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NA TURE 



{March 29, 1888 



been regarded as the most honourable and glorious- 

 This, at any rate, would seem likely, from the care mani- 

 fested in transmitting to posterity a record of these 

 achievements. The Egyptian laureate, Pentaur, no doubt 

 with a measure of poetical licence suited to his office, 

 described how the Hittite commander, Khita-sar, sum- 

 moned to the war all the peoples from the uttermost ends 

 of the seas, countless in number, covering mountains and 

 valleys like grasshoppers ; and among this multitude were 

 the people of Carchemish. In order that the " sinews of 

 war" might not be deficient, Khita-sar "had not left 

 silver nor gold with his people ; he had taken away all 

 their goods and possessions to give to the people who 

 accompanied him." The details of the conflict show a 

 high degree of military organization on the part of the 

 Hittites ; and this is in accordance with the position that 

 they had long attained a considerable measure of civiliza- 

 tion. According to the Egyptian records, however, they 

 were defeated, and a great part of their army slain, some 

 perishing in the waters of the Orontes, on the banks of 

 which river the battle was fought. It seems sufficiently 

 clear, however, that the Hittites, and "the miserable king 

 of the hostile Khita," as Pentaur calls him, had proved 

 themselves no contemptible foes, and that, defeated 

 though they may have been, their power was very far 

 from being entirely broken. This may be gathered from 

 the treaty of offensive and defensive alliance which was 

 subsequently ratified between Rameses and the Khita. 

 There was to be continual peace and brotherhood ; no 

 hostility was ever to arise. Rameses, moreover, eventually 

 married the daughter of the Hittite chief, and made her 

 his queen. 



The great sculpture and painting on the walls of the 

 temple at Abu-Simbel, far up the Nile, which represents 

 the war of Rameses with the Khita, and the battle of 

 Kadesh, gives in a point of detail an interesting piece of 

 evidence tending towards the conclusion that the Khita 

 are to be identified with those who sculptured the monu- 

 ments now known as Hittite. There are depicted on two 

 at least of the monuments in the British Museum, which 

 were obtained from excavations at Jerablus or Carchemish, 

 heads of kings or other persons in authority bearing the 

 appendage known as the " pig-tail." We are accustomed 



Fig. A. — i. "Pig-tail" from Jerablus monument in the British Museum. 

 2. Type of head at Eyuk. 3. Head of Khita warrior at Abu-Simbel (after 

 Rosellini). 



to associate the " pig-tail " especially with the Chinese, 

 though they derived this mode of head-dress from the 

 Manchu Tartars at a comparatively recent period. And, 

 primd facie, one is not unnaturally inclined to regard the 

 pig-tail on the Jerablus monuments as having a connec- 

 tion more or less identical — that is to say, a connection 

 with the Manchu Tartars or with some cognate people. 

 The sculptors of the Jerablus monuments seem to have 

 done their best to show that the pig-tail is a veritable 

 lock of hair, and not a mere appendage of the tall conical 

 cap. On what has been called the doorway inscription in 

 the British Museum, to show that hair is intended, the 

 " pig-tail " is ribbed or marked across ; and there is a 

 similar transverse marking of the hair of kings and other 

 persons on the Assyrian monuments. Turning to the 

 great painting at Abu-Simbel, already alluded to, we find 

 that a certain proportion of the Khita warriors are re- 

 presented as wearing the pig-tail, though this is not the 

 case even with all the kings and princes. A prince, for 

 example, who has fallen into the water of the Orontes, is 



destitute of this ornament. And even the great Khita- 

 sar, the commander of the Khita, though he had the 

 conical cap, does not seem to have worn the pig-tail. 



The indications ai-e clear that the pig-tailed heads on 

 the Jerablus monuments represent, in accordance with 

 what has been already said, kings or persons of superior 

 dignity. Other heads with ordinary long hair may be taken 

 to be those of persons of inferior rank — subjects or servants. 

