sayce, a.h. the hittites - the story of a forgotten empire

8/12/2019 Sayce, A.H. the Hittites - The Story of a Forgotten Empire

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3l3B eP*ti )S of M b i t Bnofolrtrge

XII

T H E HITTITES

T H E S TO RY O F A F O R G O T T E N E M P I R E

A. H . SAYCE, LL .D.PRO FE SSO R O F ASSYRI OLOGY, OXFORD

A U T H O R O F ' F R E S H L I G H T F R O M T H E A N CI E N T M O N U M E N T S '

' A SSY RI A , IT S PRINCES, PRIES TS, A N D P E O P L E , ' E T C . E T C .

S E C O N D E D I T I O N ;

F L E M I N G H . R E V E L L C O M P A N Y

N E W Y O R K

112 F I F T H A V E N U E

C H I C A G O

148 & 150 M A D I S O N S T R E E T

The Religiotis Tract Society, London


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4-

P R E F A C E .

T H E discovery of the important place once occupied by the Hitti tes has been termed ' the romance of ancient

history/ Noth ing can be more interesting than theresurrection of a forgotten people, more especially whenthat people is so in tima tely connected wi th O l d Testament story, and with the fortunes of the Chosen Race.H o w the resurrection has been accomplished, by puttingtogether the fragmentary evidence of Egyptian and Assyrian inscrip tions, of strange-looking monuments in As ia Minor, and of still undeciphered hieroglyphics, wil l be described in the following pages. It is marvellousto think that only ten years ago ' the romance ' cou ldnot have been writ ten , and that the par t played by the

Hitt i te nations in the history of the world was stillunsuspected. Y e t now we have become, as it were,familiar wi th the friends of Abraham and the race to

which Ur iah belonged. Already a large and increasing literature has been

devoted to them. The foundation stone, wh ich waslaid by my paper c On the Monuments of the Hittites'in 1880, has been crowned with a stately edifice inDr. Wright ' s Empire of the Hittites, of wh ich thesecond edition appeared in 1886, and in the fourth

volume of the magnificent work of Prof. Perrot and


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M . Chipiez, VHistoire de VArt dans VAntiquite, pub

lished at Paris a year ago. Profusely illustrated, thelatter work sets before us a life-like picture of Hittitearchitecture and art.

It cannot be long before the inscriptions left to us bythe Hi tt ites , in their peculiar form of hie rog lyphic writing, are also made to reveal their secrets. A l l that

is required are more materials upon which to work, and we shall then know which, i f any, of the attemptshitherto made to explain them has hit the truth.Major Conder's system of decipherment has not yetobtained the adhesion of other scholars.; neither hasthe rival system of Mr. Bal l , ingenious and learned asit is. But if we may judge from the successes of thelast few years, it cannot be long before we know asmuch about the Hittite language and writing as wenow know about Hi t t i te art and civi lisa tion . T o quotethe words of D r . W r i g h t : ' W e must labour to unloose

the dumb tongue of these inscriptions, and to unlocktheir mysteries, not with the view of finding somethingsensational in them, or for the purpose of advancingsome theory, but for the love of knowing what theyreally contain ; and I doubt not that, proceeding in theright method of investigation, we shall reach resultssatisfactory to the Oriental scholar, and confirmatoryof Divine truth.'

A . H . S A Y C E .Q U E E N ' S C O L L E G E , O X F O R D .

October 1888.


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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S .

C H A P. PA G E

I . T H E H I T T I T E S O F T H E B I B L E n

I I . T H E H I T T I T E S O N T H E M O N U M E N T S O F E G Y P T A N D

A S S Y R I A J 9

I I I . T H E H I T T I T E M O N U M E N T S 54

I V . T H E H I T T I T E E M P I R E 73

V . T H E H I T T I T E C I T I E S A N D R A C E 97

V I . H I T T I T E R E L I G I O N A N D A R T . . . . . . 104

V I I . T H E I N S C R I P T I O N S . . . * . . 1 2 2

V I I I . H I T T I T E T R A D E A N D I N D U S T R Y 136


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L I S T O F I L L U S T R A T I O N S .

PA G E

S L A B S W I T H H I T T I T E S C U L P T U R E A T K E L L E R N E A R A I N T A B

Frontispiece

M A P I L L U S T R A T I N G T H E E X T E N T O F T H E H I T T I T E E M P I R E . 10

A S L A B F O U N D AT M E R A S H 54

S L A B S W I T H H I T T I T E S C U L P T U R E S F O U N D A T K E L L E R N E A R

A I N T A B 63

T H E P S E U D O - SE S O S T R I S C A R V E D O N T H E R O C K I N T H E PA SS O F

K A R A B E L 67

M O N U M E N T O F A H I T T I T E K I N G F O U N D A T C A R C H E M I S H . 72

T H E D O U B L E - H E A D E D E A G L E O F E Y U K 84

S C U L P T U R E S A T B O G H A Z K E U I 88

S C U L P T U R E S A T B O G H A Z K E U I 91

A N I N SC R I P T I O N F O U N D A T C A R C H E M I S H {now destroyed) . . 1 2 2

T H E B I L I N G U A L BO SS O F T A R K O N D E M O S 127

T H E L I O N O F M E R A S H 131


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T H E H I T T I T E ST H E ST O R Y OF A F O R G O T T E N EMPIRE.

C H A P T E R I.

T H E H I T T I T E S O F T H E B I B L E .

W E are to ld in the Second Bo ok of K ings (vii. 6) that when the Syrians were encamped about Samariaand the Lo rd had sent a panic upon them, ' they saidone to another, L o , the k ing of Israel hath hired againstus the kings of the H itt i te s, and the kings of theEgyptians, to come upon us/ Near ly forty years agoa distinguished scholar selected this passage for hiscriticism. Its ' unhistorical tone/ he declared, 'i s toomanifest to allow of our easy belief in it/ ' N o Hit ti tekings can have compared in power with the king ofJudah, the real and near al ly , who is not named atall . . . nor is there a single mark of acquaintance withthe contemporaneous history/

Recent discoveries have retorted the critic's objectionsupon himself. It is not the Biblical writer but themodern author who is now proved to have been unacquainted wi th the contemporaneous his tory of thetime. Th e Hittite s were a very real power. No t verymany centuries before the age of E l isha they hadcontested the empire of Wes tern A s i a wi th the E gypt ians ,and though their power had waned in the days of


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12 THE HITTITES,

Jehoram they were still formidable enemies and usefulallies. They were still worthy of comparison with thedivided kingdom of Egypt, and infinitely more powerfulthan that of Judah.

But we hear no more about them in the subsequentrecords of the O ld Testament. The age of Hittitesupremacy belongs to an earlier date than the rise ofthe monarchy in Is rael ; earlier, we may even say, than

the Israelitish conquest of Canaan. The references tothem in the later historical books of the O l d TestamentCanon are rare and scanty. The traitor who handedover Beth-el to the house of Joseph fled ' into the landof the Hit t i tes' (Judg. i . 26), and there buil t a ci ty whichhe called Luz . M r . To mki ns thinks he has found it

in the town of Latsa, captured by the Egyptian kingRamses II., which he identifies wi th Qalb Luzeh, inNorthern Syria. However this may be, an emendedreading of the text, based upon the Septuagint, transforms the unintelligible Tah tim-hodsh i of 2 Sam. xxiv ,6 into 'the Hittites of Kadesh/ a city which longcontinued to be their chief stronghold in the valleyof the Orontes. It was as far as this city, wh ich layat' the entering in of Hamath/ on the northern frontierof the Israelitish kingdom, that the officers of Davidmade their way when they were sent to number Israel.Last ly , in the reign of Solomon the Hi tt it es are againmentioned (1 K ings x . 28, 29) in a passage where the

authorised translation has obscured the sense. It runsin the Revised Version : ' A n d the horses which Solomonhad were brought out of E g y p t ; and the king's merchants received them in droves, each drove at a price. A n d a chariot came up and went out of Egypt forsix hundred shekels of silver, and an horse for an


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THE HITTITES OF THE BIBLE, J 3

hundred and fifty: and so for a ll the kings of theHittites, and for the kings of Syr ia , d id they br in gthem out by their means/ The Hebrew merchants,in fact, were the mediatories between E g y p t and thenorth, and exported the horses o f E g y p t not on ly forthe king of Israel but for the kings of the Hittitesas well.

