by the Ionians in the 6th century B.C. for the search for knowledge in
the widest sense. It meant inquiry, investigation, not narrative. It was
not until two centuries later that the historikos, the reciter of
stories, superseded the _historeon_ ([Greek: historeon]), the seeker
after knowledge. Thus history began as a branch of scientific
research,--much the same as what the Athenians later termed philosophy.
Herodotus himself was as much a scientific explorer as a reciter of
narrative, and his life-long investigation was _historie_ in his Ionian
speech. Yet it was Herodotus himself who first hinted at the new use of
the word, applied merely to the details accumulated during a long search
for knowledge. It is not until Aristotle, however, that we have it
definitely applied to the literary product instead of the inquiry which
precedes it. From Aristotle to modern times, history (Lat. _historia_)
has been a form of literature. It is only in the scientific environment
of to-day that we recognize once more, with those earliest of the
forerunners of Herodotus, that history involves two distinct operations,
one of which, investigation, is in the field of science, while the
other, the literary presentation, is in the field of art.
The history of history itself is therefore two-fold. History as art
flourishes with the arts. It calls upon the imagination and the literary
gifts of expression. Its history does not run parallel with the
scientific side, but rather varies in inverse ratio with scientific
activity. Those periods which have been dominated by the great masters
of style have been less interested in the criticism of the historian's
methods of investigation than in the beauty of his rhetoric. The
scientific historian, deeply interested in the search for truth, is
generally but a poor artist, and his uncoloured picture of the past will
never rank in literature beside the splendid distortions which glow in
the pages of a Michelet or Macaulay. History the art, in so far as it is
conditioned upon genius, has no single traceable line of development.
Here the product of the age of Pericles remains unsurpassed still; the
works of Herodotus and Thucydides standing along with those of Pheidias
as models for all time. On the other hand, history the science has
developed so that it has not only gained recognition among historians as
a distinct subject, but it has raised with it a group of auxiliary
sciences which serve either as tools for investigation or as a basis for
testing the results. The advance in this branch of history in the 19th
century was one of its greatest achievements. The vast gulf which lies
between the history of Egypt by Herodotus and that by Flinders Petrie is
the measure of its achievement. By the mechanism now at his disposal the
scientific explorer can read more history from the dust-heaps of Abydos
than the greatest traveller of antiquity could gather from the priests
of Sais. In tracing the history of history we must therefore keep in
mind the double aspect.
History itself, this double subject, the science and the art combined,
begins with the dawn of memory and the invention of speech. It is wrong
to term those ages _pre-historic_ whose history has not come down to us,
including in one category the pre-literary age and the literary whose
traces have been lost. Even the pre-literary had its history, first in
myth and then in saga. The saga, or epos, was a great advance upon the
myth, for in it the deeds of men replace or tend to replace the deeds of
the gods. But we are still largely in the realm of imagination. Poetry,
as Thucydides complained, is a most imperfect medium for fact. The bard
will exaggerate or distort his story. True history, as a record of what
really has happened, first reached maturity in prose. Therefore,
although much of the past has been handed down to us in epic, in ballad
and in the legends of folk-lore, we must turn from them to what became
history in the narrower sense.
The earliest prose origins of history are the inscriptions. Their
inadequacy is evident from two standpoints. Their permanence depends not
upon their importance, but upon the durability of the substance on which
they are inscribed. A note for a wedding ring baked into the clay of
Babylon has been preserved, while the history of the greatest events has
perished. In the second place they are sealed to all but those who know
how to read them, and so they lie forgotten for centuries while oral
tradition flourishes,--being within the reach of every man. It is only
recently that archaeology, turning from the field of art, has undertaken
to interpret for us this first written history. The process by which the
modern fits together all the obtainable remains of an antiquity, and
reconstructs even that past which left no written record, lies outside
the field of this article. But such enlargement of the field of history
is a modern scientific product, and is to be distinguished from the
imperfect beginnings of history-writing which the archaeologist is able
to decipher.
Next to the inscriptions,--sometimes identical with them,--are the early
chronicles. These are of various kinds. Family chronicles preserved the
memory of heroic ancestors whose deeds in the earliest age would have
passed into the keeping of the bards. Such family archives were perhaps
the main source for Roman historians. But they are not confined to Rome
or Greece. Genealogies also pass from the bald verse, which was the
vehicle for oral transmission, to such elaborate tables as those in
which Manetho has preserved the dynasties of Egyptian Pharaohs.
In this field the priest succeeds the poet. The temple itself became the
chief repository of records. There were simple religious annals, votive
tablets recording miracles accomplished at a shrine, lists of priests
and priestesses, accounts of benefactions, of prodigies and portents. In
some cases, as in Rome, the pontiffs kept a kind of register, not merely
of religious history, but of important political events as well. Down to
the time of the Gracchi (131 B.C.) the Pontifex Maximus inscribed the
year's events upon annual tablets of wood which were preserved in the
Regia, the official residence of the pontiff in the Forum. These
pontifical "annals" thus came to be a sort of civic history. Chronicles
of the Greek cities were commonly ascribed to mythical authors, as for
instance that of Miletus, the oldest, to Cadmus the inventor of letters.
But they were continued and edited by men in whom the critical spirit
was awakening, as when the chroniclers of Ionian towns began the
criticism of Homer.
The first historians were the logographi of these Ionian cities; men who
carried their inquiry (_historie_) beyond both written record and oral
tradition to a study of the world around them. Their "saying" (_logos_)
was gathered mostly from contemporaries; and upon the basis of a widened
experience they became critics of their traditions. The opening lines of
Hecataeus of Miletus begin the history of the true historic spirit in
words which read like a sentence from Voltaire. "Hecataeus of Miletus
thus speaks: I write as I deem true, for the traditions of the Greeks
seem to me manifold and laughable." Those words mark an epoch in the
history of thought. They are the introduction to historical criticism
and scientific investigation. Whatever the actual achievement of
Hecataeus may have been, from his time onward the scientific movement
was set going. Herodotus of Heraclea struggled to rationalize mythology,
and established chronology on a solid basis. And finally Herodotus, a
professional story-teller, rose to the height of genuine scientific
investigation. Herodotus' inquiry was not simply that of an idle
tourist. He was a critical observer, who tested his evidence. It is easy
for the student now to show the inadequacy of his sources, and his
failure here or there to discriminate between fact and fable. But given
the imperfect medium for investigation and the absence of an
archaeological basis for criticism, the work of Herodotus remains a
scientific achievement, as remarkable for its approximation to truth as
for the vastness of its scope. Yet it was Herodotus' chief glory to have
joined to this scientific spirit an artistic sense which enabled him to
cast the material into the truest literary form. He gathered all his
knowledge of the ancient world, not simply for itself, but to mass it
around the story of the war between the east and west, the Greeks and
the Persians. He is first and foremost a story-teller; his theme is like
that of the bards, a heroic event. His story is a vast prose epos, in
which science is to this extent subordinated to art. "This is the
showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, to the end
that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the
works, great and marvellous, which have been produced, some by Hellenes,
some by Barbarians, may lose their renown, and especially that the
causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another"
(i.e. the Persian war).
In Thucydides a higher art than that of Herodotus was combined with a
higher science. He scorned the story-teller "who seeks to please the ear
rather than to speak the truth," and yet his rhetoric is the culmination
of Greek historical prose. He withdrew from vulgar applause, conscious
that his narrative would be considered "disappointing to the ear," yet
he recast the materials out of which he constructed it in order to lift
that narrative into the realm of pure literature. Speeches, letters and
documents are reworded to be in tone with the rest of the story. It was
his art, in fact, which really created the Peloponnesian war out of its
separate parts. And yet this art was merely the language of a scientist.
