Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/97

Rh on which the Hittite version of the treaty between the Hittite king of Kadesh and the Egyptian Pharaoh was written was a tablet of that metal. That such tablets were in frequent use, results from the fact that nearly all the Hittite inscriptions known to us are not incised, but cut in relief upon the stone. It is therefore obvious that the Hittites must have first inscribed their hieroglyphs upon metal, rather than upon wood or stone or clay; it is only in the case of metal that it is less laborious to hammer or cast in relief than to cut the metal with a graving tool, and nothing can prove more clearly how long accustomed the Hittite scribes must have been to doing so, than their imitation of this work in relief when they came to write upon stone. It is possible that most of the silver of which they made use came from the Bulgar Dagh. The Hittite inscription found near the old mines of these mountains by Mr. Davis, proves that they had once occupied the locality. It is even possible that their settlement for a time in Lydia was also connected with their passion for 'the bright metal.' At all events the Gumush Dagh, or 'Silver Mountains,' lie to the south of the Pass of Karabel, and traces of old workings can still be detected in them.

However this may be, the Hittite monuments of Asia Minor confirm in a striking way the evidence of the Egyptian inscriptions. They show us that the Hittites worked for silver in the mountains which looked down upon the Cilician plain, from whence the influence of their art and writing extended into the plain itself. They further show that the central point of Hittite power was a square on either side of the Taurus range, which included Carchemish and Komagênê in the south,