The Hit ti te s whose cities and princes are thus referred

to in the later his torical books of the O ld Testament belonged to the north, Ha m a th and Kadesh on theOrontes being their most southernly points. But theBook of Genesis introduces us to other Hittites'thechildren of Heth, ' as they are termedwhose seats

were in the extreme south of Palestine. It was from

' E p h r o n the Hi t t i te ' that Abraham bought the caveof Machpelah at Hebron (Gen. xxiii . ) , and Esau ' tookto wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, andBashemath the daughter of E lon the Hit t i te ' (Gen.xxv i . 34), or, as it is given elsewhere, ' A d a h the daughterof E lon the Hi t t i te 9 (Gen. x x x v i . 2). It must be tothese Hi tt ites of the south that the ethnographicaltable in the ten th chapter of Genesis refers when it issaid that 'Canaan begat Sidon his first-born, and Heth '(ver. 15), and in no other way can we explain the statement of E zek ie l (xvi . 3, 45) that ' the father' of Jerusalem' was an Amor i te an d ' its ' mother a Hittite. ' ' Uriahthe Hittite, ' too, the trusty officer of Dav id , must have

come from the neighbourhood of Hebron, where Da v idhad reigned for seven years, rather than from amongthe distant Hit ti te s of the north . Besides the latterthere was thus a Hitt i te population which clusteredround Heb ro n, and to whom the orig in of Jerusalem was partly due.


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14 THE HITTITES.

Now it will be noticed that the prophet ascribes thefoundation of Jerusalem to the Amorite as well as theHittite. The Jebusites, accordingly, from whose handsthe city was wrested by David, must have belongedto one or other of these two great races; perhaps,indeed, to both. A t all events, we find elsewhere thatthe Hitt ites and Amor ites are closely interlocked together. It was so at Hebron, where in the time of

Abraham not only Ephron the Hittite dwelt, but alsothe three sons of the Amorite Mamre (Gen. xiv. 13).The Egyptian monuments show that the two nations

were simi la rly confederated together at Kade sh on theOrontes. Kade sh was a Hit t i te st ronghold; neverthelessit is described as being 'in the land of the Amaur' or Amorites, and its king is depicted with the physicalcharacteristics of the Amorite, and not of the Hittite.Further north, in the country which the Hi tt ites hadmade peculiarly their own, cities existed which borenames, it would seem, compounded with that of the Amorite, and the common Assyrian title of the districtin which Damascus stood, Gar-emeris, is best explainedas 'the Gar of the Amorites.' Shechem was taken by Jacob 'out of the hand of the Am or i te ' (Gen. xlviii.22), and the Amor it e kingdom of O g and Sihon includedlarge tracts on the eastern side of the Jordan. Sou thof Palestine the block of mountains in which thesanctuary of Kadesh-barnea stood was an Amorite

possession (Gen. xiv. 7, Deut. i . 19, 20); and we learnfrom Numb. xii i . 29, that while the Ama leki tes dwelt' i n the land of the south' and the Canaanites by thesea and in the valley of the Jo rdan , the Hit ti te s andJebusites and Amor ites lived together in the mountainsof the interior. A m o n g the five kings of the Amo ri te s


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THE HITTITES OF THE BIBLE. 15

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

Th e Hi ttites and Amor ites were therefore mingledtogether i n the mountains of Palestine li ke the tworaces which ethnologists tell us go to form the modernKelt . But the Egypt ian monuments teach us that they

were of very different*origin and character. The H it ti te s were a people with yellow skins and 'Mongoloid 5

features, whose receding foreheads, oblique eyes, andprotruding upper jaws, are represented as faithfullyon their own monuments as they are on those of Egypt,so that we cannot accuse the Egyptian artists of caricaturing their enemies. I f the Egy pti ans have madethe Hittites ugly, it was because they were so in reality.The Amorites, on the contrary, were a tall and handsomepeople. T hey are depicted with whi te skins, blue eyes,and reddish hair , a l l the characteristics, in fact, of the white race. M r . Petrie poirfts out their resemblanceto the Dardanians of Asia Minor, who form an intermediate l ink between the white-skinned tribes of theGreek seas and the fair-complexioned Libyans of

Northern Africa. Th e latter are still found in largenumbers in the mountainous regions which stretcheastward from Morocco, and are usually known amongthe Fren ch under the name of Kab yles . The travel ler 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. T he i r clear-whitefreckled skins, their blue eyes, their golden-red hairand tall stature, remind him of the fair Kelts of anIrish village ; and when we find that their skulls, whichare of the so-called dolichocephalic or 'long-headed 'type, are the same as the skulls discovered in the


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i6 THE HITTITES.

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

In Palestine also we still come across representativesof a fair-complexioned blue-eyed race, in whom we maysee the descendants of the ancient Amorite s, just as wesee in the K abyles the descendants of the ancientLibyans. W e know that the Am or i te type continuedto exist in Judah long after the Israelitish conquestof Canaan. The captives taken from the southerncities of Judah by Shishak in the time of Rehoboam,and depicted by h im upon the walls of the great templeof Karnak, are people of Amorite origin. Thei r ' regular

profile of sub-aquiline cast/ as Mr. Tom kins describes it,their h igh cheek-bones and mart ia l expression, are thefeatures of the Amorites, and not of the Jews.

Tallness of stature has always been a distinguishingcharacteristic 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 themselves were but ' as grasshoppers' by the side of them(Numb. x i i i . 33 ). Af te r the Israelitish invasion remnants *of the Anakim were left in Gaza and Gath and Ash-kelon (Josh. x i . 22), and in the time of D av id Gol ia thof Gath and his gigantic f am ily were objects of dreadto their neighbours (2 Sam. xxi. 15-22).

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


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I 8 THE HITTITES.

of the Amorites/ and this implies that they were its

original occupants. W e must regard the Amori te s asthe earlier population, among a part of whom the Hit ti te sin later days settled and intermarried. A t what epochthat event took place we are still unable to say.


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C H A P T E R II.

T H E H I T T I T E S O N T H E M O N U M E N T S O F E G Y P T

A N D A S S Y R I A .>

IN the preceding chapter we have seen what the

Bible has to tell us about ' the children of Het h. '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 theextreme south of Palestine, where they inhabited the

mountains along with the Amorites, and had taken ashare in the foundation of Jerusalem. It was from oneof the latter, Ephron the son of Zohar, that Abrahamhad purchased the cave of M achpelah at He bron ; andone of the wives of Esau was of Hittite descent. Inlater times Uriah the Hit t i te was one of the chief

officers of David, and his wife Bath-sheba was not onlythe mother of Solomon, but also the distant ancestressof Chris t. For us, therefore, these Hittites of Judaeahave a very special and peculiar interest.

.The decipherment of the inscriptions of Egypt and Assyr ia has thrown a new light upon their origin andhistory, and shown that the race to which they belongedonce played a leading part in the history of the civilisedEast. On the Egy pt ia n monuments they are calledKheta (or better Khata), on those of Assyria Khattaor Khate, both words being exact equivalents of theHebrew Kheth and Khit t i .

The Kheta or Hittites first appear upon the sceneB 2


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20 THE HITTITES.

in the time of the Eigh teen th Egy pt ia n Dynasty. The

foreign rule of the Hyksos or Shepherd princes had been overthrown, Egyp t had recovered its independence,and its kings determined to retaliate upon Asia the sufferings brought upon their own country by the Asiaticinvader. Th e war, which commenced wi th dr iv ing the Asiatic out of the Delta, ended by attacking him in his

own lands of Palestine and Syria. Thothmes I. (aboutB . C . 1600) marched to the banks of the Euphrates andset up ' the boundary of the empire ' in the country ofNaharina. Naharina was the Biblical Aram Naharaimor ' Syria of the two rivers/ better known, perhaps, asMesopotamia, and its situation has been ascertained byrecent discoveries. It was the district cal led Mitanni by the Assyrians, who describe it as being ' in front ofthe land of the Hittites/ on the eastern bank of theEuphrates, between Carchemish and the mouth of theriver Balikh. In the age of Thothmes I., it was theleading state in Western Asia. The Hi tti tes had notas yet made themselves formidable, and the most

dangerous enemy the Egyptian monarch was calledupon to face were the people over whom Chushan-risha-thaim was king in later days (Judg. i i i . 8). It is notuntil the reign of his son, Thothmes III . , that theHittites come to the front. They are dist inguished as' Gr ea t' and ' Lit t le/ the latter name perhaps denoting

the Hi tt ites of the south of Judah . However this may be, Thothmes received tribute from 'the k ing of thegreat 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 possessionof Kadesh we do not know. I f they were, they wouldhave taken part in the struggle against the Egyptians


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MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 21

which took place around the walls o f Meg iddo , and was

decided in favour of Thothmes only after a long seriesof campaigns.Before Thothmes died, he had made E g yp t mistress

of Palestine and Syria as far as the banks of theEuphrates and the land of Na har ina. On e of the bravestof his captains tells us on the walls of his tomb howhe had captured prisoners in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, and had waded through the waters of theEuphrates when his master assaulted the mighty Hittitefortress of Carchemish. Kadesh on the Orontes hadalready fallen, and for a time al l Weste rn A s i a didhomage to the E gypt ian monarch, even the k ing of Assyria sending him presents and courting, as it wouldseem, his alliance. The Egypt ian empire touched theland of Naharina on the east and the ' great land of theHitti tes 5 on the north.

