Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/33

 The History of the Hittites. 17 foreign wives daughters of the Hittites, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, and Sidonians (i Kings xi. i). He brought up horses and chariots out of Egypt for the kings of the Hittites and those of the city of Aram (i Kings v. 29). We read that the Syrians whilst besieging Samaria fled panic-stricken, because the Lord caused the noise of chariots and horses to be heard in their camp (2 Kings vii. 6). The inference to be deduced from this passage is that their might, Hke that of Egypt, lay in the number of their chariots, coinciding with what we know of them from Assyrian and Egyptian monuments, where they are represented fighting from cars. To Egyptian and Assyrian paintings and sculptures we are indebted for our main information concerning the Hittites ; whom Jewish writers only mention in ignorant wonder, as of shadows vaguely perceived in the blueish distance of an almost boundless horizon. The Kheta first appear in the history of Egypt under Manetho I. (eighteenth dynasty); from that date until Ramses HI. they constantly figure on the mural paintings along with the Khar and the Ruten. At the outset, they are scarcely distinguished from other Syrian tribes ; but a little later, they are described as a warlike, powerful race — sometimes indeed as the " vile enemy from Kadesh" — fiercely disputing the possession of Syria with the Egyptians. The name of this place was first brought into notice by the labours of Champollion. In the great battlefield pictures of Egypt, Kadesh is represented as a fortress situated south of Hamath on Orontes, surrounded on all sides by water, so as to form an island, two bridges and causeways connecting it with the mainland. A double wall encircled it, between which was a deep ditch or channel fed by the river. ^ passed over Jordan, they pitched in Aroer, on the right side of the city that lieth in the midst of the river of Gad, and towards Jazer : then they came to Gilead, and to the land of Tahtim-Hodshi," or Hodsi. Tahtim-Hodshi has not been identified, but the Abb€' Vigoureux is of opinion that the proper reading may be restored from some manuscripts of the Seventy, where we read : koX y)kBov eis FaXaaS koX cis yr/u Xctrrt/it XaSy^s : " And they came to Gilead and to the land of the Hittites of Kadesh." The Hebrew text has Hahitim, not Tahtim ; the slight difference between the than and the /^^ causes them to be frequently confused in the manuscripts {Les Hctccns de la Bible dans la Revue des Questions Historiques^ torn. xxxi. pp. 58-120). ^ This may be inferred from the picture in the temple of Ipsamboul, which por- trays the battle fought by Ramses (Roskllini, Monumenti Sforici, Thite CX. ; Lepsius, Denkmceler, Pt HI., Plate CLXIV.). There can be no doubt about the identification of this city, for its name, " Kadesh,'' is carved on the wall. This detail, VOL. II. c