The reconstruction, from newly exhumed monuments, of the history of the
East, has been the great work of the present century. The startling
revelations arising from the decipherment of the Egyptian records were
followed by results, still more surprising, afforded by the buried
cities of Assyria and Babylonia, and by glimpses into the prehistoric
life of Greece obtained from the excavations of Dr. Schliemann on
the sites of Troy and Mycenæ. If any one will take the trouble to
look into such a book as Rollin’s “Ancient History,” and compare it
with Duncker’s “History of Antiquity,” or with the useful series of
little volumes published by the Christian Knowledge Society under the
title of “Ancient History from the Monuments,” it will be possible
to estimate the completeness of the reconstruction of our knowledge.
Thus the legendary story of Sesostris, as recorded by Herodotus, has
given place to the authentic history of the reigns of the conquering
monarchs of the New Empire, Thothmes III., Seti I., and Rameses II.,
while the Greek romance of Sardanapalus is replaced by the contemporary
annals of Assurbanipal; and, more wonderful than all, we discover that
Semiramis herself was no mortal Queen of Babylon, but the celestial
Queen of the Heavenly Host, the planet Venus, the morning star as she
journeys from her eastern realm, the evening star as she passes onward
to the west in search of her lost spouse the sun, and to be identified
with the Babylonian goddess Istar, the Ashtaroth of the Bible, whose
rationalized myth was handed down by Ctesias as sober history.
To these marvellous reconstructions another of hardly less interest
and importance must now be added. The most notable archæological
achievement of the last ten years has been the recovery and
installation of the Hittite Empire as one of the earliest and most
powerful of the great Oriental monarchies. Dr. Wright, in the opportune
volume whose title stands at the head of this notice, has established
a claim to have rescued from probable destruction some of the most
important Hittite inscriptions; to have been the first to suggest the
Hittite origin of the inscribed stones from Hamath whose discovery in
1872 excited so much speculation; and has now added to our obligations
by placing before the world in a convenient form nearly the whole of
the available materials bearing on the question of Hittite history and
civilization.
Our readers will probably remember a signed article on the Hittites,
from the pen of Dr. Wright, which appeared in this Review in 1882. This
article has been expanded by its author into a goodly volume, and has
been enriched with considerable additions of new and valuable material
which bring it well up to the present standard of knowledge. Among
these additions are facsimiles of the principal Hittite inscriptions,
most of which have already appeared in the transactions of the Society
of Biblical Archæology, and are now revised by Mr. Rylands; while Sir
C. Wilson and Captain Conder have contributed a useful map indicating
the sites where Hittite monuments have been found; and Professor
Sayce adds a valuable appendix containing the results of his latest
researches as to the decipherment of the Hittite script.
Till within the last twenty years all men had been used to think
of the Hittites as an obscure Canaanitish tribe, of much the same
importance as the Hivites or the Perizzites, with whom it was the
custom to class them. It is true that if read between the lines, as we
are now able to read it, the Biblical narrative indicated that while
other Canaanitish tribes were of small power and importance, and were
soon exterminated or absorbed into the Hebrew nationality, the Hittites
stood on altogether another footing. The Hittites are the first and
the last of these tribes to appear on the scene. As early as the time
of Abraham we find them lords of the soil at Hebron; and in the time
of Solomon, and even of Elisha, they are a mighty people, inhabiting a
region to the north of Palestine, and distinguished by the possession
of numerous war chariots, then the chief sign of military power. Though
we are now able to perceive that this is the true signification of the
references to them in the old Testament, yet it was from the newly
recovered monuments of Egypt and Assyria that the facts were actually
gleaned, and it was shown that for more than a thousand years the
Hittite power was comparable to that of Assyria and Egypt.
It is only by slow degrees that this result has been established. The
first light came from Abusimbel, in Nubia, midway between the first and
second cataracts of the Nile, where Rameses II., the most magnificent
of the Egyptian kings, at a time when the Hebrews were still toiling in
Egyptian bondage, caused a vast precipice of rock to be carved into a
stupendous temple-cave, to whose walls he committed the annals of his
reign and the records of his distant campaigns. On one of the walls of
this temple is pictured a splendid battle scene, occupying a space of
57 feet by 24, and containing upwards of 1100 figures. This represents,
as we learn from the hieroglyphic explanation, the great battle of
Kadesh, fought with the “vile people of the Kheta”—a battle which also
forms the theme of the poem of Pentaur, the oldest epic in the world,
still extant in a papyrus now preserved in the British Museum. In
spite of the grandiloquent boasts of these records, we gather that the
battle was indecisive; that Rameses had to retire from the siege of
Kadesh, narrowly escaping with his life; the campaign being ended by
the conclusion of a treaty on equal terms with the King of the Kheta—a
treaty which was followed a year later, by the espousal by Rameses of a
daughter of the hostile king.
