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134 can be traced, if not to the Hittite language, at all events to the Hittite script.

What the language of the Hittites was we have yet to learn. But the proper names preserved on the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments show that it did not belong to the Semitic family of speech, and an analysis of the Hittite inscriptions further makes it evident that it made large use of suffixes. But we must be on our guard against supposing that the language was uniform throughout the district in which the Hittite population lived. Different tribes doubtless spoke different dialects, and some of these dialects probably differed widely from each other. But they all belonged to the same general type and class of language, and may therefore be collectively spoken of as the Hittite language, just as the various dialects of England are collectively termed English. Indeed, we find the same type of language extending far eastward of Kappadokia, if we may trust the proper names recorded in the Assyrian inscriptions. Names of a distinctively Hittite cast are met with as far as the frontiers of the ancient kingdom of Ararat, and it may be that the language of Ararat itself, the so-called Vannic, may belong to the same family of speech. As the cuneiform inscriptions in which this language is embodied have now been deciphered, we shall be able to determine the question as soon as the Hittite texts also render up their secrets.

In the south of Palestine the Hittites must have lost their old language and have adopted that of their Semitic neighbours at an early period. In Northern Syria the change was longer in coming about. The last king of Carchemish bears a non-Semitic name, but a Semitic god was worshipped at Aleppo, and Kadesh