 And, in the Abu-Simbel painting, the pig-tailed riders 

 in the chariots are evidently the superiors of the persons 

 beside them wearing long hair. Generally the soldiers 

 with long hair act as shield-bearers or charioteers, while 

 it is the chief warrior who wears the pig-tail. 



On two, also, of the bas-reliefs at Eyuk, a place in 

 Asia Minor not far fiom the River Halys, the wearing of 

 the pig-tail is clearly represented, though the superiority 

 or predominance of the wearers is not equally apparent. 

 On one bas-relief there are six figures, apparently in 

 marching order, all of which probably bore originally the 

 pig-tail, though the monument is now much decayed. It 

 is not, however, very difficult to make out a remarkable 

 MongoHan type of countenance. This is especially to be 

 seen in the figure of a man ascending steps or a ladder, 

 as represented by Perrot and Guillaume ("Exploration 

 Archeologique de la Galatie," plate 62). 



Having regard, however, to the monuments from 

 Jerablus in the Museum, and to the Egyptian painting at 

 Abu-Simbel, the inference seems pretty clear that the 

 wearers of the pig-tail had gained the predominance in 

 some of the Hittite cities, and that they were of a stock 

 different from that of the general population in those 

 particular cities. With the evidence which we at present 

 have, it would be hazardous to say that this was the case 

 in all the Hittite cities. Indeed some facts already 

 alluded to render such a general conclusion extremely 

 improbable. 



The general Hittite population was most likely in great 

 part, or principally, Semitic.^ It is in accordance with 

 this view that their great deity was Set or Sutech — a 

 name repeated ten times, in connection with different 

 cities, in the catalogue of the gods of the land of Khita, 

 in the treaty with Rameses — and the treaty makes men- 

 tion also of Astartha, or Ashtoreth, as " of the land of 

 Khita " ; and here, again, we have unquestionably a 

 Semitic deity. Moreover, of the worship of Ashtoreth 

 there is other important evidence on the Hittite monu- 

 ments. There are, besides, names of Hittite cities which 

 are unmistakably Semitic ; as Carchemish, which can 

 scarcely be explained otherwise than as meaning " the 

 fortress of Chemosh." Then there is Pitru, or Pethor, as 

 well as Hamath and Kadesh. Looking at these names 

 alone, there would be a strong a priori probability that 

 the speech of the inhabitants of these cities was Semitic. 

 No doubt there are many names of Hittite persons and 

 places, mentioned in the Egyptian and Assyrian records, 

 with respect to which we must adopt the opinion of 

 Brugsch that they are at least not purely Semitic- The 

 designation of the leader of the Khita or Hittites, Khita- 

 sar, has, it is true, the word sar, which is Semitic for 

 "prince," but the Semitic order is reversed. In a purely 

 Semitic formation we should not expect to find " Khita- 

 prince," or " of-the-Khita prince " ; the order would pro- 

 bably be the same as ours, " Prince of the Khita." The 

 presence of those wearers of the pig-tail suggests an ex- 

 planation of the order of the words in Khita-sar, and of 



' M. Perrot observes; — "Or les Cappadociens, cju'Herodote appelle 

 Leuco-Syriens ou Syriens blancs, etaient de race semitique ; c'est un fait 

 atteste tout a la fois par les historiens et par le temoignage des medailles, 

 qui nous montrent encore un idiome semitique parle au-dela de I'Halys, de 

 Tarse a Sinope, dans la cours raeme du quatrieme siecle avant notre ere " 

 (Perrot et Guillaume, o/>. cit , vol. i. p. 335). Mr. Pinches, of the British 

 Museum, tells me that several Cappadocian tablets in the cuneiform character 

 have been discovered. Six of these are in the Museum, and one at least is 

 in part Semitic. The others, together with one in the Bibliotheque Nationale, 

 at Paris, have, with one exception, hitherto resisted the attempts at decipher- 

 ment which have been made. 



■^ " History of Egypt," English translation, vol. ii. p. 5. 