But neighbours so powerful could not remain long atpeace. A fragmentary inscript ion records that the firstcampaign of Thothmes I V . , the grandson of Thothmes

III . , was directed against the Hit ti tes, and Amenop hisIII . , the son and successor of Thothm es IV . , found itnecessary to support himself by entering into matrimonial alliance with the king of Naharina. The marriagehad 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 Eg yp t,and clung to the religion of her fathers, whose supremeobject of adoration was the solar disk. The Hittitemonuments themselves bear witness to the prevalenceof this worship in Northe rn Sy r ia . The winged solar

disk appears above the figure of a king which has been


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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 byHittite sculptors upon the rock.

Amenophis IV . , the son of Amenophis III ., was educated in the faith of his mother, and after his accessionto the throne endeavoured to impose the new creedupon his unwil ling subjects. The powerful priesthoodof Thebes withstood him for a while, but at last heassumed the name of Khu-n -Aten , 'the refulgence ofthe solar disk / and qu it ting Thebes and its ancienttemples he built himself a new capital dedicated to thenew divini ty . It stood on the eastern bank of the Nile,to the north of Assiout, and its long line of ruins is nowknown 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 thatenclose 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 theirreigns were brief, and they were succeeded by a monarch who returned once more to the religion of his forefathers. The capital of Kh u-n -Aten was deserted, andthe objects found upon its site show that it was neveragain inhabited.

A m o ng its ruins a discovery has recently been made which casts an unexpected light upon the history of theOriental wor ld in the century before the Exodus. Alarge collection of clay tablets has been found, similarto those disinterred from the mounds of Nineveh andBabylonia, and like the latter inscribed in cuneiformcharacters and in the Assyro-Babylonian language.


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MONUMENTS\0F EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 23

They consist for the most part of letters and despatchessent to Khu-n-Aten and his father, Amenophis III., bythe governors and rulers of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia, and they prove that at that timeBabylonian was the international language, and thecomplicated cuneiform system of writing the commonmeans of intercourse, of the educated world. M a ny ofthem were transferred by Khu-n-Aten from the royal

archives of Thebes to his new city at Te l e l- Am ar na ;the rest were received and stored up after the new ci tyhad been buil t. W e learn from them that the Hi tt ites

were already pressing southward, and were causingserious alarm to the governors and allies of the Eg yptianking. One of the tablets is a despatch from Northern

Syria, pray ing the Egypt ian monarch to send assistanceagainst them as soon as possible.The 'heresy' of Khu-n-Aten brought trouble and dis

union into Egypt , and his immediate successors seemto have been forced to retire from Sy ria. So far from being able to aid their allies, the Egypt ian generalsfound themselves no match for the Hitt i te armies.Ramses I., the founder of the Nineteenth Dynasty, wascompelled to conclude a treaty, defensive and offensive, with the Hitt i te king Saplel, and thus to recognise thatHitti te power was on an equality with that of Egypt.

From this time forward it becomes possible to speakof a Hittite empire. Kadesh was once more in Hittitehands, and the influence formerly enjoyed by Egyptin Palestine and Syria was now enjoyed by its rival.The rude mountaineers of the Taurus had descendedinto the fertile plains of the south, interrupting the intercourse between Babylon ia and Canaan, and superseding the cuneiform characters of Chaldaea by their


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24 THE HITTITES.

own hieroglyphic writing. From henceforth the Baby

lonian language ceased to be the language of diplomacyand education. Wi th Se ti I., the son and successor of Ramses, the

power of Egyp t again revived. H e drove the Be du inand other marauders across the frontiers of the desertand pushed the war into Syr ia itself. The cities of thePhilistines again received Egyptian garrisons; Setimarched his armies as far as the Orontes, fell suddenlyupon Kadesh and took it by storm. The war was now begun between E gyp t and the Hitti tes, which lasted forthe next half-century. It left E gy p t 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. H e /

led his armies once more to the Euphrates and the borders of Naharina, and compelled Mautal, the Hittitemonarch, to sue for peace. The natives of the Leba nonreceived him wi th acclamations, and cut down their

cedars for his ships on the Nile. When Seti died , however, the H it ti te s were again inpossession of Kade sh, and war had broken out betweenthem and his son Ramses I I. The long reign of R a mses II. was a ceaseless struggle against his formidablefoes. The war was waged with va ry ing success. Sometimes victory inclined to the Egyptians, sometimes totheir Hittite enemies. Its chief result was to bringruin and disaster upon the cities of the Canaanites.Their land was devastated by the hostile armies whichtraversed it ; their towns were sacked, now by theHittite invaders from the north , now by the soldiersof Ramses from the south. It was li tt le wonder that


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MONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 2$

their inhabitants fled to island fastnesses like Tyre, de

serting the city on the ma inland, which an Eg ypt iantraveller of the age of Ramses tells us had been burntnot lo ng before. W e can understand now wh y theyoffered so slight a resistance to the invading Israelites.The Exodus took place shortly after the death ofRamses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression ; and whenJoshua entered Palestine he found there a disunitedpeople and a country exhausted by the long andterrible wars of the preceding century. The way had been prepared by the Hitti tes for the Israelitish conquest of Canaan.

Pentaur, a sort of Egyptian poet laureate, has leftus an epic which records the heroic deeds of Ramses

in his first campaign against the Hitt it es. The actualevent which gave occasion to it was an act of braveryperformed by the Egyptian monarch before the wallsof Kad es h ; but the poet has transformed him into ahero capable of superhuman deeds, and has thus produced an epic poem which reminds us of the Greek

Iliad. Its details, however, afford a welcome insigh tinto the history of the time, and show to what a heightof power the Hitt i te empire had advanced. Its k ingcould summon to his aid % vassal-allies not only fromSyria, but from the distant regions of A s i a Minor as

well. The merchants of Carchem ish , the islanders of Arvad, acknowledged his supremacy along with theDardanians of the Troad and the Maeonians of Lydia.The Hitt i te empire was already a reality, extendingfrom the banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the^Egean, and in clud in g both the cultured Semites ofSyria and the rude barbarians of the Greek seas.

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


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26 THE HITTITES.

1383) that the event occurred which was celebrated by the Egyptian Homer. The Egypt ian armies hadadvanced to the Orontes and the neighbourhood ofKadesh. There two Beduin spies were captured, whoaverred that the Hittite king was far away in the north with his forces, encamped at Aleppo. But the intelligence was false. The Hit ti te s and their allies, multitudinous as the sand on the sea-shore, were really lyingin ambush hard by. In their tra in were the soldiersof Naharina, of the Dardanians and of Mysia, along

with numberless other peoples who now owned theHittite sway. The Hi tt it e monarch 'had left no peopleon his road without bringing them with h im . Th ei rnumber was endless; nothing like it had ever been

before. They covered mountains and valleys likegrasshoppers for their number. H e had not left silveror gold with his people ; he had taken away all theirgoods and possessions to give it to the people whoaccompanied him to the war.'

