Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/123

Rh of the dress such as we see represented on the Hittite monument of Ibreez.

For us of the modern world, therefore, the resurrection of the Hittite people from their long sleep of oblivion possesses a double interest. They appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. Our culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were derived from the Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor. The Hittite warriors who still guard the Pass of Karabel, on the very threshold of Asia, are symbols of the position occupied by the race in the education of mankind. The Hittites carried the time-worn civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the grey dawn of European history. But they never passed the boundary themselves; with the conquest of Lydia their mission was accomplished, the work that had been appointed them was fulfilled.