The "laborious task" of which he speaks is that of consulting all
possible evidence, and weighing conflicting accounts. It is this which
makes his rhetoric worth while, "an everlasting possession, not a prize
competition which is heard and forgotten."
From the sublimity of Thucydides, and Xenophon's straight-forward story,
history passed with Theopompus and Ephorus into the field of rhetoric. A
revival of the scientific instinct of investigation is discernable in
Timaeus the Sicilian, at the end of the 4th century, but his attack upon
his predecessors was the text of a more crushing attack upon himself by
Polybius, who declares him lacking in critical insight and biased by
passion. Polybius' comments upon Timaeus reach the dignity of a treatise
upon history. He protests against its use for controversial pamphlets
which distort the truth. "Directly a man assumes the moral attitude of
an historian he ought to forget all considerations, such as love of
one's friends, hatred of one's enemies.... He must sometimes praise
enemies and blame friends. For as a living creature is rendered useless
if deprived of its eyes, so if you take truth from History, what is left
but an improfitable tale" (bk. xii. 14). These are the words of a Ranke.
Unfortunately Polybius, like most modern scientific historians, was no
artist. His style is the very opposite of that of Isocrates and the
rhetoricians. It is often only clear in the light of inscriptions, so
closely does it keep to the sources. The style found no imitator;
history passed from Greece to Rome in the guise of rhetoric. In
Dionysius of Halicarnassus the rhetoric was combined with an extensive
study of the sources; but the influence of the Greek rhetoricians upon
Roman prose was deplorable from the standpoint of science. Cicero,
although he said that the duty of the historian is to conceal nothing
true, to say nothing false, would in practice have written the kind of
history that Polybius denounced. He finds fault with those who are _non
exornatores rerum sed tantum narratores_. History for him is the mine
from which to draw argument in oratory and example in education. It is
not the subject of a scientific curiosity.
It should be noted before we pass to Rome that with the expansion of
Hellenism the subject of historians expanded as well. Universal history
was begun by Ephorus, the rhetorician, and formed the theme of Polybius
and Deodorus. Exiled Greeks were the first to write histories of Rome
worthy of the name. The Alexandrian Eratosthenes placed chronology upon
the scientific basis of astronomy, and Apollodorus drew up the most
important _chronica_ of antiquity.
History-writing in Rome,--except for the Greek writers resident
there,--was until the first half of the 1st century B.C. in the form of
annals. Then came rhetorical ornamentation,--and the Ciceronian era. The
first Roman historian who rose to the conception of a science and art
combined was Sallust, the student of Thucydides. The Augustan age
produced in Livy a great popular historian and natural artist and a
trained rhetorician (in the speeches),--but as uncritical and inaccurate
as he was brilliant. From Livy to Tacitus the gulf is greater than from
Herodotus to Thucydides. Tacitus is at least a consummate artist. His
style ranges from the brilliancy of his youth to the sternness and
sombre gravity of age, passing almost to poetic expression in its
epigrammatic terseness. Yet in spite of his searching study of
authorities, his keen judgment of men, and his perception of underlying
principles of moral law, his view was warped by the heat of faction,
which glows beneath his external objectivity. After him Roman
history-writing speedily degenerated. Suetonius' _Lives of the Caesars_
is but a superior kind of journalism. But his gossip of the court became
the model for historians, whose works, now lost, furnish the main source
for the _Historia Augusta_. The importance to us of this uncritical
collection of biographies is sufficient comment on the decline of
history-writing in the latter empire. Finally, from the 4th century the
epitomes of Eutropius and Festus served to satisfy the lessening
curiosity in the past and became the handbooks for the middle ages. The
single figure of Ammianus Marcellinus stands out of this age like a
belated disciple of Tacitus. But the world was changing from antique to
Christian ideals just as he was writing, and with him we leave this
outline of ancient history.
The 4th and 5th centuries saw a great revolution in the history of
history. The story of the pagan past slipped out of mind, and in its
place was set, by the genius of Eusebius, the story of the world force
which had superseded it, Christianity, and of that small fraction of
antiquity from which it sprang,--the Jews. Christianity from the first
had forced thinking men to reconstruct their philosophy of history, but
it was only after the Church's triumph that its point of view became
dominant in historiography. Three centuries more passed before the pagan
models were quite lost to sight. But from the 7th century to the
17th--from Isidore of Seville and the English Bede for a thousand
years,--mankind was to look back along the line of Jewish priests and
kings to the Creation. Egypt was of interest only as it came into
Israelite history, Babylon and Nineveh were to illustrate the judgments
of Yahweh, Tyre and Sidon to reflect the glory of Solomon. The process
by which the "gentiles" have been robbed of their legitimate history was
the inevitable result of a religion whose sacred books make them lay
figures for the history of the Jews. Rejected by the Yahweh who became
the Christian God, they have remained to the present day, in Sunday
schools and in common opinion, not nations of living men, with the
culture of arts and sciences, but outcasts who do not enter into the
divine scheme of the world's history. When a line was drawn between
pagan and Christian back to the creation of the world, it left outside
the pale of inquiry nearly all antiquity. But it must be remembered that
that antiquity was one in which the German nations had no personal
interest. Scipio and the Gracchi were essentially unreal to them. The
one living organization with which they came into touch was the Church.
So Cicero and Pompey paled before Joshua and Paul. Diocletian, the
organizing genius, became a bloodthirsty monster, and Constantine, the
murderer, a saint.
Christian history begins with the triumph of the Church. With Eusebius
of Caesarea the apologetic pamphlets of the age of persecutions gave way
to a calm review of three centuries of Christian progress. Eusebius'
biography of Constantine shows what distortion of fact the father of
Church history permitted himself, but the Ecclesiastical History was
fortunately written for those who wanted to know what really happened,
and remains to-day an invaluable repository of Christian antiquities.
With the continuations of Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret, and the Latin
manual which Cassiodorus had woven from them (the _Historia
tripartita_), it formed the body of Church history during all the middle
ages. An even greater influence, however, was exercised by Eusebius'
_Chronica_. Through Jerome's translation and additions, this scheme of
this world's chronology became the basis for all medieval world
chronicles. It settled until our own day the succession of years from
the Creation to the birth of Christ,--fitting the Old Testament story
into that of ancient history. Henceforth the Jewish past,--that one path
back to the beginning of the world,--was marked out by the absolute laws
of mathematics and revelation. Jerome had marked it out; Sulpicius
Severus, the biographer of St Martin, in his _Historia sacra_, adorned
it with the attractions of romance. Sulpicius was admirably fitted to
interpret the miraculous Bible story to the middle ages. But there were
few who could write like him, and Jerome's _Chronicle_ itself, or rather
portions of it, became, in the age which followed, a sort of universal
preface for the monastic chronicler. For a time there were even attempts
to continue "imperial chronicles," but they were insignificant compared
with the influence of Eusebius and Jerome.