The whole host was concealed in ambush on the

north-west side of Kadesh. Suddenly they arose andfell upon the terrified Egyptians by the waters of theLake of the Amor ites , the modern L ake of Horns.The chariots and horses charged 'the legion of Ra-Hormakhis/ and ' foot and horse gave way before them/The news was carr ied to the Pharaoh. ' H e arose likehis father Month , he grasped his weapons, and put onhis armour like Baal / H i s steed 'V ic to r y in Thebes' bore him in his chariot into the midst of the foe. Thenhe looked behind him, and behold he was alone. The bravest heroes of the Hi tt it e host beset his retreat,and 2500 hostile chariots were around him. H e wasabandoned in the midst of the enemy : not a prince,


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THE HITTITES.

was for the Pharaoh to upbraid his army for their

cowardice and sloth. ' Have I not given what is goodto each of you/ he exclaims, ' that ye have left me, sothat I was alone in the midst of hostile hosts ? Forsaken by you, my life was in peril, and you breathedtranquilly, and I was alone. Could yo u not have saidin 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 theking arrived safely home. So Ramses 're turned in victory and strength ; he had smitten hundreds ofthousands all together in one place with his arm/

A t daybreak the fol lowing morning he desired torenew the conflict. The serpent that glowed on the

front of his diadem 'spat fire' in the face of hisenemies. They were overawed by the deeds of valourhe had accomplished single-handed the day before, andfeared to resume the fight. ' They remained afar off,and threw themselves down on the earth, to entreat theking in the sight [of his army] . A n d the k ing had

power over them and slew them without their beingable 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 theHittites sent a messenger to pray piteously to the greatname of the king, speaking thus : " T h o u art R a - H o r -makhis. T h y terror is upon the land' of the Hit ti tes,for thou hast broken the neck of the Hittites for everand ever." '

The army of Ramses seconded the prayer of theherald that the Egyp tian s and Hitt it es should henceforward be 'brothers together/ A treaty was accordingly made ; but i t was soon broken, and it was not


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3 THE HITTITES.

Hormakhu (of Hel iopolis) , Ptah (of Memphis), M ut thelady of the Asher-lake (near Karnak), and Khonsu, thepeace-loving, there took place a public sitting on thethrone of Horus among the living, resembling his fatherHormakhu in eternity, in eternity, evermore.

' On that day the king was in the c ity of Ramses,presenting his peace-offerings to his father Amon-Ra,and to the gods Ho rm ak hu -T um , to Ptah of Ramessu-Miamun, and to Sutekh, the strong, the son of the goddess of heaven Nut, that they might grant to him manythirty years' jubilee feasts, and innumerable happy years,and the subjection of all peoples under his feet for ever.

' Then came forward the ambassador of the king, andthe Ad on [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 withthe k in g Ramessu Miamun, the dispenser of life eternally and for ever, just as his father the Sun-god [dispenses it] each day.

' This is the copy of the contents of the silver tablet,

which the great ki ng of Kh et a, Kheta-sira , had causedto 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 kingRamessu Miamun , the bull among the princes, whoplaces his boundary-marks where it pleases him in alllands.

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


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of Egypt, the powerful, the son's son of Ramessu I., thegreat king of Egypt, the powerful,this was a goodtreaty for friendship and concord, which assured peace[and established concord] for a longer period than waspreviously the case, since a long*time. For it was theagreement of the great prince of Egypt in common withthe great king of Kheta, that the god should not allowenmity to exist between them, on the basis of a treaty.

' T o wit, in the times of Mautal , the great king ofKheta, my brother, he was at war with [Meneptah Seti]the great prince of Egypt.

' But now, from this very day forward, Kheta-sira, thegreat king of Kheta, shall look upon this treaty, so thatthe agreement may remain, which the god R a has made,

which the god Sutekh has made, for the people of Egyptand for the people of Kheta, that there should be nomore enmity between them for evermore.'

A n d these are the contents :' Kheta-sira, the great king of Khet a, is in covenant

with Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, from

this very day forward, that there may subsist a goodfriendship and a good understanding between them forevermore.

' H e shall be my a l ly ; he shall be my fr iend : I will be his ally ; I will be his friend : for ever.

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

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


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3 2 THE HITTITES.

gether with [Ramessu Miamun ], the great prince ofEgypt , in good friendship and in good concord. Thesons of the sons of the great king of Kheta will holdtogether and be friends with the sons of the sons ofRamessu Mia mun, the great prince of Egypt.

' In virtue of our treaty for concord, and in virtue ofour 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 suchmanner for ever.

' Never let enmity rise between them. Never let thegreat king of Kheta invade the land of Egypt, if anything shall have been plundered from it. Never letRamessu Mia mun , the great prince of Egypt, over-stepthe boundary of the land [of Kheta, if anything shallhave been plundered] from it.

' The just treaty, which existed in the times of Sapali l,the great king of Khet a, likewise the just treaty whichexisted in the times of Mautal, the great king of Kheta,my brother, that wil l I keep.

'Ram essu Mi am un , the great prince of Egypt, declares that he wil l keep it. [We have come to an understanding about it] with one another at the same timefrom this day forward, and we wil l fulfil it, and wil l actin a righteous manner.

' If another shall come as an enemy to the lands ofRamessu Mia mu n, the great prince of Egypt, then let

him send an embassy to the great king of Kheta to thiseffect: " Come! and make me stronger than hi m."Then shall the great king of Kheta [assemble his warriors], and the k in g of Kheta [shall come] to smite hisenemies. But if it should not be the wish of the greatking of Kheta to march out in person, then he shall


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send his warriors and his chariots, that they may smitehis enemies. Otherwise [he would incur] the wrath ofRamessu Mia mun , [the great prince of Eg yp t. A n dif Ramessu Mi am un , the great prince of Egy pt , should banish] for a crime subjects from his country, and theyshould commit another crime against him , then shallhe (the king of Khe ta ) come forward to k i l l them. Th egreat king of Kheta shall act in common with [the greatprince of Egypt.

' If another should come as an enemy to the landsof the great k ing of Khet a, then shal l he send an em

bassy to the great prince of Egypt with the requestthat] he would come in great power to ki l l his enemies;and if it be the intention of Ramessu Miamun, the great

prince of Egypt, to come (himself), he shall [smite theenemies of the great k ing of Kheta. I f it is not the

"intention of the great prince of Egypt to march outin person, then he shall send his warriors and his two-]horse chariots, while he sends back the answer to thepeople of Kheta.

' If any subjects of the great king of Kheta have offended him, then Ramessu Miamun, [the great princeof Egypt, shall not receive them in his land, but shalladvance to ki l l them] . . . . the oath, with the wish tosay: I wil l go . . . . until . . . . Ramessu Miamun, thegreat prince of Egypt, living for ever . . . . that he may be given for them (?) to the lord, and that RamessuMiamun, the great prince of Egy pt , may speak according to his agreement evermore. . . .

* [I f servants shall flee away] out of the territories ofRamessu Miamu n, the great prince of Egypt, to betakethemselves to the great king of Kheta, the great king of

I Kheta shall not receive them, but the great king of KhetaC


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34 THE HITTITES.

shall give them up to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince

of Egypt, [that they may receive their punishment.' If servants of Ramessu Miamun, the great prince ofEgypt, leave his country] , and betake themselves to theland 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 ofEgypt.

' If, on the other hand, there should flee away [servantsof the great king of Kheta, in order to betake themselves to] Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt,[in order to stay in Eg ypt] , then those who have comefrom the land of Kheta in order to betake themselvesto Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, shall

not be [received by] Ramessu Miamun, the great princeof Egypt, [but] the great prince of Egypt, RamessuMiamun, [shall deliver them up to the great king of Kheta].

' [ A n d i f there shall leave the land of Kheta persons]of skilful mind, so that they come to the land of Egyptto make themselves servants of another, then Ramessu

Miamun wil l not allow them to settle, he will deliverthem up to the great king of Kheta.

1 When this [treaty] shall be known [by the inhabitants of the land of Egypt and of the land of Kheta,then shall they not offend against it , for al l that stands written on] the silver tablet, these are words which will

have been, approved by the company of the gods amongthe male gods and among the female gods, among thosenamely of the land of E g y p t , They are witnesses forme [to the validity] of these words, [which they haveallowed.

' Th i s is the catalogue of the gods of the land ofK h e t a :


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

(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 d t y of Kh i l ip (Aleppo),(9) ' Sutekh of the city of. . . .,

(10) ' Sutekh of the city of Sarpina,(11) ' As ta r t a 2 of the land of Kheta,(12) ' T h e god of the land of Zaiath-khirri,(13) ' T he god of the land of K a . . .,(14) ' T he god of the land of Kher . . .,(15) 'The goddess of the city of A k h . . .,(16) ' [The goddess of the city o f . . . ] and of the land

of A . . ua,(17) 'The goddess of the land of Zaina,(18) ' T he god of the land of .. nath . . er.

