_Discovery of traces of an ancient Hittite Empire.—Scripture
references to the Hittites.—Professor Sayce’s discovery.—The
inscriptions at Hamath.—The Hittite race.—Hittite art._
Five years ago there was no one who suspected that a great empire had once
existed in Western Asia and contended on equal terms with both Egypt and
Assyria, the founders of which were the little-noticed Hittites of the Old
Testament. Still less did any one dream that these same Hittites had once
carried their arms, their art, and their religion to the shores of the
Æegean, and that the early civilisation of Greece and Europe was as much
indebted to them as it was to the Phœnicians.
The discovery was made in 1879. Recent exploration and excavation had
shown that the primitive art and culture of Greece, as revealed, for
example, by Dr. Schliemann’s excavations at Mykenæ, were influenced by a
peculiar art and culture emanating from Asia Minor. Here, too, certain
strange monuments had been discovered, which form a continuous chain from
Lydia in the west to Kappadokia and Lykaonia in the east. The best known
of these are certain rock sculptures found at Boghaz Keui and Eyuk, on the
eastern side of the Halys, and two figures in relief in the Pass of
Karabel, near Sardes, which the old Greek historian, Herodotus, had long
ago supposed to be memorials of the Egyptian conqueror Sesostris, or
Ramses II.
Meanwhile other discoveries were being made in lands more immediately
connected with the Bible. Scholars had learned from the Egyptian
inscriptions that before the days of the Exodus the Egyptian monarchs had
been engaged in fierce struggles with the powerful nation of the Hittites,
whose two chief seats were at Kadesh on the Orontes and Carchemish on the
Euphrates, and who were able to summon to their aid subject-allies not
only from Palestine, but also far away from Lydia and the Troad, on the
western coast of Asia Minor. Ramses II himself, the Pharaoh of the
oppression, had been glad to make peace with his antagonists; and the
treaty, which provided, among other things, for the amnesty of political
offenders who had found a shelter during the war among one or other of the
two combatants, was cemented by the marriage of the Egyptian king with the
daughter of his rival. A century or two afterwards Tiglath-Pileser I of
Assyria found his passage across the Euphrates barred by the Hittites of
Carchemish and their Kolkhian mercenaries. From this time forward the
Hittites proved dangerous enemies to the Assyrian kings in their attempts
to extend the empire towards the west, until at last in B.C. 717 Sargon
succeeded in capturing their rich capital, Carchemish, and in making it
the seat of an Assyrian satrap. Henceforth the Hittites disappear from
history.
But they had already left their mark on the pages of the Old Testament.
The Canaanite who had betrayed his fellow-citizens at Beth-el to the
Israelites dared not entrust himself to his countrymen, but went away
“into the land of the Hittites” (Judges i. 26). Solomon imported horses
from Egypt, which he sold to the Syrians and the Hittites (1 Kings x. 28,
29), and when God had sent a panic upon the camp of the Syrians before
Jerusalem, they had imagined that “the king of Israel had hired against
them the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians” (2 Kings
vii. 6). Kadesh itself, the southern Hittite capital, is mentioned in a
passage where the Hebrew text is unfortunately corrupt (2 Sam. xxiv. 6).
Here the Septuagint shows us that the officers sent by David to number the
people, in skirting the northern frontier of his kingdom, came as far as
“Gilead and the land of the Hittites of Kadesh.” In the extreme south of
Palestine an offshoot of the race had been settled from an early period.
These are the Hittites of whom we hear in Genesis in connection with the
patriarchs. Hebron was one of their cities, and Hebron, we are told (Numb.
xiii. 22), “was built seven years before Zoan,” or Tanis, the capital of
the Hyksos conquerors of Egypt. This suggests that the Hittites formed
part of the Hyksos forces, and that some of them, instead of entering
Egypt, remained behind in Southern Canaan. The suggestion is confirmed by
a statement of the Egyptian historian Manetho, who asserts that Jerusalem
was founded by the Hyksos after their expulsion from Egypt; and Jerusalem,
it will be remembered, had, according to Ezekiel (xvi. 3), a Hittite
mother.
Another Hittite city in the south of Judah was Kirjath-sepher, or
“Booktown,” also known as Debir, “the sanctuary,” a title which reminds us
of that of Kadesh, “the holy city.” We may infer from its name that
Kirjath-sepher contained a library stocked with Hittite books. That the
Hittites were a literary people, and possessed a system of writing of
their own, we learn from the Egyptian monuments. What this writing was has
been revealed by recent discoveries. Inscriptions in a peculiar kind of
hieroglyphics or picture-writing have been found at Hamath, Aleppo, and
Carchemish, in Kappadokia, Lykaonia, and Lydia. They are always found
associated with sculptures in a curious style of art, some of which from
Carchemish, the modern Jerablûs, are now in the British Museum. The style
of art is the same as that of the monuments of Asia Minor mentioned above.
It was the discovery of this fact by Professor Sayce, in 1879, which first
revealed the existence of the Hittite empire and its importance in the
history of civilisation. Certain hieroglyphic inscriptions, originally
noticed by the traveller Burckhardt at Hamah, the ancient Hamath, had been
made accessible to the scientific world by the Palestine Exploration Fund,
and the conjecture had been put forward that they represented the
long-lost writing of the Hittites. The conjecture was shortly afterwards
confirmed by the discovery of similar inscriptions at Jerablûs, which Mr.