From the first, Christianity had a philosophy of history. Its earliest
apologists sought to show how the world had followed a divine plan in
its long preparation for the life of Christ. From this central fact of
all history, mankind should continue through war and suffering until the
divine plan was completed at the judgment day. The fate of nations is in
God's hands; history is the revelation of His wisdom and power. Whether
He intervenes directly by miracle, or merely sets His laws in operation,
He is master of men's fate. This idea, which has underlain all Christian
philosophy of history, from the first apologists who prophesied the fall
of the Empire and the coming of the millennium, down to our own day,
received its classic statement in St Augustine's _City of God_. The
terrestrial city, whose eternity had been the theme of pagan history,
had just fallen before Alaric's Goths. Augustine's explanation of its
fall passes in review not only the calamities of Roman history--combined
with a pathetic perception of its greatness,--but carries the survey
back to the origin of evil at the creation. Then over against this
_civitas terrena_ he sets the divine city which is to be realized in
Christendom. The Roman Empire,--the last general form of the earthly
city,--gives way slowly to the heavenly. This is the main thread of
Augustine's philosophy of history. The mathematical demonstration of its
truth was left by Augustine for his disciple, Paulus Orosius.
Orosius' _Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans_, written as a
supplement to the _City of God_, is the first attempt at a Christian
"World History." This manual for the middle ages arranged the rise and
fall of empires with convincing exactness. The history of antiquity,
according to it, begins with Ninus. His realm was overthrown by the
Medes in the same year in which the history of Rome began. From the
first year of Ninus' reign until the rebuilding of Babylon by Semiramis
there were sixty-four years; the same between the first of Procas and
the building of Rome. Eleven hundred and sixty-four years after each
city was built, it was taken,--Babylon by Cyrus, Rome by Alaric, and
Cyrus' conquest took place just when Rome began the Republic. But before
Rome becomes a world empire, Macedon and Carthage intervene, guardians
of Rome's youth (_tutor curatorque_). This scheme of the four
world-monarchies, which was to prevail through all the middle ages, was
developed through seven books filled with the story of war and
suffering. As it was Orosius' aim to show that the world had improved
since the coming of Christ, he used Trogus Pompeius' war history,
written to exalt Roman triumphs, to show the reverse of
victory,--disaster and ruin. Livy, Caesar, Tacitus and Suetonius were
plundered for the story of horrors; until finally even the Goths in
Spain shine by contrast with the pagan heroes; and through the confusion
of the German invasions one may look forward to Christendom,--and its
peace.
The commonest form of medieval historical writing was the chronicle,
which reaches all the way from monastic annals, mere notes on Easter
tables, to the dignity of national monuments. Utterly lacking in
perspective, and dominated by the idea of the miraculous, they are for
the most part a record of the trivial or the marvellous. Individual
historians sometimes recount the story of their own times with sober
judgment, but seldom know how to test their sources when dealing with
the past. Contradictions are often copied down without the writer
noticing them; and since the middle ages forged and falsified so many
documents,--monasteries, towns and corporations gaining privileges or
titles of possession by the bold use of them,--the narrative of medieval
writers cannot be relied upon unless we can verify it by collateral
evidence. Some historians, like Otto of Freising, Guibert of Nogent or
Bernard Gui, would have been scientific if they had had our appliances
for comparison. But even men like Roger Bacon, who deplored the
inaccuracy of texts, had worked out no general method to apply in their
restoration. Toward the close of the middle ages the vernacular
literatures were adorned with Villani's and Froissart's chronicles. But
the merit of both lies in their journalistic qualities of contemporary
narrative. Neither was a history in the truest sense.
The Renaissance marked the first great gain in the historic sense, in
the efforts of the humanists to realize the spirit of the antique world.
They did not altogether succeed; antiquity to them meant largely Plato
and Cicero. Their interests were literary, and the un-Ciceronian
centuries were generally ignored. Those in which the foundations of
modern Europe were laid, which produced parliaments, cathedrals, cities,
Dante and Chaucer, were grouped alike on one dismal level and christened
the middle ages. The perspective of the humanists was only one degree
better than that of the middle ages. History became the servant to
literature, an adjunct to the classics. Thus it passed into the schools,
where text-books still in use devote 200 pages to the Peloponnesian war
and two to the Athens of Pericles.
But if the literary side of humanism has been a barrier to the progress
of scientific history, the discovery and elucidation of texts first made
that progress possible. Historical criticism soon awoke. Laurentius
Valla's brilliant attack on the "Donation of Constantine" (1440), and
Ulrich von Hutten's rehabilitation of Henry IV. from monkish tales mark
the rise of the new science. One sees at a glance what an engine of
controversy it was to be; yet for a while it remained but a phase of
humanism. It was north of the Alps that it parted company with the
grammarians. Classical antiquity was an Italian past, the German
scholars turned back to the sources of their national history. Aeneas
Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II.) had discovered Otto of Freising and
Jordanes. Maximilian I. encouraged the search for manuscripts, and
Vienna became a great humanistic centre. Conrad Celtes left his
_Germania illustrata_ unfinished, but he had found the works of
Hroswitha. Conrad Peutinger gathered all sorts of Chronicles in his room
in Vienna, and published several,--among them Gregory of Tours. This
national movement of the 15th century was not paralleled in France or
England, where the classical humanities reigned. The Reformation
meanwhile gave another turn to the work of German scholars.
The Reformation, with its heated controversies, seems a strange
starting-point for science, yet it, even more than the Renaissance,
brought out scientific methods of historical investigation. It not only
sobered the humanist tendency to sacrifice truth for aesthetic effect,
it called for the documents of the Church and subjected them to the most
hostile criticism. Luther himself challenged them. Then in the
_Magdeburg Centuries_ (1559-1574) Protestantism tried to make good its
attack on the medieval Church by a great collection of sources
accompanied with much destructive criticism. This gigantic work is the
first monument of modern historical research. The reply of Cardinal
Baronius (_Annales ecclesiastici_, 1588-1697) was a still greater
collection, drawn from archives which till then had not been used for
scientific history. Baronius' criticism and texts are faulty, though far
surpassing anything before his day, and his collection is the basis for
most subsequent ones,--in spite of J. J. Scaliger's refutation, which
was to contain an equal number of volumes of the errors in Baronius.
The movement back to the sources in Germany until the Thirty Years' War
was a notable one. Collections were made by Simon Schard (1535-1573),
Johannes Pistorius (1576-1608), Marquard Freher (1565-1614), Melchior
Goldast (1576-1635) and others. After the war Leibnitz began a new
epoch, both by his philosophy with its law of continuity in phenomena,
and by his systematic attempt to collect sources through an association
(1670). His plan to have documents printed as they were, instead of
"correcting" them, was a notable advance. But from Leibnitz until the
19th century German national historiography made little
progress,--although church historians like Mosheim and Neander stand out
among the greatest historians of all time.
France had not paralleled the activity of Maximilian's Renaissance
historians. The father of modern French history, or at least of
historical research, was Andre Duchesne (1584-1640), whose splendid
collections of sources are still in use. Jean Bodin wrote the first
treatise on scientific history (_Methodus ad facilem historiarum
cognitionem_, 1566), but he did not apply his own principles of
criticism; and it was left for the Benedictine monks of the Congregation
of St Maur to establish definitely the new science. The place of this
school in the history of history is absolutely without a parallel. Few
of those in the audiences of Moliere, returning home under the grey
walls of St Germain-des-Pres, knew that within that monastery the men
whose midnight they disturbed were laying the basis for all scientific
history; and few of the later historians of that age have been any
wiser. But when Luc d'Achery turned from exegetics to patristics and the
lives of the saints, as a sort of Christian humanist, he led the way to
that vast work of collection and comparison of texts which developed
through Mabillon, Montfaucon, Ruinart, Martene, Bouquet and their
associates, into the indispensable implements of modern historians.
Here, as in the Reformation, controversy called out the richest product.
