62 THE REV. WILLIAM WRIGHT, D.D. 
than the absence of a written language would sufficiently 
account for such an omission on their part. 
We know, however, that the Hittites had a written language, 
and that they were a literary people. The offensive and ' 
defensive alliance between the Hittites and Egyptians which 
Kheta-Sira took with him to Hgypt was written in the 
language of the Hittites on a silver tablet. The version of 
the treaty, inscribed on the temples of Egypt, is a mere 
translation from the Hittite original. So fully do the 
EHeyptian inscriptions recognise the literary attainments of 
the Hittites, that they contain a contemptuous reference to 
their writing propensities. The facts being such, it seemed 
to me only reasonable to look out for Hittite remains in the 
‘land of the Hittites.” 
With this object in view, I started from Damascus, on the 
10th of November, 1872, to secure the wonderful inscriptions 
which Burckhardt had seen in Hamah sixty years before. 
Our adventures in saving the inscriptions, and making casts 
of them, are fully recorded elsewhere, and I need only add 
that before leaving Hamah I wrote a long account of the 
inscriptions, which I forwarded from Damascus to the 
Palestine Exploration Fund. 
The first part of my paper, consisting of simple description, 
appeared in the quarterly journal of the P. H. F. for April, 
1873. ‘The second half of my paper, under the heading— 
“Tne Haman Inscriptions: Hirrrre Remarys,”’ 
after lying for a time at the office of the Atheneum unappre- 
ciated, was finally printed by my friend, Dr. Oswald Dykes, in 
the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, of January, 1874. 
I claim no credit beyond the exercise of a little common 
sense for suggesting that the Hamah inscriptions were Hittite 
remains. ‘lhe Cuneiform inscriptions were called Assyrian 
before Grotfend made the happy guess that led to their de- 
cipherment. ‘The hieroglyphics were called Hgyptian long 
before Champollion, or Thomas Young, or Dr. Birch began to 
unravel the mysteries of the Rosetta Stone; and it does not 
seem a violent supposition that the remarkable inscriptions in 
the land of the Hittites, may have been produced by the 
warlike, but cultured, people who once inhabited that land. 
Indeed, I should not have dwelt on this point but for the fact 
that my very obvious hypothesis was received at first, like 
Holman Hunt’s scape-goat, as some kind of joke, or, as 
Captain Burton expressed it in Drake’s life—“magno cum 
risu.”” 
