Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/274

 256 A History of Art in Sardinia and Jud^a. the derivation of which scholars are not agreed.^ For, if a certain number cannot be reduced by means of a Semitic vocabulary, others are indubitably possessed of elements common to the family of speech used by the Semites ; on the other hand, it is urged that although such names may be compounded with Assyrian or Hebrew words, they do not follow the rules of the Semitic grammar. Names, however, as Khiti-sar, Kilip-sar, etc., are not made up of organic compounds, as in Greek and Latin, but are formed by simple agglutination, wherein the affirmative verb is understood. Thus, we should not read Khitisar, *' the king of the Kheta," but '' Khiti (is) king." It should be noted, on the one hand, that among the names of individuals and localities, preserved in the inscriptions of Nineveh and Thebes, few only can be traced to Semitic roots ; and on the other, that in the rare instances where passing allusion is made to Hittites in the Old Testament, their names have a strong family likeness to Hebrew appellatives. Nor is this all ; the gods specified in the treaty between Ramses H. and Khitisar, such as Sutekh, and Ashtoreth of the land of the Kheta, belong to the pantheon of the Western Semites. Then, too, the author of Genesis (x. 15) calls Heth, a son of Canaan, the younger offspring of Sidon ; and we have seen that Kadesh, their great fortress on Orontes, is a Semitic name, signifying '' holy."^ Hence it may be apprehended that the study of Hittite onomatology is beset with difficulties and contradictory evidence, from which final conclusions cannot be drawn at the present hour. The best documents to be examined are undoubtedly the sculptures, wherein their own image is portrayed. Unfortunately they have been too often made to bear false witness on the one hand, and on the other nothing proves that the Hittite sculptor was sufficiently master of his craft to reproduce with fidelity the ^ A complete list of Hittite proper names will be found in The Monuments of the Hittites (Sayce) ; where it is formally stated that " Hittite names preserved in the Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions, prove that the Hittites did not speak a Semitic language ; " whilst Brugsch (Egypt under the Pharaohs) was content to remark that " Hittite names, found in Egyptian inscriptions, do not bear a Semitic, or at any rate, a pure Semitic stamp." ^ On the coins of the Asmonaean age, Jerusalem is called codsha haccadesh, " holy ; " a name which it preserved as Hierosolyma, Jerusalem. Again, in the Old Testament, Mount Zion is often designated harshodsha, harcodshi, " the holy hill," " the hill of holiness."