CHAPTER VIII.
HITTITE TRADE AND INDUSTRY.
The Hittites shone as much in the arts of peace as in the arts of war. The very fact that they invented a system of writing speaks highly for their intellectual capacities. It has been granted to but few among the races of mankind to devise means of communicating their thoughts otherwise than by words; most of the nations of the world have been content to borrow from others not only the written characters they use but even the conception of writing itself.
We know from the ruins of Boghaz Keui and Eyuk that the Hittites were no mean architects. They understood thoroughly the art of fortification; the great moat outside the walls of Boghaz Keui, with its sides of slippery stone, is a masterpiece in this respect, like the fortified citadels within the city, to which the besieged could retire when the outer wall was captured. The well-cut blocks and sculptured slabs of which their palaces were built prove how well they knew the art of quarrying and fashioning stone. The mines of the Bulgar Dagh are an equally clear indication of their skill in mining and metallurgic work.
The metallurgic fame of the Khalybes, who bordered on the Hittite territory, and may have belonged to the same race, was spread through the Greek world. They had the reputation of first discovering how to harden iron into steel. It was from them, at all events, that the Greeks acquired the art.
Silver and copper appear, from the evidence of the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, to have been the metals most in request, though gold and iron also figure among the objects which the Hittites offered in tribute. The gold and copper were moulded into cups and images of animals, and the copper was changed into bronze by being mixed with tin. From whence the tin was procured we have yet to learn.
Silver and iron were alike used as a medium of exchange. The Assyrian king received from Carchemish 250 talents of iron; and the excavations of Dr. Schliemann among the ruins of Troy have afforded evidence that silver also was employed by the Hittites in place of money, and that its use for this purpose was communicated by them to the most distant nations of Western Asia Minor.
In the so-called 'treasure of Priam,' disinterred among the calcined ruins of Hissarlik or Troy, are six blade-like ingots of silver, about seven or eight inches in length and two in breadth. Mr. Barclay Head has pointed out that each of these ingots weighs the third part of a Babylonian maneh or mina, and further that this particular maneh of 8656 grains Troy, was once employed throughout Asia Minor for weighing bullion silver. It differed from the standard of weight and value used in Phœnicia, Assyria, and Asia Minor itself in the later Greek age. But it corresponded with 'the maneh of Carchemish' mentioned in the Assyrian contract tablets, which continued to hold its own even after the conquest of Carchemish by Sargon. The maneh of Carchemish had, it is true, been originally derived from Babylonia, like most of the elements of Hittite culture, but it had made itself so thoroughly at home in the Hittite capital as to be called after its name. Nothing can show more clearly than this the leading position held by the Hittites in general, and the city of Carchemish in particular, in regard to commerce and industry.
Carchemish was, in fact, the centre of the overland trade in Western Asia. It commanded the high-road which brought the products of Phœnicia and the West to the civilised populations of Assyria and Babylon. It was this which made its possession so greatly coveted by the Assyrian kings. Its capture assured to Sargon the command of the Mediterranean coast, and the transference to Assyrian hands of the commerce and wealth which had flowed in to the merchant-princes of the Hittite city.
The sumptuous furniture in which they indulged is mentioned by Assur-natsir-pal. Like the luxurious monarchs of Israel, they reclined on couches inlaid with ivory, of which it is possible that they were the inventors. At all events, elephants were still hunted by Tiglath-pileser I., in the neighbourhood of Carchemish, as they had been by Thothmes III. four centuries earlier, and elephants' tusks were among the tribute paid by the Hittites to the Assyrian kings. It may be that the extinction of the elephant in this part of Asia was due to Hittite huntsmen.