About twenty years ago it was suggested by De Rougé that this powerful
nation of the Kheta might probably be identified with the Khittim,
or Hittites, of the Old Testament; and this conclusion, though never
accepted by some eminent Egyptologists, such as Chabas and Ebers,
gradually won its way into favor, and has been recently confirmed by
Captain Conder’s identification of the site of Kadesh, where the battle
depicted on the wall at Abusimbel was fought. From other inscriptions
we learn that for five hundred years the Kheta resisted with varying
success the attacks of the terrible conquerors of the eighteenth and
nineteenth dynasties, their power remaining to the last substantially
unshaken. The story is now taken up by the Assyrian records, which
prove that from the time of Sargon of Accad—who must be assigned to the
nineteenth century B.C., if not to a much earlier period—down
to the reigns of Tiglath Pileser I. (B.C., 1130), and for four hundred
years afterwards, till the reigns of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmanezer
II., the Khatti of Hamath and Carchemish were the most formidable
opponents of the rising power of Assyria, their resistance being only
brought to a close by the defeat of their King Pisiris, and the capture
of Carchemish, their capital, in 717 B.C., by Sargon II., the king who
also destroyed the monarchy of Israel by the capture of Samaria.
It seemed strange that no monuments should have been discovered
belonging to a people powerful enough to withstand for twelve
centuries the assaults of Egypt and Assyria. At last, in 1872,
certain inscriptions from Hamath on the Orontes, in a hieroglyphic
picture-writing of a hitherto unknown character, were published in
Burton and Drake’s “Unexplored Syria.” Dr. Wright, in 1874, published
an article in “The British and Foreign Evangelical Review,” suggesting
that these monuments were in reality records of the Hittite race. This
conjecture, though much ridiculed at the time, has gradually fought
its way to universal acceptance, mainly owing to the skilful advocacy
of Professor Sayce, who, in ignorance of Dr. Wright’s suggestion,
arrived independently at the same conclusion, and shortly afterwards
identified a monument at Karabel, near Ephesus, described by Herodotus
as a figure of Sesostris, as the effigy of a Hittite king. Subsequent
discoveries of Hittite monuments in other parts of Asia Minor, taken in
conjunction with the Biblical notices, and the Egyptian and Assyrian
records, prove that at some remote period a great Hittite empire must
have extended from Hebron to the Black Sea, and from the Euphrates to
the Ægean; while it is now generally admitted that, to some extent, the
art, the science, and the religion of prehistoric Greece must have been
derived ultimately from Babylon, having been transmitted, first to the
Hittite city of Carchemish, and thence to Lydia, through the Hittite
realm in Asia Minor. It is now believed by many scholars of repute
that the Ephesian Artemis must be identified with the great Hittite
goddess Atargatis, and ultimately with the Babylonian Istar; that the
Niobe of Homer, whose effigy may still be seen on Mount Sipylus, near
Smyrna, was an image of Atargatis, whose armed priestesses gave rise to
the Greek legend of the Amazons, a nation of female warriors; that the
Euboic silver standard was based upon the mina of Carchemish; and that
in all probability the characters found on Trojan whorls by Schliemann,
as well as certain anomalous letters in the Lycian alphabet, and even
the mysterious Cypriote syllabary itself were simply cursive forms
descended from the Hittite hieroglyphs used in the inscriptions on the
pseudo-Niobe and the pseudo-Sesostris in Lydia, and pictured on the
stones obtained by Dr. Wright from Hamath, and by Mr. George Smith from
Carchemish.
The arguments by which scholars have been led to these conclusions,
together with the existing materials on which future researches must be
based, have been collected by Dr. Wright in a handy volume, which we
have great pleasure in heartily commending to all students of Biblical
archæology as a substantial contribution to our knowledge.
When the Turks permit the mounds at Kadesh and Carchemish, which
conceal the ruined palaces and temples of the Hittite capitals,
to be systematically explored, and when the Hittite writing shall
be completely deciphered, we may anticipate a revelation of the
earliest history of the world not inferior, possibly, in interest
and importance, to those astonishing discoveries which have made
known to this generation the buried secrets of Babylon, Nineveh, and
Troy.—_British Quarterly Review._