In this same reign we have also an incidental notice of the same region in the celebrated “Travels of an Egyptian,” which were carried as far north as Kadesh. Speaking of the Lebanon, he says: “The sky is darkened by the cypresses, the oaks, and the cedars, which grow to heaven. There also are lions found, and wolves and hyenas, which the Shasu hunt.” Yet the spoils taken and tribute offered in Syria at that time abundantly witness the civilisation of the Hittites and of the Phœnicians, whose “holy city Gebal” is noticed in this early papyrus with Sidon, Sarepta, and Tyre.
Two centuries passed by, and, with the decreasing power of Egypt, the freedom and prosperity of the independent kingdoms of Israel and of the Hittites increased. Yet while Samuel was still a child we find Tiglath Pileser I. hunting in the Lebanon. The account recovered from a cuneiform tablet is of great interest, seeming to show that the Lebanon ridge was the division between the Semitic Phœnicians on the coast and the Mongolic Hittites along the Orontes. The broken obelisk in the British Museum records of Tiglath Pileser that “in ships of Arvad he rode, a porpoise in the great sea he slew, wild bulls (rimi) fierce and fine he slew at the city Araziki, which is opposite to the land of the Hittites at the foot of Lebanon.” Thus the wild bull, which is mentioned in the Bible, was still found in Syria as late as 1100 B.C.
The foundation of our knowledge of the Hittite hieroglyphic system of writing, which was probably in use as early as 2000 B.C., was laid by Burckhardt’s discovery of one of their monuments at Hamath. That great traveller and observer describes a stone, now in the Constantinople Museum, but then in a wall in the city of Hamath, as covered with hieroglyphics which differed from those of Egypt. Yet the discovery was without further result until the stone, with four others, was rediscovered by the American visitor Mr. J. A. Johnson in 1870. The further finds at Carchemish, and in Asia Minor, of similar monuments have shown that Northern Syria possessed a written character of its own, and that a language akin to the old speech of the Medes and Akkadians was spoken by the Hittite chieftains as well as by their relatives, the Lydians, Carians, and early Cappadocians.