Skene and Mr. George Smith had already identified with the site of
Carchemish. If, therefore, the early monuments of Asia Minor were really
of Hittite origin, as Professor Sayce supposed, it was clear that they
ought to be accompanied by Hittite hieroglyphics. And such turned out to
be the case. On visiting the sculptured figure in the Pass of Karabel, in
which Herodotus had seen an image of the great opponent of the Hittites,
he found that the characters engraved by the side of it were all of them
Hittite forms.
Hittite inscriptions have since been discovered attached to another
archaic monument of Lydia, the sitting figure of the great goddess of
Carchemish, carved out of the rocks of Mount Sipylos, which the Greeks
fancied was the Niobê of their mythology as far back as the age of Homer;
and similar inscriptions also exist at Boghaz Keui and Eyuk, in
Kappadokia, as well as near Ivris, in Lykaonia. Others have been
discovered in various parts of Kappadokia and in the Taurus range of
mountains, while a silver boss, which bears a precious inscription both in
Hittite hieroglyphics and in cuneiform characters, seems to belong to
Cilicia. In fact, there is now abundant evidence that the Hittites once
held dominion throughout the greater portion of Asia Minor, so that we
need no longer feel surprised at their being able to call Trojans and
Lydians to their aid in their wars against Egypt.
The existence of Hittite inscriptions at Hamath goes to show that Hamath
also was once under Hittite rule. This throws light on several facts
recorded in sacred history. David, after his conquest of the Syrians,
became the ally of the Hamathite king, and the alliance seems to have
lasted down to the time when Hamath was finally destroyed by the
Assyrians, since it is implied in the words of 2 Kings xiv. 28, as well as
in the alliance between Uzziah and Hamath, of which we are informed by the
Assyrian monuments. Hamath and Judah, in fact, each had a common enemy in
Syria, and were thus drawn together by a common interest. It was only when
Assyria threatened all the populations of the west alike, that Hamath and
Damascus were found fighting side by side at the battle of Karkar.
Otherwise they were natural foes.
The reason of this lay in the fact that the Hittites were intruders in the
Semitic territory of Syria. Their origin must be sought in the highlands
of Kappadokia, and from hence they descended into the regions of the
south, at that time occupied by Semitic Arameans. Hamath and Kadesh had
once been Aramean cities, and when they were again wrested from the
possession of the Hittites they did but return to their former owners. The
fall of Carchemish meant the final triumph of the Semites in their long
struggle with the Hittite stranger.
Even in their southern home the Hittites preserved the dress of the cold
mountainous country from which they had come. They are characterised by
boots with turned-up toes, such as are still worn by the mountaineers of
Asia Minor and Greece. They were thick-set and somewhat short of limb, and
the Egyptian artists painted them without beards, of a yellowish-white
colour, with dark black hair. In short, as M. Lenormant has pointed out,
they had all the physical characteristics of a Caucasian tribe. Their
descendants are still to be met with in the defiles of the Taurus and on
the plateau of Kappadokia, though they have utterly forgotten the language
or languages their forefathers spoke. What this language was is still
uncertain, though the Hittite proper names which occur on the monuments of
Egypt and Assyria show that it was neither Semitic nor Indo-European. With
the help of the bilingual inscription in cuneiform and Hittite, already
mentioned, Professor Sayce believes that he has determined the values of a
few characters and partially read three or four names, but until more
inscriptions are brought to light it is impossible to proceed further.
Only it is becoming every day more probable that the hieroglyphics in
which the inscriptions are written were the origin of a curious syllabary
once used throughout Asia Minor, which survived in Cyprus into historical
times.
Hittite art was originally borrowed from Babylonia, but modified by the
borrowers in a peculiar way. The borrowing took place before the rise of
Assyria. The astronomical and astrological tablets belonging to the great
work on the heavenly bodies which was compiled for the library of Sargon I
of Accad speak from time to time of the Khattâ or Hittites, a clear proof
that already at that remote epoch they had moved down from their northern
home into their new quarters in Syria. Besides the art of Babylonia they
also borrowed several of the Babylonian deities and religious legends. The
supreme goddess of Carchemish was the Babylonian Istar or Ashtoreth, and
the representation of her found on early Babylonian cylinders was carried
by the Hittites to the western coasts of Asia Minor, and from thence made
its way across the Ægean Sea to Greece. Even the Amazons of Greek
mythology were really nothing more than the priestesses of this Hittite
divinity, who wore arms in honour of the goddess. The cities which
according to the Greeks were founded by the Amazons were all of Hittite
origin.
We may expect to discover hereafter that the influence exercised by the
Hittites upon their Syrian neighbours was almost as profound as that
exercised by them upon their neighbours in Asia Minor, and through these
upon the fathers of the Greeks. For the present, however, we must be
content with the startling results that have already been obtained in this
new field of research. A people that once played an important part in the
history of the civilised world has been again revealed to us after
centuries of oblivion, and a forgotten empire has been again brought to
light. The first chapter has been opened of a new history, which can only
be completed when more Hittite inscriptions have been discovered, and the
story they contain has been deciphered. All that is now needed are
explorers and excavators, who shall do for the buried cities of the
Hittites what Botta and Layard have done for Nineveh or Schliemann for
Mykenæ and Troy.