Jean Mabillon's treatise, _De re diplomatica_ (1681), was due to the
criticisms of that group of Belgian Jesuits whose _Acta Sanctorum
quotquot toto orbe coluntur_ (1643, &c., see BOLLANDISTS) was destined
to grow into the greatest repository of legend and biography the world
has seen. In reply to D. Papebroch's criticisms of the chronicle of St
Denis, Mabillon prepared this manual for the testing of medieval
documents. Its canons are the basis, indeed, almost the whole, of the
science of diplomatic (q.v.), the touchstone of truth for medieval
research. Henceforth even the mediocre scholar had a body of technical
rules by which to sort out the vast mass of apocrypha in medieval
documentary sources. Scientific history depends upon implements.
Without manuals, dictionaries, and easy access to texts, we should go as
far astray as any medieval chronicler. The France of the Maurists
supplied the most essential of these instruments. The great "glossary"
of Ducange is still in enlarged editions the indispensable encyclopaedia
of the middle ages. Chronology and palaeography were placed on a new
footing by Dom Bernard de Montfaucon's _Palaeographia graeca_ (1708),
the monumental _Art de verifier les dates_ (3rd ed., 1818-1831, in 38
vols.), and the _Nouveau Traite de diplomatique_ (1750-1765) of Dom
Tassin and Dom Toustain. The collections of texts which the Maurists
published are too many and too vast to be enumerated here (see C.
Langlois, _Manuel de bibliographie historique_, pp. 293 ff.). Dom
Bouquet's _Historiens de la Gaule et de la France_--the national
repertory for French historians--is but one of a dozen tasks of similar
magnitude. During the 18th century this deep under-work of scientific
history continued to advance, though for the most part unseen by the
brilliant writers whose untrustworthy generalities passed for history in
the salons of the old regime. Interrupted by the Revolution, it revived
in the 19th century, and the roll of honour of the French Ecole des
Chartes has almost rivalled that of St Germain-des-Pres.
The father of critical history in Italy was L. A. Muratori (1672-1750),
the Italian counterpart of Leibnitz. His vast collection of sources
(_Rerum Italicarum scriptores_), prepared amid every discouragement,
remains to-day the national monument of Italian history; and it is but
one of his collections. His output is perhaps the greatest of any
isolated worker in the whole history of historiography. The same haste,
but much less care, marked the work of J. D. Mansi (d. 1769), the
compiler of the fullest collection of the Councils. Spain, stifled by
the Inquisition, produced no national collection of sources during the
17th and 18th centuries, although Nicolas Antonio (d. 1684) produced a
national literary history of the first rank.
England in the 16th century kept pace with Continental historiography.
Henry VIII.'s chaplain, John Leland, is the father of English
antiquaries. Three of the most precious collections of medieval
manuscripts still in existence were then begun by Thomas Bodley (the
Bodleian at Oxford), Archbishop Matthew Parker (Corpus Christi at
Cambridge), and Robert Cotton (the Cottonian collection of the British
Museum). In Elizabeth's reign a serious effort was made to arrange the
national records, but until the end of the 18th century they were
scattered in not less than fifteen repositories. In the 17th and 18th
centuries English scholarship was enriched by such monuments of research
as William Dugdale's _Monasticon_, Thomas Madox's _History of the
Exchequer_, Wilkins's _Concilia_, and Thomas Rymer's _Foedera_. But
these works, important as they were, gave but little idea of the wealth
of historical sources which the 19th century was to reveal in England.
In the 19th century the science of history underwent a sort of
industrial revolution. The machinery of research, invented by the genius
of men like Mabillon, was perfected and set going in all the archives of
Europe. Isolated workers or groups of workers grew into national or
international associations, producing from archives vast collections of
material to be worked up into the artistic form of history. The result
of this movement has been to revolutionize the whole subject. These men
of the factory--devoting their lives to the cataloguing of archives and
libraries, to the publication of material, and then to the gigantic task
of indexing what they have produced--have made it possible for the
student in an American or Australian college to master in a few hours in
his library sources of history which baffled the long years of research
of a Martene or Rymer. The texts themselves have mostly become as
correct as they can ever be, and manuals and bibliographies guide one to
and through them, so that no one need go astray who takes the trouble to
make use of the mechanism which is at his hand. For example, since the
papal archives were opened, so many _regesta_ have appeared that soon it
will be possible to follow the letter-writing of the medieval popes day
by day for century after century.
The apparatus for this research is too vast to be described here.
Archives have been reformed, their contents catalogued or calendared;
government commissions have rescued numberless documents from oblivion
or destruction, and learned societies have supplemented and criticized
this work and co-ordinated the results. Every state in Europe now has
published the main sources for its history. The "Rolls" series, the
_Monumenta Germaniae historica_, and the _Documents inedits_ are but the
more notable of such national products. A series of periodicals keeps
watch over this enormous output. The files and indices of the _English
Historical Review_, _Historische Zeitschrift_, _Revue historique_, or
_American Historical Review_ will alone reveal the strength and
character of historical research in the later 19th century.
Every science which deals with human phenomena is in a way an implement
in this great factory system, in which the past is welded together
again. Psychology has been drawn upon to interpret the movements of
revolutions or religions, anthropology and ethnology furnish a clue to
problems to which the key of documents has been lost. Genealogy,
heraldry and chronology run parallel with the wider subject. But the
real auxiliary sciences to history are those which deal with those
traces of the past that still exist, the science of language
(philology), of writing (palaeography), of documents (diplomatic), of
seals (sphragistics), of coins (numismatics), of weights and measures,
and archaeology in the widest sense of the word. These sciences underlie
the whole development of scientific history. Dictionaries and manuals
are the instruments of this industrial revolution. Without them the
literary remains of the race would still be as useless as Egyptian
inscriptions to the fellaheen. Archaeology itself remained but a minor
branch of art until the machinery was perfected which enabled it to
classify and interpret the remains of the "pre-historic" age.
This is the most remarkable chapter in the whole history of history--the
recovery of that past which had already been lost when our literary
history began. The perspective stretches out as far the other side of
Homer as we are this. The old "providential" scheme of history
disintegrates before a new interest in the "gentile" nations to whose
high culture Hebrew sources bore unwilling testimony. Biblical criticism
is a part of the historic process. The Jewish texts, once the infallible
basis of history, are now tested by the libraries of Babylon, from which
they were partly drawn, and Hebrew history sinks into its proper place
in the wide horizon of antiquity. The finding of the Rosetta stone left
us no longer dependent upon Greek, Latin or Hebrew sources, and now
fifty centuries of Egyptian history lie before us. The scientific
historian of antiquity works on the hills of Crete, rather than in the
quiet of a library with the classics spread out before him. There he can
reconstruct the splendour of that Minoan age to which Homeric poems look
back, as the Germanic epics looked back to Rome or Verona. His
discoveries, co-ordinated and arranged in vast _corpora inscriptionum_,
stand now alongside Herodotus or Livy, furnishing a basis for their
criticism. Medieval archaeology has, since Quicherat, revealed how men
were living while the monks wrote chronicles, and now cathedrals and
castles are studied as genuine historic documents.