' [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. [W i t h them have been associated the male an d the female gods] of the mountainsand of the rivers of the land of Kheta, the gods of theland of Qazauadana, Am on, R a , Sutekh, and the maleand female gods of the land of Egypt , of the earth, of

the sea, of the winds, and of the storms.' Wi t h regard to the commandment which the silver

tablet contains for the people of Kheta and for thepeople of Egypt , he who shall not observe it shall begiven over [to the vengeance] of the company of the

1 No w Tennib in Northern Syria.2

Al so read Antarata.C 2


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3* THE HITTITES.

gods of Kheta, and shall be given over [to the ven

geance] of the gods of Egypt, [he] and his house andhis servants.

' But he who shall observe these commandments which the silver tablet contains, whether he be of thepeople of Kheta or [of the people of Egypt], becausehe has not neglected them, the company of the gods

of the land of Kheta and the company of the gods ofthe land of E gy p t shall secure his reward and preservelife [for him ] and his servants and those who are withhim and who are with his servants.

' If there flee away of the inhabitants [one from theland of Egypt], or two or three, and they betake themselves to the great ki ng of Kh et a [the great king ofKheta shall not] allow them [to remain, but he shall]deliver them up, and send them back to RamessuMiamun, the great prince of Egypt.

' N o w with respect to the [inhabitant of the land ofEgypt] , who is delivered up to Ramessu Miamun, thegreat prince of Egypt, his fault shall not be avengedupon h im, his [house] shal l not be taken away, nor his[wife] nor his [chi ldren] . There shall not be [put todeath his mother, neither shall he be punished in hiseyes, nor on his mouth, nor on the soles of his feet],so that thus no crime shall be brought forward againsthim.

' In the same way shall it be done if inhabitants ofthe land of Kheta take to flight, be it one alone, or two,or three, to betake themselves to Ramessu Miamun, thegreat prince of Eg yp t. Ramessu Miamun, the greatprince of Egypt, shall cause them to be seized, andthey shall be delivered up to the great king of Kheta.

' [W i th regard to] h im who [is delivered up, his crime


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shall not be brought forward against him ]. H i s [house]shall not be taken away, nor his wives, nor his children,nor his peop le ; 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 h im.

' That which is in the middle of this s ilver tablet andon its front side is a likeness of the god Sutekh . . .,surrounded by an inscription 1 to this effect: " This isthe [picture] of the god Su tekh , the king of heavenand [earth]."' A t the time (?) of the treaty wh ich Kheta-sira, the great king of the Kheta, made . . .

This compact of offensive and defensive alliance provesmore forcibly than any description the pos ition to which

the Hitt i te empire had attained. It ranked side by side with the Egypt of Ramses, the last great Pharaoh whoever ruled over the land of the Nile. Wi th Egypt ithad contested the sovereignty of Western Asia, andhad compelled the Egypt ian monarch to consent topeace. Egyp t and the H it ti te s were now the two lead-

I ing powers of the world.The treaty was ratified by the visit of the Hittite

prince Kheta-sira to Egypt in his national costume,i and the marriage of his daughter to Ramses in the[ thirty-fourth year of the Pharaoh's reign (B. C. 1354).

She took the Egy pt ia n name of U r- maa Noferu -Ra ,' and her beauty was celebrated by the scribes of the

court. Syr ia was handed over to the Hit ti te s as theirlegitimate possession; Egypt never again attempted

I to wrest it from them, and i f the Hitt i te yoke was to be shaken off it must be through the efforts of theSyrians themselves. F o r a while, however, 't he greatking of the Hi t t i tes ' preserved his power intact; his


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38 THE HITTITES.

supremacy was acknowledged from the Euphrates inthe 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 EgyptianPharaohs, acknowledged his sovereignty, and Pethor,the home of Balaam, at the junction of the Euphratesand the Sajur, became a Hitt i te town. The cities ofPhilistia, indeed, still sent tribute to the Egyptian ruler,

but northwards the Hitt i te sway seems to have beenomnipotent. The Am or ites of the mountains all iedthemselves wi th ' the children of Heth, ' and the Canaan-ites in the lowlands looked to them for protection. TheIsraelites had not as yet thrust themselves between thetwo great powers of the Oriental world : it was still pos

sible for a Hitt i te sovereign to visit Egypt, and for anEgyptian traveller to explore the cities of Canaan.

After sixty-six years of vainglorious splendour thelong reign of Ramses II. came to an end (B. C. 1322).The Israelites had toiled for him in bu ilding Pit hom andRaamses, and on the accession of his son and successor,

Meneptah, they demanded permission to depart fromEg yp t. Th e history of the Exodus is too well knownto be recounted here; it marks the close of the periodof conquest and prosperity which Egyp t had enjoyedunder the kings of the eighteenth and nineteenthdynasties. Ea r ly in his reign Meneptah had sent corn

by sea to the Hittites at a time when there was a faminein Syria, showing that the peaceful relations establishedduring the reign of his father were still in force. Despatches dated in his third year also exist, which speakof letters and messengers passing to and fro betweenEgypt and Phoenicia, and make it clear that Gaza wasstill garrisoned by Egyptian troops. But in the fifth


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year of his reign Eg yp t was invaded by a confederacyof white-skinned tribes from Libya and the shores of As ia Minor, who overran the Delta and threatened the very existence of the Egypt ian monarchy. Egypt,however, was saved by a battle in wh ich the inva dinghost was almost annihilated, but not before it had itself been half drained of its resources, and weakenedcorrespondingly. *

Not many years afterwards the dynasty of Ramsesthe Oppressor descended to its grave in bloodshed anddisaster. Civi l war broke out, followed by foreigninvasion, and the crown was seized by ' A r i s u thePhoenician.' But happier times again arrived. Once

more the Egypti ans obeyed a native prince, and the

Twentieth Dyna sty was founded. Its one great king wasRamses II I. , who rescued his country from two invasionsmore formidable even than that which had been beaten

back by Meneptah. L i k e the latter, they were conducted by the Libyans and the nations of the Greek seas, andthe invaders were defeated pa rt ly on the land, pa rt ly on

the water. The mari tim e confederacy included theTeukrians of the T ro ad , the L yk ians and the Philistines,perhaps also the natives of Sa rd in ia and Sic il y. Theyhad flung themselves in the first instance on the coastsof Phoenicia, and spread inland as far as Carchemish.Laden with spoil, they f ixed their camp ' in the land ofthe Am or ite s, ' and then descended upon Egyp t . TheHittites 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

I Pelusium. The Eg yp tian s were victor ious ; the shipsof the enemy were sunk, and their soldiers slain orcaptured. E g y p t was once more filled with captives,


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4 THE HITTITES.

and the flame of its former g lory flickered again for a

moment before finally going out.The list of prisoners shows that the Hitt i te tribes hadtaken part in the struggle, Carchemish, Alep po, andPethor being specially named as having sent contingentsto the war. They had probably marched by land, whiletheir allies from Asia Minor and the islands of theMediterranean had attacked the Egyptian coast inships. So far as we can gather, the Hitt i te populationsno longer acknowledged the suzerainty of an imperialsovereign, but were div ided into independent states.It would seem, too, that they had lost their hold uponMysia and the far west. Th e Tse kk ri and the L ek u,the Shardaina and the Shakalsha are said to haveattacked their cities before proceeding on their south ward march. If we can trust the statement, we mustconclude that the Hitt i te empire had already brokenup. The tribes of A s i a Minor it had conquered were inrevolt, and had carried the war into the homes of theirformer masters. However this may be, it is certain that

from this time forward the power of the Hi tt ites in Sy r ia began to wane. Li t t le by little the Aramaean populationpushed them back into their nor thern fastnesses, andthroughout the period of the Israelitish judges we neverhear even of their name. The Hitt i te chieftains advanceno longer to the south of Kades h ; and though Israel was once oppressed by a k ing who had come from thenorth, he was king of Aram-Naharaim, the Naharina ofthe Egyptian texts, and not a Hitt i te prince.

Where the Egypt ian monuments desert us, those of Assyria come to our help. The earliest notices of theHittites found in the cuneiform texts are contained in agreat work on astronomy and astrology, originally com-


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piled for an early k in g of Babylonia. The references

to ' the k ing of the Hi tt ites / however, which meet us init, cannot be ascribed to a remote date. One of thechief objects aimed at by the author (or authors) of the work was to foretell the future, it being supposed that aparticular event which had followed a certain celestialphenomenon would be repeated when the phenomenonhappened again. Consequently it was the fashion tointroduce into the work from time to time fresh noticesof events ; and some of these glosses, as we may termthem, are probably not older than the seventh centuryB. C . It is, therefore, impossible to determine the exactdate to which the allusions to the Hitt i te king belong, but there are indications that it is comparatively late.

