 ; the gods of, 104 ; holy cities
of, 113 ; cities of refuge, 113 ; art
of, 114 ; sculpture of, 115 ; dis-
covery of bronze figures of, 117 ;
gems of, 118 ; extent of influence
of, 120 ; reasons for our interest in,

INDEX.

H\

I2i ; inscriptions of, 122 ; a literary
people, 125 ; libraries of, 126 ; in-
fluence of, on Phoenician letters,
132 ; language of, 134; architecture
of, 136 ; metallurgy of, 136 ; their
means of exchange, 137 ; trade
of, 138 ; furniture of, 138 ; music
of, 139 ; horses and chariots of,
139 ; army of, 140 ; dress of, 140,
142 ; weapons of, 141 ; cloth and
linen of, 142 ; their symbol ' swas-
tika,' 142 ; knowledge of, confirms
the truth of Scripture, 143.

Holy cities, Hittite, 113.

Horses, Hittite, 139.

Humann, Dr., his discovery of a
cuneiform inscription, 126.

Ibreez, sculptures at, 61.

Inscriptions, Hittite, purpose of, 123 ;
characteristics of, 123 ; originality
ofj 124 ; use of, 124 ; writing mate-
rial, 125 ; at Tel el-Amarna, 126 ;
cuneiform and hieroglyphic, 126 ;
from Kaisariyeh, 126 ; from Sinjirli,
126 ; on boss of Tarkondemos, 127.

Istar, the goddess, 109.

Jebusites, origin of, 14.

Jerablus, true site of Carchemish, 98.

Jerusalem, founders of, 14.

Jessup, Mr., his discovery at Hamah,

57-
Johnson, Mr., his discovery at Hamah,

57-
Joshua, his entrance into Palestine,

25-

Jovanoff, M. Alexander, his purchase

of a boss, 127.
Judith, Esau's Hittite wife, 13,

Kabyles, descendants of Libyans, 16.
Kadesh, people of, 14 ; taken by Seti

I., 24 ; bravery of Ramses II. before,

25 ; Hittite occupation of, 100.
Kadesh-barnea, an Amorite town, 14.
Kaisariyeh, tablets from, 126.
Kappadokia, Hittite descendants in,

102.
Karabel, Pass of, situation of, 54 ;

sculptures of, 54 ; description of,

66.
Karkar, Assyrian victory at, 48.
Kaska, submission of, 42.
Kayster, fable concerning, 78.

Kedesh in Galilee, a Hebrew city of

refuge, 114.
Kes, the Syrian goddess, 112.
Kheta or Hittites, see Hittites.
Kheta-sira, his treaty with Ramses I.,

30-
Khu-n-Aten, see Amenophis IV.
Kili-anteru, capture of, 42.
Kirjath-sepher or Book-town, an

Amorite town, 126.
Kirkesion, site of, 97.
Komana, the goddess of, 112.
Kombabos, legend of, no,
Krcesos, destroys city of Pteria, 82.
Kummukh attacked by Tiglath-pile-

ser I., 41.
Kybele* or Kybebe\ her image and

worship, 108 ; Amazonian priestesses

of, 1 13.

Language, Hittite, 134.

Latsa, capture of, 12.

Lenormant, M. F., on boss of Tar-
kondemos, 129.

Libyan confederacy against Egypt, 39.

Libyans, appearance of, 15 ; descend-
ants of, 16 ; remains of, 17.

Linen, Hittite, 142.

Lucian on temple of Mabog, 104.

Luz, identification of, 12.

Lydia, overthrow of, by Cyrus, 82.

Lydian mythology, 109.

Ma, the goddess, worship of, 112.

Mabog, see Membij, temple of, 104 ;
the holy of holies, 104 ; the gods in,
104 ; the priests of, 106 ; proces-
sions at, 106 ; pilgrims at, 107 ;
sacrifices at, 107 ; legends concern-
ing, 107.

Malatiyeh attacked by Tiglath-pileser
I,, 42.

Maneh of Carchemish, the, 46, 137.

Maspero, Prof., on site of Carchemish,

97-

Melito, on the goddess Simi, 106.
Membij, supposed site of Carchemish,

97-
Meneptah, his peaceful relations with

Hittites, 38 ; with Phoenicia, 38.
Menuas, campaigns of, 51 ; makes an

inscription at Palu, 52.
Merash, Hittite inscriptions at, 94.
Metallurgy, Hittite, 117, 136.
Monkeys imported by Hittites, 139.
Mopsos, legend concerning, 109.

K 2

148

INDEX.

Mordtmann, Dr., on boss of Tarkon-

demos, 127.
Music, Hittite, 139.
Mykenae, remains found at, no ; rings,

119 ; lions at, 120.
Mythology of the Hittites, 35, 104.

Naharina, situation of, 20 ; Ameno-
phis III. marries daughter of king
of, 21.

Necho, defeat of, at Carchemish, 100.

Niobe, the weeping, 69.

Oven, the, spring, 107.

Palu, inscription of Menuas at, 52.

Patinians, submit to Assur-natsir-pal,
47 ; overthrow of, 47 ; insurrection
of, 49-

Pentaur, his epic on Ramses II., 25.

Perrot, Professor, on Karabel sculp-
tures, 56 ; on inscription at Boghaz
Keui, 65 ; his discovery of Hittite
bronze figures, 117.

Pessinus, worship of Ma at, 113.

Pethor made into an Assyrian colony,
48.