The immense increase in available sources, archaeological and literary,
has remade historical criticism. Ranke's application of the principles
of "higher criticism" to works written since the invention of printing
(_Kritik neuerer Geschichtsschreiber_) was an epoch-making challenge of
narrative sources. Now they are everywhere checked by contemporary
evidence, and a clearer sense of what constitutes a primary source has
discredited much of what had been currently accepted as true. This is
true not only of ancient history, where last year's book may be a
thousand years out of date, but of the whole field. Hardly an "old
master" remains an authoritative book of reference. Gibbon, Grote,
Giesebrecht, Guizot stand to-day by reason of other virtues than their
truth. Old landmarks drop out of sight--e.g. the fall of the Western
Empire in 476, the coming of the Greeks to Italy in 1450, dates which
once enclosed the middle ages. The perspective changes--the Renaissance
grows less and the middle ages more; the Protestant Revolution becomes
a complex of economics and politics and religion; the French Revolution
a vast social reform in which the Terror was an incident, &c., &c. The
result has been a complete transformation of history since the middle of
the 19th century.
In the 17th century the Augustinian scheme of world history received its
last classic statement in Bossuet's _Histoire universelle_. Voltaire's
reply to it in the 18th (_Essai sur les moeurs_) attacked its
limitations on the basis of deism, and its miraculous procedure on that
of science. But while there are foreshadowings of the evolutionary
theory in this work, neither the _philosophe_ historians nor Hume nor
Gibbon arrived at a constructive principle in history which could take
the place of the Providence they rejected. Religion, though false, might
be a real historic force. History became the tragic spectacle of a game
of dupes--the real movers being priests, kings or warriors. The pawns
slowly acquired reason, and then would be able to regulate the moves
themselves. But all this failed to give a satisfactory explanation of
the laws which determine the direction of this evolution. Giovanni
Battista Vico (1668-1744) was the first to ask why there is no science
of human history. But his lonely life and unrecognized labours leave him
apart from the main movement, until his works were discovered again in
the 19th century. It was A. L. H. Heeren who, at the opening of the 19th
century, first laid that emphasis upon the economic factors in history
which is to-day slowly replacing the Augustinian explanation of its
evolution. Heeren's own influence, however, was slight. The first half
of the century (apart from the scientific activity of Pertz, Guizot,
&c.) was largely dominated by the romanticists, with their exaggeration
of the individual. Carlyle's "great man theory of history" is logically
connected with the age of Scott. It was a philosophy of history which
lent itself to magnificent dramatic creations; but it explained nothing.
It substituted the work of the genius for the miraculous intervention of
Providence, but, apart from certain abstract formulae such as Truth and
Right, knew nothing of why or how. It is but dealing in words to say
that the meaning of it all is God's revelation of Himself. Granting
that, what is the process? Why does it so slowly reveal the Right of the
middle ages (as in slavery for instance) to be the Wrong to-day? Carlyle
stands to Bossuet as the sage to the myth. Hegel got no closer to
realities. His idealistic scheme of history, which makes religion the
keynote of progress, and describes the function of each--Judaism to
typify duty, Confucianism order, Mahommedanism justice, Buddhism
patience, and Christianity love--does not account for the facts of the
history enacted by the devotees. It characterizes, not the real process
of evolution, but an ideal which history has not realized. Besides, it
does not face the question how far religion itself is a product or a
cause, or both combined.
In the middle of the century two men sought to incorporate in their
philosophy the physical basis which Hegel had ignored in his
spiritism--recognizing that life is conditioned by an environment and
not an abstraction for metaphysics. H. T. Buckle, in his _History of
Civilization in England_ (1857), was the first to work out the
influences of the material world upon history, developing through a
wealth of illustration the importance of food, soil and the general
aspect of nature upon the formation of society. Buckle did not, as is
generally believed, make these three factors dominate all history. He
distinctly stated that "the advance of European civilization is
characterized by a diminishing influence of physical laws and an
increasing influence of mental laws," and "the measure of civilization
is the triumph of mind over external agents." Yet his challenge, not
only to the theologian, but also to those "historians whose indolence of
thought" or "natural incapacity" prevented them from attempting more
than the annalistic record of events, called out a storm of protest from
almost every side. Now that the controversy has cleared away, we see
that in spite of Buckle's too confident formulation of his laws, his
pioneer work in a great field marks him out as the Augustine of the
scientific age. Among historians, however, Buckle's theory received but
little favour for another generation. Meanwhile the economists had
themselves taken up the problem, and it was from them that the
historians of to-day have learned it. Ten years before Buckle published
his history, Karl Marx had already formulated the "economic theory of
history." Accepting with reservation Feuerbach's attack on the Hegelian
"absolute idea," based on materialistic grounds (_Der Mensch ist, was er
isst_), Marx was led to the conclusion that the causes of that process
of growth which constitutes the history of society are to be found in
the economic conditions of existence. From this he went on to socialism,
which bases its militant philosophy upon this interpretation of history.
But the truth or falseness of socialism does not affect the theory of
history. In 1845 Marx wrote of the Young-Hegelians that to separate
history from natural science and industry was like separating the soul
from the body, and "finding the birthplace of history, not in the gross
material production on earth, but in the misty cloud formation of
heaven" (_Die heilige Familie_, p. 238). In his _Misere de la
philosophie_ (1847) he lays down the principle that social relationships
largely depend upon modes of production, and therefore the principles,
ideas and categories which are thus evolved are no more eternal than the
relations they express, but are historical and transitory products. In
the famous _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ (1848) the theory was
applied to show how the industrial revolution had replaced feudal with
modern conditions. But it had little vogue, except among Socialists,
until the third volume of _Das Kapital_ was published in 1894, when its
importance was borne in upon continental scholars. Since then the
controversy has been almost as heated as in the days of the Reformation.
It is an exaggeration of the theory which makes it an explanation of all
human life, but the whole science of dynamic sociology rests upon the
postulate of Marx.
The content of history always reflects the interests of the age in which
it is written. It was so in Herodotus and in medieval chronicles. Modern
historians began with politics. But as the complex nature of society
became more evident in the age of democracy, the economic or
sociological history gained ground. Histories of commerce and cities now
rank beside those on war and kings, although there are readers still who
prefer to follow the pennants of robber barons rather than to watch the
slow evolution of modern conditions. The drum-and-trumpet history has
its place like that of art, jurisprudence, science or philosophy. Only
now we know that no one of these is more than a single glimpse at a vast
complex of phenomena, most of which lie for ever beyond our ken.
This expansion of interest has intensified specialization. Historians no
longer attempt to write world histories; they form associations of
specialists for the purpose. Each historian chooses his own epoch or
century and his own subject, and spends his life mastering such traces
of it as he can find. His work there enables him to judge of the methods
of his fellows, but his own remains restricted by the very wealth of
material which has been accumulated on the single subject before him.
Thus the great enterprises of to-day are co-operative--the _Cambridge
Modern History_, Lavisse and Rambaud's _Histoire generale_, or Lavisse's
_Histoire de France_, like Hunt and Poole's _Political History of
England_, and Oncken's _Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen_.
But even these vast sets cover but the merest fraction of their
subjects. The Cambridge history passes for the most part along the
political crust of society, and seldom glances at the social forces
within. This limitation of the professed historian is made up for by the
growingly historical treatment of all the sciences and arts--a tendency
noted before, to which this edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ is
itself a notable witness. Indeed, for a definition of that limitless
subject which includes all the phenomena that stand the warp and stress
of change, one might adapt a famous epitaph--_si historiam requiris,
circumspice_.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See Ch. V. Langlois, _Manuel de bibliographie
historique_ (2 vols., 1904). This forms the logical bibliography of
this article. It is a general survey of the whole apparatus of
historical research, and is the indispensable guide to the subject.