The first clear account that the Assyrian inscriptionsgive us concerning the Hi tt ites , to which we can attacha date, is met with in the annals of Tiglath-pileser I.

Tiglath-pileser I. was the most famous monarch of thefirst Assyrian empire, and he reigned about 1110B. C .He carr ied his arms northward and westward, pene

trating into the bleak and trackless mountains of Armenia, and forcing his way as far as Ma la t iy eh inKappadokia. H i s annals present us with a very fulland interesting picture of the geography of these regionsat the time of his reign. K u m m u k h or Kom agene, which at that epoch extended southward from Malatiyehin the direction of Carchemish, was one of the firstobjects of his attack. ' A t the beginning of my reign/he says, ' 20,000 Moschians (or men of Meshech) andtheir five kings, who for fifty years had taken possessionof the countries of A l z i and Purukuzzi, which hadformerly paid tribute and taxes to Assur my lordnoking (before me) had opposed them in bat tletrusted


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as he tells us, though more probably the truth was that

he found himself unable to take it by storm. But henever succeeded in forcing his way across the fords ofthe Euphrates, which were commanded by the greatfortress of Carchemish. Once he harried the land ofMitanni or Naharina, slaying and spoiling ' in one day'from Carchemish southwards to a point that faced thedeserts of the nomad *Sukhi, the Shuhites of the Bookof Job. It was on this occasion that he killed tenelephants in the neighbourhood of Har ran and on the banks of the Khab ou r, besides four wild bulls which hehunted with arrows and spears 4 in the land of Mitanniand in the city of Araz iq i 1 , which lies opposite to theland of the Hittites."

Towards the end of the twelfth century before ourera, therefore, the Hitti tes were still strong enough tokeep one of the mightiest of the Assyrian kings incheck. It is true that they no longer obeyed a singlehead ; it is also true that that portion of them which was settled in the land of K u m m u k h was overrun by

the Assyrian armies, and forced to pay tribute to the Assyrian invader. Bu t Carchemish compelled therespect of Tiglath-pileser; he never ventured to approachits walls or to cross the river which it was intended todefend. H i s way was barred to the west, and he neversucceeded in traversing the high road which led to

Phoenicia and Palestine. After the death of Tiglath-pileser I. the Assyrianinscriptions fail us. H i s successors allowed the empireto fall into decay, and more than two hundred yearselapsed before the curtain is lifted again. These twohundred years had witnessed the rise and fall of the

1

Called Eragiza in classical geography and in the Talmu d.


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44 THE HITTITES.

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 theHittites in Syr ia was beginning to wane. Hadad-ezer,king o f Zobah, the antagonist of David, had been ableto send for aid to the Arameans of Nahar ina, on theeastern side of the Euphrates (2 Sam. x . 16), and withthem he had marched to Helam, in which it is possibleto see the name of Aleppo 1 . It is clear that the Hitt it es

were no longer able to keep the Aramean populationin subjection, or to prevent an Aramean prince of Zobahfrom expelling them from the territory they had oncemade their own. Indeed, it may be that in one passage

of the O ld Testament allusion is made to an attack which Hadad-ezer was preparing against them. Whenit is stated that he was overthrown by David, ' as he wasgoing to turn his hand against the river Euphrates 9 (2Sam. viii. 3) , it may be that it was against the Hit ti te sof Carchemish that his armies were about to be directed.

At any rate, support for this view is found in a furtherstatement of the sacred historian. c W h e n T o i king ofHamath/ we learn, heard that D av id had smitten al lthe host of Hadad-ezer, then Toi sent Joram his sonunto k ing David, to salute him, and to bless him,

because he had fought against Hadad-ezer and smittenhim ; for H adad-ezer had wars with T o i ' (2 Sam . viii.9, 10). Now we know from the monuments that have been discovered on the spot that H amath was once aHittite city, and there is no reason for not believingthat it was still in the possession of the Hittites in the

1 Cal led Kh alman in the Assyrian texts. Josephns changes Helam intothe proper name Kh al am an .


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age of David. Its Syri an enemies would in that case

have been the same as the enemies of David, and acommon danger would thus have united it with Israelin an alliance which ended only in its overthrow by the Assyrians.

A s late as the time of Uzziah, we are told by the Assyrian inscriptions , the Jewish k ing was in league

with H am at h , and the last independent ruler of H am ath was Yahu-bihdi, a name in which we recognise thatof the God of Israel. Indeed, the very fact that theSyrians imagined that 6 the kings of the Hittites" werecoming to the rescue of Samaria, when besieged by theforces of Damascus, goes to show that Israel and theHittites were regarded as natural friends, whose naturaladversaries were the Arameans of Sy ria. A s the powerand growth of Israel had been bu il t up on the conquestand subjugation of the Semitic populations of Palestine,so too the power of the Hittites had been gained at theexpense of their Semitic neighbours. The triumph ofSyria was a blow al ike to the Hit ti te s of Carchemish

and to the Hebrews of Samaria and Jerusalem. Wi t h Assur-natsir-pal, whose reign extended from B.C.

885 to 860, contemporaneous Assyri an his tory beginsafresh. H i s campaigns and conquests riva lled those ofTiglath-pileser I., and indeed exceeded them both inextent and in brutality. L i k e his predecessor, he ex

acted tribute from K u m m u k h as well as from the kingsof the country in which Mala t iy eh was situated ; but with better fortune than Tiglath-pileser he succeeded inpassing the Euphrates, and obliging Sangara of Carchemish 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


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46 THE HITTITES.

vanishing away. There was still, however, a small

Hittite population on the eastern bank of the Euphrates;at al l events, Assur-natsi r-pal describes the tribe ofBakhian on that side of the river as Hittite, and it wasonly after receiving tribute from them that he crossedthe stream in boats and approached the land of Gar-gamis or Carchemish. But his threatened assault uponthe Hitt i te stronghold was bought off with rich andnumerous presents. Twenty talents of silver thefavourite metal of the Hitt i te princes'cups of gold,chains of gold, blades of gold, 100 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 ofcopper, the multitudinous furniture of the royal palace,of which the like was never received, couches andthrones of rare woods and ivory, 200 slave-girls, garments of variegated cloth and linen, masses of blackcrystal and blue crystal, precious stones, the tusks ofelephants, a white chariot, small images of gold/ as wellas o rdinary chariots and war-horses, such were the

treasures poured into the lap of the Assyrian monarch by the wealthy but unwarlike k ing of Carchemish. Theygive us an idea of the wealth to which the city hadattained through its favourable position on the highroad of commerce that ran from the east to the west.The uninterrupted prosperity of several centuries had

filled it

w ith merchants and riches ; in later days wefind the A ssyr ia n inscript ions speaking of ' the manehof 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 thetrained warriors of the Assyrian king.

Quitt ing Carchemish, As su r-na ts ir -pal pursued his


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march westwards, and after passing the land of Akhanu

on his left, fell upon the town of Azaz near Aleppo, which belonged to the k ing of the Patin ians. The latterpeople were of Hitt i te descent, and occupied the country between the river Afr in and the shores of the Gulf of Antioch. The Ass yr ia n armies crossed the Afrin andappeared before the walls of the Patinian capital.Large bribes, howevef, induced them to turn awaysouthward, and to advance along the Orontes in thedirection of the Lebanon . Her e Assur-na tsir-pal received the tribute of the Phoenician cities.

