58 THE REY. WILLIAM WRIGHT, D.D. 
success. That rough, impartial instrument has turned up 
inscribed bricks of Babylon, and laid bare important 
hieroglyphics in Egypt, to stop the mouths of those who 
prated of the “‘ interpolations ” and “ unhistorical”’ statements 
of the Bible. It is no longer necessary to deal with this 
subject in an a priori fashion, to urge the unlikelihood of the 
Israelites falsifying, out of pure wantonness, their holy writings, 
which they preserved with more than superstitious reverence, 
or to dwell on the superhuman act of genius implied in the 
invention, the creation, of the Bible story of the Hittites. 
Thanks to our trusty friend, the spade, we are now ina position 
to confront ingenious theories and bold assertions by hard 
concrete facts, and those ‘‘ who believe not Moses and the 
prophets must be confounded by bricks and stones.” 
Assyriologists, including Rawlinson, Hinks, Oppert, Bos- 
cawen, Pinches, Sayce, and others, have read for us the 
Assyrian inscriptions ; and these inscriptions reveal to us the 
Hittites as a warlike and aggressive people as early as the 
time of Abraham. They also inform us that the Israelites were 
carried into captivity in 721 B.c., and that’ the Hittites were 
completely crushed at Carchemish four years later (717 B.c.). 
Egyptologists, among whom we might mention Birch, 
Renouf, Goodwin, Maspero, Mariette, and Brugsch, have 
deciphered for us the Egptian hieroglyphics; and in their 
ancient records we find the kings of the Hittites rivals of the 
Pharaohs, in peace and war, from the twelfth to the twentieth 
dynasty. As soon as the key was found to the long silent 
records of Egypt and Assyria, the veil began to lift off dark 
continents of history, and the forgotten but mighty Hittite 
people began to emerge. They appeared chiefly as a martial 
people, in constant conflict with the great monarchies on their 
borders ; but in almost every respect they correspond to the 
Hittites of the Bible. The explorer and the decipherer have 
been pressing on in their discoveries with marvellous energy, 
and the increasing light from Egypt and Assyria reveal to us, 
in broad outline and in incidental detail, a series of facts 
regarding the Hittites, in striking harmony with the narra- 
tives of the Bible. 
In their existence in the south, and gradual withdrawal 
northward ; in their manner of warfare and use of chariots ; 
in their advance in civilisation and literary propensities; in 
the facts of their supplying wives to the Pharaohs of Egypt 
and the kings of Israel, and their reception of necessary 
supplies from the monarchs of both countries; in the use of 
the phrase “ kings of the Hittites,” common to the Hebrew 
Scriptures and the Assyrian inscriptions,—in these, and other 