Similar bibliographies covering sections of history are noted with the
articles where they properly belong, e.g. in English medieval history
the manual of Chas. Gross, _Sources and Literature of English
History_; in German history the _Quellenkunde_ of Dahlmann-Waitz (7th
ed.); for France the _Bibliographie de l'histoire de France_ of G.
Monod (antiquated, 1888), or the _Sources de l'histoire de France_ so
ably begun by A. Molinier's volumes on the medieval period. Perhaps
the sanest survey of the present scientific movement in history is the
clear summary of Ch. V. Langlois and Ch. Seignobos, _Introduction to
the Study of History_ (trans. with preface by F. York Powell, London,
1898). Much more ambitious is E. Bernheim's _Lehrbuch der historischen
Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie mit Nachweis der wichtigsten
Quellen und Hilfsmittel zum Studium der Geschichte_ (3rd and 4th ed.,
Leipzig, 1903). (J. T. S.*)
HIT, a town of Asiatic Turkey, in the vilayet of Bagdad, on the west
bank of the Euphrates, 70 m. W.N.W. of Bagdad, in 33 deg. 38' 8" N., 42
deg. 52' 15" E. It is picturesquely situated on a line of hills, partly
natural, but in large part certainly artificial, the accumulation of
centuries of former habitation, from 30 to 100 ft. in height, bordering
the river. The houses are built of field stones and mud. A striking
feature of the town is a lofty and well-proportioned minaret, which
leans quite perceptibly. Behind and around Hit is an extensive but
utterly barren plain, through which flow several streams of bitter
water, coming from mineral springs. Directly behind the town are two
bitumen springs, one cold and one hot, within 30 ft. of one another. The
gypsum cliffs on the edge of the plain, and the rocks which crop out
here and there in the plain, are full of seams of bitumen, and the whole
place is redolent of sulphuretted hydrogen. Across the river there are
naphtha springs. Indeed, the entire region is one possessing great
potential wealth in mineral oils and the like. Hit, with its fringe of
palms, is like an oasis in the desert occasioned by the outcrop of these
deposits. From time immemorial it has been the chief source of supply of
bitumen for Babylonia, the prosperity of the town depending always upon
its bitumen fountains, which are still the property of the government,
but are rented out to any one who wishes to use them. There is also a
shipyard at Hit, where the characteristic Babylonian boats are still
made, smeared within and without with bitumen. Hit is the head of
navigation on the Euphrates. It is also the point from which the
camel-post starts across the desert to Damascus. About 8 m. inland from
Hit, on a bitter stream, lies the small town of Kubeitha. Hit is
mentioned, under the name of Ist, in the Karnak inscription as paying
tribute to Tethmosis (Thothmes) III. In the Bible (Ezra viii. 15) it is
called Ahava; the original Babylonian name seems to have been _Ihi_,
which becomes in the Talmud _Ihidakira_, in Ptolemy [Greek: Idikara],
and in Zosimus and Ammianus [Greek: Dakira] and Diacira.
See Geo. Rawlinson's _Herodotus_, i. 179, and note by H. C. Rawlinson;
J. P. Peters, _Nippur_ (1897); H. V. Geere, _By Nile and Euphrates_
(1904). (J. P. Pe.)
HITA, GINES PEREZ DE (1544?-1605?), Spanish novelist and poet, was born
at Mula (Murcia) about the middle of the 16th century. He served in the
campaign of 1569-1571 against the Moriscos, and in 1572 wrote a rhymed
history of the city of Lorca which remained unpublished till 1889. He
owes his wide celebrity to the _Historia de los bandos de Zegries y
Abencerrajes_ (1595-1604), better known as the _Guerras civiles de
Granada_, which purports to be a chronicle based on an Arabic original
ascribed to a certain Aben-Hamin. Aben-Hamin is a fictitious personage,
and the _Guerras de Granada_ is in reality a historical novel, perhaps
the earliest example of its kind, and certainly the first historical
novel that attained popularity. In the first part the events which led
to the downfall of Granada are related with uncommon brilliancy, and
Hita's sympathetic transcription of life at the Emir's court has clearly
suggested the conventional presentation of the picturesque, chivalrous
Moor in the pages of Mlle de Scudery, Mme de Lafayette, Chateaubriand
and Washington Irving. The second part is concerned with the author's
personal experiences, and the treatment is effective; yet, though
Calderon's play, _Amar despues de la muerte_, is derived from it, the
second part has never enjoyed the vogue or influence of the first. The
exact date of Hita's death is unknown. His blank verse rendering of the
_Cronica Troyana_, written in 1596, exists in manuscript.
HITCHCOCK, EDWARD (1793-1864), American geologist, was born of poor
parents at Deerfield, Massachusetts, on the 24th of May 1793. He owed
his education chiefly to his own exertions, and was preparing himself
to enter Harvard College when he was compelled to interrupt his studies
from a weakness in his eyesight. In 1815 he became principal of the
academy of his native town; but he resigned this office in 1818 in order
to study for the ministry. Having been ordained in 1821 pastor of the
Congregational church of Conway, Mass., he employed his leisure in
making a scientific survey of the western counties of the state. From
1825 to 1845 he was professor of chemistry and natural history, from
1845 to 1864 was professor of natural theology and geology at Amherst
College, and from 1845 to 1854 was president; the college owed its early
success largely to his energetic efforts, especially during the period
of his presidency. In 1830 he was appointed state geologist of
Massachusetts, and in 1836 was made geologist of the first district of
the state of New York. In 1840 he received the degree of LL.D. from
Harvard, and in 1846 that of D.D. from Middlebury College, Vermont.
Besides his constant labours in geology, zoology and botany, Hitchcock
took an active interest in agriculture, and in 1850 he was sent by the
Massachusetts legislature to examine into the methods of the
agricultural schools of Europe. In geology he made a detailed
examination and exposition of the fossil footprints from the Triassic
sandstones of the Connecticut valley. His collection is preserved in the
Hitchcock Ichnological Museum of Amherst College, and a description of
it was published in 1858 in his report to the Massachusetts legislature
on the ichnology of New England. The footprints were regarded as those
of reptiles, amphibia and birds (?). In 1857 he undertook, with the aid
of his two sons, the geological survey of Vermont, which was completed
in 1861. As a writer on geological science, Hitchcock was largely
concerned in determining the connexion between it and religion, and
employing its results to explain and support what he regarded as the
truths of revelation. He died at Amherst, on the 27th of February 1864.
His son, CHARLES HENRY HITCHCOCK (1836- ), did good service in geology,
in Vermont, New Hampshire (1868-1878), and other parts of America, and
became professor of geology at Dartmouth in 1868.
The following are Edward Hitchcock's principal works: _Geology of the
Connecticut Valley_ (1823); _Catalogue of Plants growing without
cultivation in the vicinity of Amherst_ (1829); _Reports on the
Geology of Massachusetts_ (1833-1841); _Elementary Geology_ (1840; ed.
2, 1841; and later ed. with C. H. Hitchcock, 1862); _Fossil Footmarks
in the United States_ (1848); _Outline of the Geology of the Globe and
of the United States in particular_ (1853); _Illustrations of Surface
Geology_ (1856); _Ichnology of New England_ (1858); _The Religion of
Geology and its Connected Sciences_ (1851; new ed., 1869);
_Reminiscences of Amherst College_ (1863); and various papers in the
_American Journal of Science_, and other periodicals.
HITCHCOCK, GEORGE (1850- ), American artist, was born at Providence,
Rhode Island, in 1850. He graduated from Brown University in 1872 and
from the law school of Harvard University in 1874; then turned his
attention to art and became a pupil of Boulanger and Lefebvre in Paris.