Shalmaneser II ., the son and successor of Assur -na tsi r-pal, continued the warlike policy of his father ( B . C . 860-825). The Hitt i te princes were again a special objectof attack. Year after year Shalmaneser led his armiesagainst them, and year after year did he return homeladen with spoil. The aim of his pol icy is not difficultto discover. H e sought to break the power of theHitti te race in Syria, to possess himse lf of the fordsacross 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 Mediterranean to his own country. B y the overthrow of thePatinians he made himse lf master of the cedar forestsof Amanus, and his palaces were erected with the helpof their wood. Sangara of Carchemish , it is true, per

ceived his danger, and a league of the Hitt i te princes was formed to resist the common foe. Contingentscame not only from Kummukh and from the Patinians, but from Cilicia and the mountain ranges of Asia Minor.It was, however, of no avai l. The Hitt i te forces weredriven from the field, and their leaders were compelled

to purchase peace by the payment of tribute. Once


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4 8 THE HITTITES.

more Carchemish gave up its gold and silver, its bronze

and copper, its purple vestures and curiously-adornedthrones, and the daughter of Sangara himself was carriedaway to the harem of the Assyria n king. Pethor , thecity of Balaam, was turned into an Assyrian colony, its

very name being changed to an Assyr ian one. The way into Hamath and Phoenicia at last lay open to the Assyrian host. A t Aleppo Shalmaneser offered sacrifices to the native god Hadad, and then descended uponthe cities of Hamath . A t K a r k a r he was met by agreat confederacy formed by the kings of Hamath andDamascus, to which Ahab of Israel had contributed2000 chariots and 10,000 men. But noth ing could

withstand the onslaught of the Assyr ian veterans. Theenemy were scattered like chaff, and the river Orontes was reddened with their blood. The battle of Ka rk a r(in B . C . 854) brought the Assyrians into contact withDamascus, and caused Jehu on a later occasion to sendtribute to the Assyrian king.

The subsequent history of Shalmaneser concerns us

but little. The power of the Hit ti te s south of theTaurus had been broken for ever. The Semite hadavenged himself for the conquest of his country by thenorthern mountaineers centuries before. They no longerformed 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 ageof the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt could now be againresumed. Carchemish ceased to command the fords ofthe Euphrates , and was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of the Assyrian invader. In fact, the Hit ti tesof Syria had become li ttl e more than tributaries of the


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Assyrian monarch. When an insurrection broke out

among the Patinians, in consequence of which the rightful king was killed and his throne seized by an usurper,Shalmaneser claimed and exercised the right to interfere. A new sovereign was appointed by him, and heset up an image of himself in the capital city of thePatinian people.

The change that had come over the relations betweenthe Assyrians and the Hitt i te population is marked bya curious fact. F rom the time of Shalmaneser onwards,the name of Hitt i te is no longer used by the Assyrian writers in a correct sense. It is extended so as toembrace all the inhabitants of Northern Syria on the western side of the Euphrates, and subsequently cameto include the inhabitants of Palestine as well. Kha t taor ' Hit t i te ' became synonymous with Syr ian . H o wthis happened is not difficult to ex plain . The firstpopulations of Syria with whom the Assyrians hadcome into contact were of Hitt i te origin. When theirpower was broken, and the Assyr ian armies had forcedtheir way past the barrier they had so long presentedto the invader, it was natural that the states nexttraversed by the Assyrian generals should be supposedalso to belong to them. Moreover, many of these states

were actually dependent on the Hitt i te princes, thoughinhabited by an Ar am ea n people. The Hit ti tes had

imposed their yoke upon an alien race of Arameandescent, and accordingly in Northern Syria Hit t i te and Aramean cities and tribes were intermingled together.' I took/ says Shalmaneser, ' what the men of the landof the Hitt it es had called the c ity of Pethor {Pitru), which is upon the river Sajur (Sagura), on the further

side of the Euphrates, and the city of Mudkinu, on theD


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5o THE HITTITES

eastern side of the Euphrates, which Tiglath-pileser (I.),

the royal forefather who went before me, had unitedto my country, and Assur-rab-buri king of Assyria andthe king of the Arameans had taken (from it) by atreaty/ A t a later date Shalmaneser marched fromPethor to Aleppo, and there offered sacrifices to ' thegod of the city,' H adad-Rimmon, whose name betrays

the Semitic character of its population. The Hi tt ites ,in short, had never been more than a conquering upperclass in Syr ia , like the Normans in S ic i ly ; and as time went on the subject population gained more and moreupon them. L i k e al l similar aristocracies, they tendedto die out or to be absorbed into the native populat ionof the country.

They still held possession of Carchemish, however,and the decadence of the first Assyrian empire gavethem an unexpected respite. But the revolution whichplaced Tigla th-p ileser II I. on the throne of As sy ri a, inB. C. 725, brought with it the final doom of Hit t i tesupremacy. Assyr ia entered upon a new career ofconquest, and under its new rulers established an empire which extended over the whole of Western Asia . InB . C . 717 Carchemish final ly fell before the armies ofSargon, and its last king Pisiris became the captive ofthe Assyr ian king . Its trade and wealth passed into Assyrian hands, it was colonised by Assyrians and

placed under an Ass yr ia n satrap. The great Hitti testronghold on the Euphrates, which had been for somany centuries the visible sign of their power andsouthern conquests, became once more the possessionof a Semi tic people. The long struggle that had beencarried on between the Hitt it es and the Semites was

at an end ; the Semite had tr iumphed, and the Hi t t it e


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was driven back into the mountains from whence hehad come.

But he did not yie ld without a struggle. The yearfollowing the capture of Carchemish saw Sargon confronted by a great league of the northern peoples,Meshech, Tubal , Melitene and others, under the leadership of the k in g of Ararat . Th e league, however, wasshattered in a decisive battle, the king of Araratcommitted suicide, and in less than three yearsKomagene was annexed to the As sy r ia n empire. TheSemite of Nineveh was supreme in the Eastern world.

Ararat was the name given by the Assyrians to thedistrict in the immediate neighbourhood of Lake Van,

as well as to the country to the south of it. It wasnot until post-Biblical days that the name was extendedto the north, so that the modern Mount Ararat obtaineda title which orig inal ly belonged to the Kurdish rangein the south. But Ararat was not the native nameof the country. Th is was Biainas or Bianas, a name which still survives in that of Lake Va n . Numerousinscriptions are scattered over the country, written incuneiform characters borrowed from Nineveh in thetime of Assur-natsir-pal or his son Shalmaneser, butin a language which bears no resemblance to that of Assyria. They record the bu ilding of temples andpalaces, the offerings made to the gods, and the campaigns of the Vannic kings. A m o n g the latter mentionis made of campaigns against the Khate or Hi tt ites .

The first of these campaigns was conducted by aking called Menuas, who reigned in the ninth century before our era. H e overran the land of A lz i , and thenfound himself in the land of the Hi tt it es . He re heplundered the cities of Sur isili s and Tarkhi-gamas,

D 2


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5 2 THE HITTITES.

belonging to the Hit t i te prince Sada-halis, and captureda number of soldiers, whom he dedicated to the serviceof his god Khaldi s. On another occasion he marchedas far as the city of Malatiy eh, and after passing throughthe country of the Hi tt ites , caused an inscrip tion commemorating his conquests to be engraved on the cliffsof Palu. Palu is situated on the northern bank of the

Euphrates, about midway between Malat iy eh and V a n ,and as it lies to the east of the ancient district of Alzi ,

we can form some idea of the exact geographicalposition to which the Hittites of Menuas must beassigned. H i s 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 includedamong their fortresses. The ' l and of the Hi tt it es /according to the statements of the Vannic kings, stretchedalong the banks of the Euphrates from Palu on theeast as far as Malatiyeh on the west.

The Hi tt ites of the Assyr ia n monuments lived to thesouth-west of this region, spreading through Komageneto Carchemish and Aleppo . Th e Eg yp ti an records bring them yet further south to Kadesh on the Orontes, while the O ld Testament carries the name into theextreme south of Palestine. It is evident, therefore,that we must see in the H it t i te tribes fragments of arace whose original seat was in the ranges of the Taurus,

but who had pushed their way into the warm plainsand val leys of Syr ia and Palestine. They belongedoriginally to Asia Minor, not to Syria, and it was 'conquest only which gave them a right to the nameof Syrians. * Hit t i te ' 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


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AIONUMENTS OF EGYPT AND ASSYRIA. 53

Palu, this was the title under which they were known.

W e must regard it as a national name, which clung tothem in all their conquests and migrations, and markedthem out as a peculiar people, distinct from the otherraces of the Eastern world. It is now time to see whattheir own monuments have to tell us regarding them,and the influence they exercised upon the history ofmankind.


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A S L A B F O U N D A T M E R A S H .

C H A P T E R III .

T H E H I T T I T E M O N U M E N T S .