Petrie,Mr.,on appearance of Amorites,

IS-
Phoenician alphabet, Hittite influence

on, 132.
Pisiris, last king of Carchemish, 50.
Priam, treasure of, 137.
Priests of Mabog, description of, 106.

Qalb Luzeh, or Luz, 12.

Ramses I., his treaty with Hittites, 23.

Ramses II., his wars with Hittites, 24 ;
the Pharaoh of the Exodus, 25 ; epic
on his bravery at Kadesh, 25 ; makes
a treaty with Hittites, 29 ; marries
daughter of Hittite king, 37.

Ramses III., victories of, 39.

Religion of the Hittites, 104.

Renouard, his discovery of Karabel
sculpture, 55.

Rhea, the goddess, 108.

Rimmon or Tammuz, worship of, 109.

Rings found at Mykenae, 119.

Sadi-anteru, submission of, 42.
Sandan, the god, in.
Sangara, league formed by,

47

daughter of, given to Shalmaneser
II., 48.

Saplel, a Hittite king, his treaty with
Ramses I., 23.

Sardes, date of capture of, 78.

Sargon, wars of, 50.

Schliemann, Dr., discoveries of, at
Mykenae, no, 119.

Sculpture, Hittite, 115.

Seals, Hittite, 118.

Semiramis, the goddess, no.

Semitic mixture with Hittites, 102.

Sesostris, memorials of, at Karabel, 54.

Seti I., wars of, 24.

Shalmaneser II., warlike policy of, 47 ;
sacrifices to Hadad, 48, 50 ; his vic-
tory at Karkar, 48 ; appoints a new
king of Patinians, 49 ; inscription
of, 49.

Shechem, a Hebrew city of refuge, 114.

Shishak, Amorite captives of, 16.

Sidon, son of Canaan, 13.

Silver, Hittite liking for, 94 ; treaty-
tablets, 95.

Simi, the goddess, fable of, 106.

Sinjirli, inscription at, 126.

Sipylos, sculpture at, 69.

Sisythes, the hero of the deluge, 107.

Skene, Mr., his discovery of site of
Carchemish, 98.

Smith, Mr. George, his visit to site of
Carchemish, 98.

Solar disk, worship of, 21.

Sphinx at Eyuk, 85.

Strabo on White Syrians, 82.

StratonikS, myth of, no.

Subhi Pasha at Hamah, 58.

Sun-god, the, 109.

Sutekh, the supreme Hittite god, 105,
112.

Swastika, a Hittite symbol, 142.

Syllabary used in Cyprus, 132.

Tahtim-hodshi, explanation of, 12.

Tammuz, worship of, 109 ; myth of
death of, 109.

Tannur, the spring, 107.

Tar or Tarku, the god, in.

Tarkondemos, silver boss of, 127 ;
bilingual inscription on, 129.

Tarqu-dimme, name of, on silver boss,
129.

Tel el-Amarna, discovery at, 22 ; in-
scriptions at, 126.

Thothmes I., wars of, 20.

INDEX.

149

Thothmes III., receives Hittite tri-
bute, 20 ; conquests of, 21.

Thothmes IV., campaign of, 21.

Tiglath-pileser I., annals of, 41 ; at-
tacks Kummukh, 42 ; Malatiyeh,
42 ; his hunting feats, 43.

Tiglath-pileser III., 50.

Togarmah, identification of, 139.

Toi, his embassy to David, 44.

Tomkins, Mr., his identification of
Luz, 12 ; on Amorites, 16.

Treasure of Priam, 137.

Treaty between Ramses II. and
Hittite king, translation of, 29.

Tyana, Hittite text at, 94.

Uriah, origin of, 13.

-", Noferu-Ra, marriage of, 37.

Ur-maa

Urrakhinas, siege of, 42.
Uruma, submission of, 42.

Van, Lake, 51.

Vei, Negro syllabary of, 124.

Ward, Dr. Hayes, discovery of, 59.

Weapons, Hittite, 141.

Wilson, Sir Charles, discovery of

Hittite inscriptions at Merash by,

94 ; on Hittite descendants in Kap-

padokia, 102.
Worship of the Hittites, 104.
Wright, Dr. Wm., his discovery of

Hittite remains at Hamah, 57.
Writing material, Hittite, 125.

Yahu-bihdi, last ruler of Hamath, 45.

LIST OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES.

GENESIS.

xiv. 7 . . . .14

17

xiv. 13 ... .

14

XXlll

IS

xxvi. 34 ... .

13

XXXVI. 2 . . . .

13

xlviii. 22 . . . 14,

114

NUMBERS.

xiii. 29 ....

H

xm. 33 . . . .

ib

DEUTERONOMY.
. 19, 20 . . . . 14

JOSHUA.

x. 5 IS

xi. 22 16

JUDGES.

i. 26 12

iii. 8 20

v. 14 126

2 SAMUEL.

viii. 3, 9> 10 . . . 44

x. 16 44

xxi. 15-22 ... 16

xxiv. 6 ... 12, 101

1 KINGS.

x. 28, 29 . . . . 12

2 KINGS.

vii. 6 ix

EZEKIEL.

xvi. 3, 45 ... 13
xxvii. 14 ... . 139

ZECHARIAH.
xii. 11 109

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>' .i" . ..,f^iT£J

•1"T^llT '"'IH Jt7'Hl||

.><**■'

(illlillllljliliilllilllillllliiillli

lIMliM

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