He attracted notice in the Salon of 1885 with his "Tulip Growing," a
Dutch garden which he painted in Holland. He had for years a studio at
Egmond, in the Netherlands. He became a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour, France; a member of the Vienna Academy of Arts, the Munich
Secession Society, and other art bodies; and is represented in the
Dresden gallery; the imperial collection, Vienna; the Chicago Art
Institute, and the Detroit Museum of Fine Arts.
HITCHCOCK, ROSWELL DWIGHT (1817-1887), American divine, was born at East
Machias, Maine, on the 15th of August 1817, graduated at Amherst College
in 1836, and later studied at Andover Theological Seminary, Mass. After
a visit to Germany he was a tutor at Amherst in 1839-1842, and was
minister of the First (Congregational) Church, Exeter, New Hampshire, in
1845-1852. He became professor of natural and revealed religion in
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1852, and in 1855 professor of
church history in the Union Theological Seminary in New York, of which
he was president in 1880-1887. He died at Somerset, Mass., on the 16th
of June 1887.
Among his works are: _Life of Edward Robinson_ (1863); _Socialism_
(1879); _Carmina Sanctorum_ (with Z. Eddy and L. W. Mudge, 1885); and
_Eternal Atonement_ (1888).
HITCHIN, a market town in the Hitchin parliamentary division of
Hertfordshire, England, on the small river Hiz, 32 m. N. from London by
the Great Northern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 10,072. It is
the junction of the main line with the Cambridge branch, and with a
branch of the Midland railway to Bedford. The church of St Mary is
Perpendicular, with a fine porch, a painting of the Adoration of the
Magi, attributed to Rubens, a small crypt said to have been used by
Cromwell as a prison for the Royalists, and many interesting monuments.
Hitchin Priory is a mansion on the site of a Carmelite foundation of the
early 14th century. A Gilbertine nunnery, founded later in the same
century, stood adjacent to the church, and portions of the buildings
appear in an existing block of almshouses. The grammar school (1632) was
reconstituted in 1889 for boys and girls. Straw-plaiting, malting,
brewing, and the cultivation and distillation of lavender and peppermint
are carried on.
HITTITES, an ancient people, alluded to frequently in the earlier
records of Israel, and also, under slightly variant names, in Egyptian
records of the XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth Dynasties, and in Assyrian from
about 1100 to 700 B.C. They appear also in the Vannic cuneiform texts,
and are believed to be the authors of a class of monuments bearing
inscriptions in a peculiar pictographic character, and widely
distributed over Asia Minor and N. Syria, around which much controversy
has raged during the past thirty years.
1. _The Bible._--In the Old Testament the name of the race is written
_Heth_ (with initial aspirate), members of it being _Hitti_, _Hittim_,
which the Septuagint renders [Greek: chet], [Greek: chettaios], [Greek:
chettein] or [Greek: chetteim], keeping, it will be noted, [epsilon] in
the stem throughout. The race appears in two connexions, (a) In
pre-Israelite Palestine, it is resident about Hebron (Gen. xxiii. 3),
and in the central uplands (Num. xiii. 29). To Joshua (i. 4) is promised
"from the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the
river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites." The term "wilderness"
here is of geographical ambiguity; but the promise is usually taken to
mean that Palestine itself was part of the Hittite land before the
coming of Israel; and an apostrophe of Ezekiel (xvi. 3) to Jerusalem,
"thy mother (was) an Hittite," is quoted in confirmation. Under the
monarchy we hear frequently of Hittites within the borders of Israel,
but either as a small subject people, coupled with other petty tribes,
or as individuals in the Jewish service (e.g. Uriah, in the time of
David). It appears, therefore, that there survived in Palestine to late
times a detached Hittite population, with which Hebrews sometimes
intermarried (Judges iii. 5-6; Gen. xxvi. 34) and lived in relations now
amicable, now tyrannical (e.g. Hittites were made tributary bondsmen by
Solomon, 1 Kings ix. 20, 21; 2 Chron. viii. 7, 8). (b) An independent
and powerful Hittite people was domiciled N. of Palestine proper,
organized rather as a confederacy of tribes than a single monarchy (1
Kings x. 28; 2 Kings vii. 6). Presumably it was a daughter of these
Hittites that Solomon took to wife. If the emendation of 2 Sam. xxiv.
64, "Tahtim-hodshi," based on the Septuagint version [Greek: gen
chetteim kades] be accepted, we hear of them at Kadesh on Orontes; and
some minor Hittite cities are mentioned, e.g. Luz; but no one capital
city of the race is clearly indicated. Carchemish, on the Euphrates,
though mentioned three times (2 Chron. xxxv. 20; Isa. x. 9; Jer. xlvi.
2), is not connected explicitly with Hittites, a fact which is not
surprising, since that city was no longer under a Hatti dynasty at the
epoch of the Old Testament references. So far as the Old Testament goes,
therefore, we gather that the Hittites were a considerable people,
widely spread in Syria, in part subdued and to some extent assimilated
by Israel, but in part out of reach. The latter portion was not much
known to the Hebrews, but was vaguely feared as a power in the early
days of the monarchy, though not in the later pre-Captivity period. The
identification of the northern and southern Hittites, however, presents
certain difficulties not yet fully explained; and it seems that we must
assume Heth to have been the name both of a country in the north and of
a tribal population not confined to that country.
2. _Egyptian Records._--The decipherment of the inscriptions of the
XVIIIth Theban Dynasty led, before the middle of the 19th century, to
the discovery of the important part played in the Syrian campaigns of
Tethmosis (Thothmes) III. by the H-t8 (vulgarly transliterated _Kheta_,
though the vocalization is uncertain). The coincidence of this name,
beginning with an aspirate, led H. K. Brugsch to identify the Kheta with
Heth. That identification stands, and no earlier Egyptian mention of the
race has been found. Tethmosis III. found the Kheta ("Great" and
"Little") in N. Syria, not apparently at Kadesh, but at Carchemish,
though they had not been in possession of the latter place long (not in
the epoch of Tethmosis I.'s Syrian campaign). They were a power strong
enough to give the Pharaoh cause to vaunt his success (see also EGYPT:
_Ancient History_, S "The New Empire"). Though he says he levied tribute
upon them, his successors in the dynasty nearly all record fresh wars
with the Kheta who appear as the northernmost of Pharaoh's enemies, and
Amenophis or Amenhotep III. saw fit to take to wife Gilukhipa, a Syrian
princess, who may or may not have been a Hittite. This queen is by some
supposed to have introduced into Egypt certain exotic ideas which
blossomed in the reign of Amenophis IV. The first Pharaoh of the
succeeding dynasty, Rameses I., came to terms with a Kheta king called
Saplel or Saparura; but Seti I. again attacked the Kheta (1366 B.C.),
who had apparently pushed southwards. Forced back by Seti, the Kheta
returned and were found holding Kadesh by Rameses II., who, in his fifth
year, there fought against them and a large body of allies, drawn
probably in part from beyond Taurus, the battle which occasioned the
monumental poem of Pentaur. After long struggles, a treaty was concluded
in Rameses's twenty-first year, between Pharaoh and "Khetasar" (i.e.
Kheta-king), of which we possess an Egyptian copy. The discovery of a
cuneiform tablet containing a copy of this same treaty, in the
Babylonian language, was reported from Boghaz Keui in Cappadocia by H.