I T was a warm and sunny September morning whenI left the l ittle town of Ny m p h i near Smy rn a witha strong escort of Turk ish soldiers, and made my wayto the Pass of Kar ab el . The Pass of Karabe l is anarrow defile, shut in on either side by lofty cliffs,through which ran the ancient road from Ephesos inthe south to Sardes and Smyrna in the north. TheGreek historian Herodotos tells us that the Egyptianconqueror Sesostris had left memorials of himself inthis place. ' T w o images cut by h im in the rock ' wereto be seen beside the roads which led 'from Ephesos


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THE HITTITE MONUMENTS. 55

to Phokaea and from Sardes to Sm yr na . O n 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 theleft. The rest of his accoutrement is similar , for it isEgypt ian and Eth io pi an , and from one shoulder to theother, right across the breast, Egyptian hieroglyphicshave 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 otherhad been found , by Dr . Beddoe in 1856. But visitorsto the Pass in whic h they were engraved were few andfar between ; the cliffs on either side were the favouritehaunt of br igands, and thir ty soldiers were not deemedtoo many to protect my safety. M y work of exp lorationhad to be carried on under the -shelter of their guns, formore than twenty bandits were lurking under the

brushwood above.The sculpture sketched by Texier had subsequently

been photographed by M r . Svoboda. It represents a warrior whose height is rather more than life-size, and who stands in profile with the right foot planted in frontof him , in the attitude of one who is marching. In hisright hand he holds a spear, behind his left shoulderis slung a bow, and the head is crowned with a high

peaked cap. H e is clad in a tunic whic h reaches tothe knees, and his feet are shod with boots with turned-up ends. The whole figure is cut in deep relief in anartificial niche, and between the spear and the face arethree lines of hierog lyph ic characters. The figure facessouth, and is carved on the face of the eastern cliff of

Karabel.


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56/144


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58 THE HITTITES.

energy and devotion that the preservation of these

precious relics of Hitt i te literature may be said to bedue. ' O n the io th of November , 1872/ he tells us,he 'set out from Damascus, intent on securing theHamah inscriptions. The Sublime Porte, seized bya periodic fit of reforming zeal, had appointed an honestman, Subh i Pasha, to be governor of Sy ri a. Subh i Pasha

brought a conscience to his work, and, not content withredressing wrongs that succeeded in forcing their wayinto his presence, resolved to visit every district of hisprovince, in order that he might check the spoiler anddiscover the wants of the people. H e invi ted me toaccompany him on a tour to Hamah, and I gladlyaccepted the invita tion .' A lo n g with M r . Green, theEnglish Consul, accordingly, Dr. Wright joined theparty of the Pasha; and, fearing that the same fate might befall the Hamath stones as had befallen the MoabiteStone, which had been broken into pieces to save itfrom the Europeans, persuaded him to buy them, andsend them as a present to the Museum at Constan

tinople. When the news became known in Hamah,there were murmurings long and deep against thePasha, and it became necessary, not only to appealto the cupidity and fear of the owners of the stones, but also to place them under the protection of a guardof soldiers the night before the work of removing them

was to commence. j !-

Th e night was an anxious one to Dr . W r i g h t ; but when day dawned, the stones were still safe, and thelabour of their removal was at once begun. It ' waseffected by an army of shouting men, who kept thecity in an uproar du ring the whole day. Two of themhad to be taken out of the walls of inhabited houses,


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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. Theother stones were split in two, and the inscribed parts were carried on the backs of camels to the ' court ofthe governor's palace. Here they could be cleaned andcopied at leisure and in safety.

But the work of cleaning them from the accumulateddirt of ages occupied* the greater par t 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 br ing from the neighbourhood. A t leng th,however, the work was completed, and Dr . Wrigh thad the satisfaction of sending home to England twosets of casts of these ancient and mysterious texts, onefor the British Muse um , the other for the PalestineExplorat ion Fund, while the o rig inals themselves weresafely deposited in the Mus eu m of Constantinople. It was now time to inquire what the inscriptions meant,and who could have been the authors of them.

Dr. W r ig h t at once suggested that they were the workof the Hit ti te s, and that they were memoria ls of Hittite

writing. But his suggestion was bur ied in the pages of aperiodical better known to theologians than to Or ien talists; and the world agreed to call the wri ti ng by thename of Ha ma th ite. It specially attracted the notice ofDr. Hayes Ward of New York, who discovered that the

inscriptions were written in boustrophedon fashion, thatis to say, that the lines turned alternately from righ tto left and from left to right, like oxen when plowinga field, the first line beginning on the right and the linefollowing on the left. The lines read, in fact, from thedirection towards which the characters look.

, Dr . Hayes W a r d also^ made another discovery. In


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6o THE HITTITES.

the ruins of the great palace of Nineve h Si r A . H . L a y a r d

had discovered numerous clay impressions of seals onceattached to documents of papyrus or parchment. T h epapyrus and parchment have long since perished, butthe seals remain, wi th the holes through wh ich the stringspassed that attached them to the or ig inal deeds. Someof the seals are Assyria n, some Phoenician, others againare Egyptian , but there are a few wh ich have upon themstrange characters such as had never been met with before. It was these characters which Dr. Hayes Wardperceived to be the same as those found upon the stonesof Ham ah , and it was accord ing ly supposed that theseals were of Hamathite origin.

In 1876, two years after the publication of Dr. Wright'sarticle, of which I had never heard at the time, I read aPaper on the Hamathite inscriptions before the Societyof Biblical Archaeology. In this I put forward a numberof conjectures, one of them being that the Hamathitehieroglyphs were the source of the curious syllabary usedfor several centuries in the island of Cyprus, and another

that the hieroglyphs were not an invention of the earlyinhabitants of Hamath , but represented the system of writing employed by the Hit ti te s. W e know from theEgyptian records that the Hittites could write, and thata class of scribes existed among them, and, since Hamathlay close to the borders of the Hitt i te kingdoms, it

seemed reasonable to suppose that the unknown form ofscript discovered on its site was Hitt i te rather thanHamathite. The conjecture was confirmed almost immediately afterwards by the discovery of the site of Carchemish, the great Hitt i te cap ita l, and of inscriptionsthere in the same system of writing as that found on thestones of Hamah.


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THE HITTITE MONUMENTS. 6l

It was not long, therefore, before the learned world began to recognise that the newly-discovered script wasthe peculiar possession of the Hitt i te race. Dr . Hayes Ward was one of the first to do so, and the Trustees ofthe British Museum determined to institute excavationsamong the ruins of Carchemish. Meanwhile notice wasdrawn to a fact which showed that the Hit t i te characters,

as we shall now call them, were employed, not only atHamath and Carchemish, but in Asia Minor as well.

More than a century ago a German traveller hadobserved two figures carved on a wall of rock nearIbreez, 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, whostood before the god in an attitude of adoration. Bothfigures were shod with boots with upturned ends, andthe deity wore a tunic that reached to his knees, whileon his head was a peaked cap ornamented with hornlike ribbons. A century elapsed before the sculpture was again visited by an European traveller, and it wasagain a Germ an who found his way to the spot. O nthis occasion a drawing was made of the figures, which was published by Ritter in his great work on thegeography of the world. But the drawing was poorand imperfect, and the first attempt to do adequate

justice to the original was made by the Rev. E . J . Davisin 1875. H e published his copy, and an account of themonument, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical

Archeology the following year. H e had noticed thatthe figures were accompanied by what were known atthe time as Ham athit e characters. Three lines of these

were inserted between the face of the god and his uplifted

left arm, four lines more were engraved beh ind his wor-


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62 THE HITTITES.

shipper, whi le below, on a level wi th an aqueduct which

fed a mill, were yet other lines of half-obliteratedhieroglyphs. It was plain that in Lykaonia also, wherethe old language of the country still lingered in the daysof St. Paul, the Hitt i te system of writing had once beenused.

Another stone inscribed with Hitt i te characters had

come to light at Aleppo. L ike those of Hamath , it wasof 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 hiseyes upon it would be immediately cured of ophthalmia.More than one copy of the inscription was taken, butthe difficulty of dis tinguish ing the half-obliterated characters rendered the copies of li tt le service, and a cast ofthe stone was about to be made when news arrived thatthe fanatics of Aleppo had destroyed it. Ra ther thanallow its virtue to go out of i t to be stolen, as theyfancied, by the Europeansthey preferred to break it inpieces. It is one of the many monuments that haveperished at the very moment when their importancefirst became known.

This, then, was the state of our knowledge in thesummer of 1879. W e knew that , the Hi tt ites , wi th 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 onmonuments in Hamath, Aleppo,

sayce, a.h. the hittites - the story of a forgotten empire

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