Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/35

Rh financial difficulties, and in increasing its literary and scientific efficiency. More especially did he render to it invaluable service during the period when he was president, from 1845 to 1854. In 1830 he was appointed geologist of, and in 1836 to the same office in connexion with the first district of the  of , On resigning the presidentship of Amherst College, he was induced to retain his professorship. In 1836 he received the degree of LL.D. from Harvard, and in 1846 that of D.D. from Middlebury College. Besides his constant labours in geology, zoology, and botany, Hitchcock took an active interest in agriculture, and in 1850 he was sent by the legislature to examine into the methods of the agricultural schools of Europe. In geology his most important achievement was the examination and exposition of the fossil footprints of the Connecticut valley. The collection which he accumulated in connexion with his investigations is contained in the Hitchcock Ichnological Museum of Amherst College, and a description of it was published in 1858 in his report to the legislature on the ichnology of New England. As a writer on geological science, Hitchcock was mainly 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, February 27, 1864.

1em  HITCHIN, a market-town of Hertfordshire, England, is situated on the small river Hiz, 34 from London, on the Great Northern Railway. It is for the most part neatly built of brick, and the streets are generally spacious. The principal buildings are the parish church in the later style of English architecture, with a fine porch, an Adoration of the Magi by Rubens, a small crypt said to have been used by Cromwell as a prison for the Royalists, and many inter esting monuments ; Hitchin Priory, the residence of the Radcliffe family; various chapels, schools, and banks; the infirmary, the workhouse, the town-hall, and the corn exchange. Malting and straw-plaiting are extensively carried on. There are also breweries and manufactories of agricultural implements. The of the local board district in 1871 was 7630, and of the parish 8850.

1em  HITTITES, a warlike and powerful nation, whose centre lay in the far north of Syria, between the Orontes and the Euphrates, but whose outposts about extended as far to the west as the AEgean sea. In the Egyptian inscriptions they are called the Khita or Kheta ; in the Assyrian, the Khatti ; in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Khittim. Some confusion has been caused in the treatment of the history of the Hittites by the uncritical use of the Old Testament. It is true that the Khittim or Hittites are repeatedly mentioned among the tribes which in habited Canaan before the Israelites (Gen. xv. 20 ; Ex. iii. 8, 17, xiii. 5, xxiii. 23, 28, xxxiii. 2, xxxiv. 11 ; Num. xiii. 29 ; Dent. vii. 1, xx. 17 ; Josh. iii. 10, ix. 1, xi. 3, xii. 8, xxiv. 11; Judg. iii. 5 ; 1 Kings ix. 20 ; 2 Chr. viii. 7; Ezra ix. 1; Neh. ix. 8), but the lists of these pre-Israelitish populations cannot be taken as strictly historical documents. Not to dwell on the cases of the Perizzitcs (properly speak ing, an appellative and not an ethnic name), and the Kenites and other Arab races, sometimes included, but evidently by an anachronism (see ), it is obvious that narratives written, or (as all will agree) edited, so long after the events referred to cannot be taken as of equal authority with Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions. How meagre the tradition respecting the Ilittites was in the time of the great Elohistic narrator is shown by the picture of Hittite life in Gen. xxiii. As Ewald remarks, &quot; Abraham s allies in war are Amorites ; but when he desires to obtain a possession peaceably he turns to the Hittites.&quot; Yet the undoubtedly authentic inscriptions of Egypt and Assyria reveal the Hittites in far different guise, as pre-eminently a warlike, conquering race. Not less unfavourable to the accuracy of the Old Testament references to the Hittites is the evidence deducible from proper names. As we shall see presently, the Hittite names preserved in Egyptian and Assyrian records are on the whole strikingly un-Semitic. The three Hittite names given in the Old Testament (Ephron, Gen. xxiii. 8, 10; Ahimelech, 1 Sam. xxvi. 6; Uriah, 2 Sam. xi. 3, xxiii. 39) are, however, of undeniably Semitic origin. Is it unnatural to infer that these three names are no less fictitious than the Semitic names ascribed in the Old Testament to the non-Semitic Philistines 1 It is not surprising that at least two eminent Egyptologists (Chabas, Ebers) should absolutely deny the identity of the Khita and the Khittim. This, however, seerns to be going too far. The Old Testament writers clearly meant by the latter name the same people as the Egyptian inscriptions by the former, but in their time the memory of the Khita had grown so dim that they could include it among other shadowy names of conquered Canaanitish peoples. No impartial scholar, indeed, will deny that a branch of the Khita may once have existed in Palestine. Unfortunately there is no historical evidence that it did so. In fact, the most trustworthy notices in the Old Testament itself point to the Hittites as a nation beyond the borders of the land of Israel. In 2 Kings vii. 6 we find &quot;the kings of the Hittites&quot; mentioned side by side with &quot;the kings of the Egyptians;&quot; in 1 Kings x. 29 the same phrase occurs parallel with &quot; the kings of Aram &quot;; and in 2 Sam. xxiv. 6 we should probably read, &quot; and they came I to Gilead, and to the land of the Hittites unto Kaclesh.&quot; The position of Heth in the table of nations (Gen. x. 15) may also be regarded as a vestige of an accurate geographical tradition. If then we continue to employ the familiar na me Hittites instead of the Egyptian Khita and the Assyrian Khatti, let it be understood that by this term we do not indicate one of the Canaanitish peoples conquered by the Israelites, but an extra-Palestinian race capable of holding its own even against Egypt and Assyria. Its centre lay, as we have seen already, and as is admitted on all hands, between the Euphrates and the Orontes. This was in fact the region which one fears to say for how many centuries was designated in the Assyrian inscriptions mat Khatti or Khatti-land. Under the name of Khatti we already meet with the Hittites in the astronomical work in seventy tablets drawn up by Sargina, king of Agane, in the It appears from this venerable document that hostilities were constantly arising between Babylonia on the one hand and the Hittite country on the other (Sayce s translation of the tablets, Transactions of Soc. of 