Winckler in 1907. It argues the Kheta a people of considerable
civilization. The Kheta king subsequently visited Pharaoh and gave him
his daughter to wife. Rameses' successor, Mineptah, remained on terms
with the Kheta folk; but in the reign of Rameses III. (Dyn. XX.) the
latter seem to have joined in the great raid of northern tribes on Egypt
which was checked by the battle of Pelusium. From this point (c. 1150
B.C.)--the point at which (roughly) the monarchic history of Israel in
Palestine opens--Egyptian records cease to mention Kheta; and as we know
from other sources that the latter continued powerful in Carchemish for
some centuries to come, we must presume that the rise of the Israelite
state interposed an effective political barrier.
3. _Assyrian Records._--In an inscription of Tiglath Pileser I. (about
1100 B.C.), first deciphered in 1857, a people called _Khatti_ is
mentioned as powerful in Girgamish on Euphrates (i.e. Carchemish); and
in other records of the same monarch, subsequently read, much mention is
made of this and of other N. Syrian names. These Khatti appear again in
the inscriptions of Assur-nazir-pal (early 9th century B.C.), in whose
time Carchemish was very wealthy, and the Khatti power extended far over
N. Syria and even into Mesopotamia. Shalmaneser II. (d. 825 B.C.) raided
the Khatti and their allies year after year; and at last Sargon III., in
717 B.C., relates that he captured Carchemish and its king, Pisiris, and
put an end to its independence. We hear no more of it thenceforward.
These _Khatti_, there is no reasonable doubt, are identical with
_Kheta_. (For the chronology see further under BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.)
4. _Other Cuneiform Records._--The name of the race appears in certain
of the Tel-el-Amarna letters, tablets written in Babylonian script to
Amenophis (Amenhotep) IV. and found in 1892 on the site of his capital.
Some of his governors in Syrian districts (e.g. one Aziru of Phoenicia)
report movements of the Hittites, who were then pursuing an aggressive
policy (about 1400 B.C.). There are also other letters from rulers of
principalities in N. Syria (Mitanni) and E. Asia Minor (Arzawa), who
write in non-Semitic tongues and are supposed to have been Hittites.
Certain _Khate_ or _Khati_ are mentioned in the Vannic inscriptions
(deciphered partially by A. H. Sayce and others) as attacked by kings
of Bianas (Van), and apparently domiciled on the middle Euphrates N. of
Taurus in the 9th century B.C. This name again may safely be identified
with _Khatti-Kheta_.
The Khatti also appear on a "prophecy-tablet," referring ostensibly to
the time of Sargon of Agade (middle of 4th millennium B.C.); but the
document is probably of very much later date. Lastly, a fragmentary
chronicle of the 1st Babylonian Dynasty mentions an invasion of Akkad by
them about 1800 B.C.
From all these various sources we should gather that the Hittites were
among the more important racial elements in N. Syria and S.E. Asia Minor
for at least a thousand years. The limits at each end, however, are very
ill defined, the superior falling not later than 2000 B.C. and the
inferior not earlier than 600 B.C. This people was militant, aggressive
and unsettled in the earlier part of that time; commercial, wealthy and
enervated in the latter. A memorial of its trading long remained in Asia
in the shape of the weight-measure called in cuneiform records the
_maneh_ "of Carchemish." These Hittites had close relations with other
Asia Minor peoples, and at times headed a confederacy. During the later
part of their history they were in continual contact with Assyria, and,
as a Syrian power, and perhaps also as a Cappadocian one, they finally
succumbed to Assyrian pressure.
_The "Hittite" Monuments._--It remains to consider in the light of the
foregoing evidence a class of monuments to which attention began to be
called about 1870. In that year two Americans, Consul J. A. Johnson and
the Rev. S. Jessup, rediscovered, at Hamah (Hamath) on Orontes, five
basaltic blocks bearing pictographic inscriptions in relief, one of
which had been reported by J. L. Burckhardt in 1812. In spite of their
efforts and subsequent attempts made by Tyrwhitt Drake and Richard
Burton, when consul at Damascus, proper copies could not be obtained;
and it was not till the end of 1872 that, thanks to W. Wright of Beirut,
casts were taken and the stones themselves sent to Constantinople by
Subhi Pasha of Damascus. As usually happens when a new class of
antiquities is announced, it was soon found that the "Hamathite"
inscriptions did not stand alone. A monument in the same script had been
seen in Aleppo by Tyrwhitt Drake and George Smith in 1872. It still
exists, built into a mosque on the western wall of the city. Certain
clay sealings, eight of which bore pictographic signs, found by A. H.
Layard in the palace of Assur-bani-pal at Kuyunjik (Nineveh), as long
ago as 1851 and noticed then as in a "doubtful character," were compared
by Hayes Ward and found to be of the Hamathite class. A new copy of the
long known rock-sculpture at Ivriz[1] in S.W. Cappadocia was published
by E. J. Davis in 1876, and clearly showed Hamathite characters
accompanying the figures. Davis also reported, but did not see, a
similar inscription at Bulgar Maden, not far away. Sculptures seen by W.
Skene and George Smith at Jerablus, on the middle Euphrates, led to
excavations being undertaken there, in 1878, by the British Museum, and
to the discovery of certain Hamathite inscriptions accompanying
sculptures, a few of which were brought to London. The conduct of these
excavations, owing to the death of George Smith, devolved on Consul
Henderson of Aleppo, and was not satisfactorily carried out. Meanwhile
Wright, Ward and Sayce had all suggested "Hittite" as a substitute for
"Hamathite," because no other N. Syrian people loomed so large in
ancient records as did the Hittites, and the suggestion began to find
acceptance. Jerablus was confidently identified with Carchemish (but
without positive proof to this day), and the occurrence of Hamathite
monuments there was held to confirm the Hittite theory.
In 1876 Sayce pointed out the resemblance between certain Hittite signs
and characters in the lately deciphered Cypriote syllabary, and
suggested that the comparison might lead to a beginning of decipherment;
but the hope has proved vain. To this scholar, however, is owed the
next great step ahead. In 1879 it first occurred to him to compare the
rock-monuments at Boghaz Keui (see PTERIA) and Euyuk in N. Cappadocia,
discovered by Texier and Hamilton in 1835 and subsequently explored by
G. Perrot and E. Guillaume. These, he now saw, bore Hittite pictographs.
Other rock-sculptures at Giaur Kalessi, in Galatia, and in the Karabel
pass near Smyrna, he suspected of belonging to the same class[2]; and
visiting the last-named locality in the autumn, he found Hittite
pictographs accompanying one of the two figures.[3] He announced his
discoveries in 1880, and proclaimed the fact that a great Hittite
empire, extending from Kadesh to Smyrna, had risen from the dead. A
month later he had the good fortune to recover copies of a silver boss,
or hilt-top, offered to various museums about 1860, but rejected by them
as a meaningless forgery and for a long time lost again to sight. Round
the rim was a cuneiform legend, and in the field a Hittite figure with
six Hittite symbols engraved twice over on either hand of it. Reading
the cuneiform as _Tarqu-dimme sar mat Erme_ (i.e. "T. king of the
country E."), Sayce distributed phonetic values, corresponding to the
syllables of the two proper names, among four of the Hittite characters,
reserving two as "ideograms" of "king" and "country," and launched into
the field of decipherment. But he subsequently recognized that this was
a false start, and began afresh from another basis. Since then a number
of other monuments have been found, some on new sites, others on sites
already known to be Hittite, the distribution of which can be seen by
reference to the accompanying map. It will be observed that, so far as
at present known, they cluster most closely in Commagene, Cappadocia and
S. Phrygia.