Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/36

26 HITTITES Biblical Archeology, iii. 245). Among the Assyrian kings it is Tiglath Pileser I. who makes the first mention of the Khatti ; in his time they are already the lords paramount of the region between the Euphrates and Lebanon. Sargon, the most enterprising of the Assyrian monarchs, was im patient of such an obstacle to his victorious arms. By the conquest of Carchemish and Kummuch, Khatti-land lost its two great bulwarks on the east, and was open henceforth to the Assyrian hosts. The last reference to the Khatti is in the time of Esar-haddon, who speaks of &quot; twenty-two kings of the land of Khatti, which is by the sea and in the midst of the sea.&quot; But it has been shown by Schrader that from the time of Sennacherib onwards the name Khatti was transferred to the western maritime lauds in general, viz., Canaan and Philistia, including Edom, Moab, and Ammon (Kcilinschriftemmd Geschichtsforschung, pp. 234-5). Turning now to the hieroglyphic monuments, we find the Khita playing a still more important part in the history of Egypt, first of all, under Thothmes III. One of his generals has left us an account of his personal experiences in the campaign against the Khita (Brugsch, History of Egypt, i. 354), and in the Statistical Tablet of Karnak we have a record of the tribute brought from &quot;the great land of the [Khita] &quot; (ibid., p. 334, comp. Records of the Past, ii. 25). At this period, however, the Khita were bub one among a number of peoples ; in the wars of Seti I. and (especially) Ramses II., they occupy the first rank among the adversaries of Egypt. The account of the battle of Karlesh (the island city on the Orontes), given by the Theban poet Pentaur, presents a vivid picture of the mili tary prowess of this rising power (comp. Brugsch s trans lation with that of Lushington. in Records of the Past, ii. 65-78). llamses was indeed victorious, but he owed his life and consequently his victory to his personal bravery, and, as Pentaur represents it, to his childlike faith in his god. On an outer wall of the temple of Karnak the treaty of peace between Egypt and Khita-land may still be read (comp. Brugsch s translation with that of Goodwin in Records of the Past, iv. 25-32), and the same fruitful source of primitive history has furnished inscriptions of Ramses, with the names of conquered towns of the Khita, corre sponding with those already recorded by Thothmes III. Thus the long feud between Egypt and Khita was closed, and the happy result was celebrated by the marriage of the Pharaoh to a daughter of the king of his chivalrous antagonists. The name of the Khita almost disappears henceforth from Egyptian history. M. Lenormant indeed (Ancient History of the East, i. 2G8) mentions them as assailing llamses III., but Dr Birch (Egypt, p. 139) and Brugsch Bey more accurately describe the war referred to as one between Ramses and the conquerors of the Khita, viz., the confederated &quot; Carian-Colchian nations &quot; (see Brugsch Bey, History of Egypt, ii. 147). &quot;We have spoken of the Hittites as we know them from the monuments, as a people of Syria. But the extra- monumental history of the Hittites, which is only beginning to be divined from scattered indications, shows that their power was not limited to the area between the Euphrates and the Orontes. Not only had they their confederates or vassals in their near or more distant neighbourhood, but they also (as it seems) despatched conquering hosts into the far-off regions of Asia Minor. Even the Egyptian records have been thought to indicate this fact. At that great battle of Kadesh on the Orontes to which we have already referred, there were present, besides the princes of Khita, the kings of Arathu, Khilibu, Naharain, Qazanadaria, Malunna, Pidasa, Leka, the Dardani or Dandani, the Masu, Kerkcsh or Keshkesh, Kairkamasha (so Lushington ; Brugsch, somewhat arbitrarily perhaps, Quirqimosh), Aherith, Anangas, Mushanath, a mighty host &quot;gathered&quot; (as the poet Pentaur tells us) &quot;from the margin of the sea to the land of Khita.&quot; The late M. de Rouge&quot;, a coryphreus in Egyptology, actually supposed that this list included the Dardani of Asia Minor, the. Mysians, Ilion, and perhaps the Lycians ; Brugsch Bey, however, who is now a greater authority, is satisfied to identify the Dardani with those of Kurdistan (comp. Herod., i. 189), the Leka with the Ligyes (comp. Herod., vii. 7 2), and the Masu with the people of Mount Masius. But putting M. de Rouge s opinion aside, it seems to be evident from other sources that the influence of the Khita extended even into Asia Minor. Prof. E. Curtius has already pointed out &quot; that one of the paths by which the art and civilization of Babylonia and Assyria made its way to Greece was along the great high road which runs across Asia Minor,&quot; and Professor Tiele has been struck by the presence in the religions of Asia Minor of an un explained element which with all reserve he conjectures may be Hittite. Professor Sayce has added an important contribution to the question by showing that the Hittite capital Carchemish (rightly identified by Mr George Smith with the modern Jerabliis) was the source from which that modified type of Assyrian art was derived, which specially characterizes the early monuments of Asia M inor. &quot; The sculpture accompanied by inscriptions in Hittite (or Hum- athite) characters which Mr Davis discovered at Ibreez in Lycaonia (Transactions of Soc. of Bibl. Archaeology, iv. 2) proves that the Hittites had penetrated through the eastern barrier of Asia Minor formed by the Taurus range ; and tbe two or three characters that still remain in the rock-cut inscription engraved in his Life in Asiatic Turkey (p. 222), and found near Bulgar Maden, make it clear that Hittite power had once extended at least as far as the central plateau of Asia Minor.&quot; Evidence has now been supplied of the extension of Hittite power to the very shores of the ^Egean in the occurrence of Hittite hieroglyphics (the same which occur at Jerablus or Carchemish) on the pseudo- Sesostris (a fellow to which has, however, been pointed out) at Ninfi, the ancient Nymphseum, on the road from Smyrna to Sardes (Letter of Professor Sayce, in Academy, Aug. 16, 1879). In a subsequent letter, Professor Sayce remarks that there were two roads open to the Hittites, and both, to judge by the scattered monuments already found, appear to have been travelled by their armies. The one was that taken by Crousus on his march against Cyrus ; its course was through Pessinus, Ancyra, and Pterium. The other was that traversed by Xenophon and the Ten Thousand ; this road passed through the Cilician Gates by Iconium. Both roads met in Sardes. &quot;Was this enterprising race a member of the Semitic family ? Let us consider (1.) The evidence supplied by the pictorial representations on the ancient monuments. &quot; If it is allowable to form a judgment on the origin of this cultivated and powerful people from its outward bearing and appearance, it seems to us, under the guidance of the monuments, to be at least very doubtful whether we should reckon this chivalrous race among the Canaanites&quot; (who, see art. CANAANITES, were prob ably in the main Semitic). &quot;Beardless, armed in a diil erent manner, fighting three men on each chariot of war [the Egyptian chariots only carry two], arranged in their order of battle according to a well con sidered plan previously laid down, the Khita present a striking contrast to their Canaanite allies. &quot; Such is the verdict of Brugsch and of all who have seen the wonderful wall-sculptures in the great temple of Abusimbcl. No modern artist is more careful to repre sent distinctive racial features than this primitive sculptor. Even at such a distance from this national centre as Ninli (see above), Professor Sayce maintains that no one who has once seen a Hittite figure can mistake the resemblance. The peaked tiara and the turned-up shoes are the peculiar marks of the Hittite, and of the Hittite alone. (2.) The evidence from language. Our knowledge of the Hittite language is confined to the proper names mentioned in the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions those which occur in the Hebrew Bible being, as we have seen, of insufficient authority. Opinions differ as to the character of the names derived from hieroglyphic sources. M. de Rouge was strongly convinced of their Semitic origin, but his ex-