Page:The Hittites - the Story of a Forgotten Empire.djvu/98

96 the district eastwards of the Halys on the north, and the country of which Malatiyeh was the capital in the east. The Hittite tribes, in fact, were mountaineers from the plateau of Kappadokia who had spread themselves out in all directions. A time came when, under the leadership of powerful princes, they marched along the two high-roads of Asia Minor and established their supremacy over the coast-tribes of the far west. The age to which this military empire belongs is indicated by the Egyptian character of the so-called image of Niobe on the cliff of Sipylos, as well as by the sphinxes which guarded the entrance to the palace of Eyuk. It goes back to the days when the rulers of Kadesh could summon to their aid the vassal-chieftains of the Ægean coast. The monuments the Hittites have left behind them in Asia Minor thus bear the same testimony as the records of Egypt. The people to whom Uriah, and it may be Bath-sheba, belonged, not only had contended on equal terms with one of the greatest of Egyptian kings; they had carried their arms through the whole length of Asia Minor, they had set up satraps in the cities of Lydia, and had brought the civilisation of the East to the barbarous tribes of the distant West.