AN ANCIENT CAPITAL 



115 



pie, probably, who practised the noble 

 sport of falconry were the Hittites — so 

 the sculptures tell us. And in that con- 

 nection it was interesting to hear from 

 the Turkish bey, who is the overlord 

 of all this region, that he and his friends 

 train and use falcons in hunting now, 

 and are very eager in the sport. 



Was it Rome that first made the proud 

 boast that all roads lead toward her? 

 Professor Ramsay tells us that all the 

 roads of more ancient times met in 

 Boghaz Keouy. Was it only in medieval 

 Eunipe that there was one writing and 

 language used for general communication 

 between nations, and for learning and 

 literature? Assyrian cuneiform claimed 

 more importance and a greater vogue 

 than did Latin, since for three thousand 

 years and more it was the language of 

 commerce and literature among all the 

 civilized nations of the world. And to 

 these civilized nations belonged the 

 Hittites. 



Here on the citadel in IQ06 the ex- 

 plorers unearthed a library of clay tablets 

 all written in cuneiform characters, some 

 of them in the Hittite language, but more 

 in the Assyrian. x\ll these tablets have 

 been taken to Constantinople," to the 

 Museum, and are awaiting the reading 

 that will give us, we hope, much new 

 light on the lives and thoughts of the 

 P>oghaz Keouy Hittites. 



Of the tablets that have been read, one 

 gives the Assyrian text of the treaty be- 

 tween the great Rameses of Egypt and 

 the powerful Hittite king Khattu-Sil — 

 that treaty of which the Egyptian text 

 was already well known to historians. 



And another tablet, as Professor Sayce 

 tells us, shows how much women had to 

 do with politics in those far-otf days, 

 since it is a letter from Naptere, the wife 

 of Rameses, addressed to the Hittite 

 Queen, and expresses her great satisfac- 

 tion over the conclusion of the treaty. 



In the summer of 1907 another great 

 library was found in two rooms at the 

 eastern side of the palace. Some of these 

 tablets are very large, 12x8 inches in 

 size ; others are but 2 inches long. They 

 are mostly of about the same time as the 



Tel el Amarna tablets, and so cover the 

 age of Aloses. 



Professor Sayce also tells us that many 

 of these Boghaz Keouy tablets were writ- 

 ten by the same disaffected governors of 

 Syrian provinces, who, in the Tel el 

 Amarna tablets, write to Pharaoh of the 

 difficulties in the way of maintaining the 

 rights of the Egyptian government in 

 Syria, but tell how nobly they were work- 

 ing in their lord's interests, while in 

 these newly found writings of Boghaz 

 Keouy the same men tell the Hittite king 

 how they are pretending to be the hum- 

 ble servants of Egypt while really obey- 

 ing the commands of Khattu-Sil, and the 

 political intrigues that are here displayed 

 and the polite sarcasm and meaningless 

 phrases that pass between these old 

 writers might give points to modern 

 diplomatists. 



XO KEY TO THESE TABLETS HAS YET BEEN 

 FOUND 



Although all the tablets discovered two 

 or three years ago were carried to the 

 Constantinople Museum, the shepherds; 

 and laborers who wander over these hills 

 pick up occasionally broken pieces of 

 tablets, and, knowing that any writing on 

 clay or stone seems precious in the eyes 

 of "these queer Europeans," they offer 

 what they find for sale to any passer-by. 

 As one eats one's dinner a boy appears, 

 and, squatting on his heels, produces a 

 few bits of clay from his girdle, or 

 wrapped in a handkerchief ( which chal- 

 lenges comparison in age and in dirt with 

 the Hittite contents) ; or one is awak- 

 ened in the early dawn by a head stuck 

 between the curtains of the tent and an 

 insinuating voice saying "kyramidi" ( clay 

 tiles), the owner thereof being anxious 

 to strike a bargain quickly, before he 

 takes his sheep up on the hills above. 



So far, I believe, no bilingual has been 

 found among the tablets ; that is, no writ- 

 ing which repeats the same thing in both 

 the Hittite and the Assyrian languages, 

 and which would perform the office for 

 the Hittite which the Rosetta stone per-' 

 formed for the Egyptian hieroglyphics. 

 But the sudden stopping of the liistory 



