1010 EEPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



THE HITTITES. 



The Hittites (Hebrew Hittim) are derived in the Bible from Heth, son 

 of Canaan, the son of Ham.' They are depicted as an important tribe 

 settled in the region of Hebron on the hill,- and are often mentioned as 

 one of the seven principal Canaanitish tribes, and sometimes as com- 

 prising the whole Canaanitish population.^ 



From Abraham to Solomon the Hittites came more or less in contact 

 with Israel. I^umbers of them remained with the Jews even as late as 

 the time of Ezra and Kehemiah.^ Hittite kings are mentioned as set- 

 tled north of Palestine,^ and some scholars distinguish the latter as 

 Syrian Hittites from the Canaanite tribe. Eecently the Hittites have 

 been identified with the Gheta of the Egyptian and Chatti of the 

 Assyrian monuments. 



From the notices on these monuments it is gathered that this people 

 at an early period constituted a mighty power, dominating, for a time, 

 the territory from the Euphrates to the ^Egean, and standing forth as 

 rivals of Egypt and Assyria. As early as the seventeenth century 

 B. C, a struggle began for supremacy between Egypt and the Hittites, 

 which lasted for five hundred years, when Ramses II defeated the 

 Hittites at Kadesh, on the Orontes. He did not conquer them, how- 

 ever, but was compelled to make an alliance. From the twelfth to tlie 

 eighth century B. C, the Hittites were in conflict with Assyria, until 

 the Assyrian King, Sargon, put an end to the Hittite dominion in 717 

 B. C, when the inhabitants of Carchemish, the Hittite capital in Syria 

 (the modern Jerablus on the Euphrates), were deported to Assyria, and 

 the city was repeopled with Assyrian colonists. 



Of late there have been added to the Biblical, Egyptian, and Assj'^- 

 rian sources numerous monuments which were discovered throughout 

 Asia Minor and Northern Syria, aud which are by some scholars 

 attributed to the Hittites. The beginning was made by two Americans, 

 Mr. J. Augustus Johnson, of the United States consular service, aud 

 Eev. S. Jessup, who in 1870 found Hittite inscriptions at Hama, in 

 Syria. Later discoveries were made, especially by Humann and Pucli- 

 stein, under the auspices of the German Government (1872), and by 

 Eamsay and Hogarth (1890). The monuments, mostly of black basalt, 

 contain representations in bas-relief of religious objects, winged figures, 

 deities standing on various animals, sphinxes, gryphons, the winged 

 disk, as symbol of the deitj^, the two headed eagle (which became the 

 standard of the Seljukiau Turks, and afterwards of Austria and Kussia, 

 etc.), and inscriptions in hieroglyphic characters, written in alternat- 

 ing lines from right to left and left to right {houstrophedon). The art 

 exhibited on these monuments is of a primitive, rude character, and 

 recalls the early art of Babylonia, Greece, and Phenicia.* The inscrip- 



' Genesis x, 15. -"Ezra ix, 1. 



-Idem, xxiii, 2. ^I Kings x, 29; II Kings vii, 6. 



^Jowbua, i, etc. 



