ON THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES. 5a 
stranger and a wandering Sheikh, purchased a grave for his 
wife from the Hittites, who were then in possession and power 
at Hebron. The completion of the bargain involved the 
earliest money transaction on record, and the earliest recog- 
nised form of sale and conveyancing (Genesis xxii. 4). The 
magnanimous sentiments and polished courtesy, under cover 
of which the Hittites secured a high price for a useless cave in 
a useless field, as wellas the use of “money current with the 
merchant,” mark them as a mercantile community in an 
advanced state of civilisation. 
The family of the patriarch and the Hittites continued to 
live side by side. he currents of their lives flowed in 
parallel channels, and Hsau, the grandson of Abraham, chose 
for himself two Hittite wives, who “ were a grief of mind unto 
Isaac and Rebekah” (Genesis xxvi. 35). Later the Hittites 
opposed Joshua as he entered the promised land, and the 
serried lines of Hittite chariots were scattered in confusion 
by the Israelites in the decisive battle of Laks Mzrom. Later 
still, Hittite captains marshalled and led the hosts of David 
and Solomon, and Hittite women were prominent in the 
hareems of the same renowned monarchs. King David pushed 
his conquests and extended his border in the land of the 
Hittites, and Solomon supplied them with commodities from 
Hgypt in their time of need, and in the time of Jehoram, 
Benhadad, of Damascus, fled headlong from Samaria with his 
Syrian hosts for fear of “‘ the kings of the Hittites.” Besides 
these and similar incidental references to the Hittites in the 
Bible, their geographical position generally was indicated in 
the time of Joshua as being—“ From the wilderness and 
this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Huphrates, 
all the land of the Hittites ” (Joshua 1. 4). 
Had these references been found in any ancient secular 
book, even among the shreds and fragments of the shady 
Sanchoniathon, they would have been hailed as historical, and 
the empire of the Hittites would long since have occupied a 
recognised place among the great empires of antiquity. 
The references, however, were worked into the texture of the 
Bible, and they were therefore ignored ; not indeed altogether 
ignored, for while Biblical critics in Germany accounted for 
the most important of them on the theory of “interpolation,” 
English Biblical Critics went further still, and pronounced 
them ‘‘ unhistorical.” ''o the thoughtful it seemed strange 
that an ancient people should interpolate unhistorical state- 
ments into their sacred books without sufficient cause, but to 
the critics it seemed scientific simply to say they had done so. 
On this question the common spade has achieved signal 
