IN THE KHITAN LANGUAGES. 285 



India, Tartaiy, Siberia and Japan, and on this continent give name 

 to their otherwise unknown architects, the Mound Builders. At 

 Carchemish and Hamath, in Phrygia and Lydia, the Hittite hiero- 

 glyphics strange and distinctive remain as monuments of Khitan 

 empire and journeyings. The Cypriote syllabic notation has bor- 

 rowed largely from them; the Libyan and Kelt-Iberian alphabets 

 are their descendants. Some of the moi-e characteristic symbols 

 appear on rudely sculptured rocks in India ; the alphabet of Corea 

 preserves many foi'ms identical with those of Hamath ; and, in this 

 western world, the few surviving inscriptions of the Mound Builders 

 are unmistakably Hittite, while the Aztec paleography is but an 

 adaptation of the ancient symbolism of Syria to the productions and 

 necessities of a new land. The Hittites of the Hebrew Scriptures 

 are the Kheti of the Egyptian, and the Khita of the Assyrian 

 records, the Ketei of Homer, who left their name to the Keteus river 

 in Mysia, the Kathaei of the Punjaub, the Katei of Siberia, and the 

 Khitan of Chinese history. When, in the 12th century, the 

 Aculhua Tepanecs, traversing the length of the North American 

 continent, arrived in Mexico within the borders of the Chichimec 

 kingdom, they sought to conciliate its monarch Nopaltzin by the 

 tidings that they belonged to the same ancient stock from which he 

 was descended, that namely of the Citin, a race illustrious by its 

 nobility and heroic deeds. Hamath, a Hittite word, yields its 

 meaning only when we discover it in the native name of Japan 

 which is Yama-to, the mountain door ; and this again explains the 

 Bible expression, " the entering in of Hamath." Hittite colonists, 

 or Greeks who had dwelt with Hittites in Asia Minor, carried the 

 word into Europe as Haemus and Hymettus. The Kathaei carried 

 it with them to India, where it became on Aryan lips Himavat, 

 afterwards to change to Himalaya. Among the survivals of the 

 ancient name on this continent I may mention Yuma, that of a tribe 

 in south-western California to which, with the other members of the 

 family so designated, I shall have occasion to refer more than once, 

 and Yemez, the name of a Pueblo people of New Mexico. The 

 languages of these two peoples are undoubtedly Khitan. Another 

 group of Khitan names to which I can only briefly refer, as I have 

 already directed attention to them in my paper on " Hittites in 

 America," has been linked with the Kathaei by writers on Indian 

 antiquities. These have supposed that the Kathaei and the Ksha- 



