Beyond Naharaim, in the deep recesses of the Amanus and Taurus, there had lived, for no one knows how many centuries, the rude and warlike tribes of the Khâti, related not so, much to the Semites of the Syrian plain as to the populations of doubtful race and language who occupied the upper basins of the Halys and Euphrates.* The Chaldæan conquest had barely touched them; the Egyptian campaign had not more effect, and Thûtmosis III. himself, after having crossed their frontiers and sacked several of their towns, made no serious pretence to reckon them among his subjects. Their chiefs were accustomed, like their neighbours, to use, for correspondence with other countries, the cuneiform mode of writing; they had among them, therefore, for this purpose, a host of scribes, interpreters, and official registrars of events, such as we find to have accompanied the sovereigns of Assyria and Babylon.** These chiefs were accustomed to send from time to time a present to the Pharaoh, which the latter was pleased to regard as a tribute,*** or they would offer, perhaps, one of their daughters in marriage to the king at Thebes, and after the marriage show themselves anxious to maintain good faith with their son-in-law.
* Halévy asserts that the Khâti were Semites, and bases his
assertion on materials of the Assyrian period. Thés Khâti,
absorbed in Syria by the Semites, with whom they were
blended, appear to have been by origin a non-Semitic people.
** A letter from the King of the Khâti to the Pharaoh
Amenothes IV. is written in cuneiform writing and in a
Semitic language. It has been thought that other documents,
drawn up in a non-Semitic language and coming from Mitanni
and Arzapi, contain a dialect of the Hittite speech or that
language itself. A “writer of books,” attached to the person
of the Hittite King Khatusaru, is named amongst the dead
found on the field of battle at Qodshû.
*** It is thus perhaps we must understand the mention of
tribute from the Khâti in the Annals of Thûtmosis III., 1.
26, in the year XXXIII., also in the year XL. One of the Tel
el-Amarna letters refers to presents of this kind, which the
King of Khâti addresses to Amenôthes IV. to celebrate his
enthronement, and to ask him to maintain with himself the
traditional good relations of their two families.
They had, moreover, commercial relations with Egypt, and furnished it with cattle, chariots, and those splendid Cappadocian horses whose breed was celebrated down to the Greek period.* They were already, indeed, people of consideration; their territory was so extensive that the contemporaries of Thutmosis III. called them the Greater Khâti; and the epithet “vile,” which the chancellors of the Pharaohs added to their name, only shows by its virulence the impression which they had produced upon the mind of their adversaries.**
* The horses of the Khâti were called abarî, strong,
vigorous, as also their bulls. The King of Alasia, while
offering to Amenôthes III. a profitable speculation, advises
him to have nothing to do with the King of the Khâti or with
the King of Sangar, and thus furnishes proof that the
Egyptians held constant commercial relations with the Khâti.
** M. de Rougé suggested that Khâti “the Little” was the
name of the Hittites of Hebron. The expression, “Khâti the
Great,” has been compared with that of Khanirabbat, “Khani
the Great,” which in the Assyrian texts would seem to
designate a part of Cappadocia, in which the province of
Miliddi occurs, and the identification of the two has found
an ardent defender in W. Max Millier. Until further light is
thrown upon it, the most probable reading of the word is not
Khani-rabat, but Khani-galbat. The name Khani-Galbat is
possibly preserved in Julbat, which the Arab geographers
applied in the Middle Ages to a province situated in Lesser
Armenia.
Their type of face distinguishes them clearly from the nations conterminous with them on the south. The Egyptian draughtsmen represented them as squat and short in stature, though vigorous, strong-limbed, and with broad and full shoulders in youth, but as inclined frequently to obesity in old age. The head is long and heavy, the forehead flattened, the chin moderate in size, the nose prominent, the eyebrows and cheeks projecting, the eyes small, oblique, and deep-set, the mouth fleshy, and usually framed in by two deep wrinkles; the flesh colour is a yellowish or reddish white, but clearer than that of the Phoenicians or the Amurru.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.
Their ordinary costume consisted, sometimes of a shirt with short sleeves, sometimes of a sort of loin-cloth, more or less ample according to the rank of the individual wearing it, and bound round the waist by a belt. To these they added a scanty mantle, red or blue, fringed like that of the Chaldæans, which they passed over the left shoulder and brought back under the right, so as to leave the latter exposed. They wore shoes with thick soles, turning up distinctly at the toes,* and they encased their hands in gloves, reaching halfway up the arm.
* This characteristic is found on the majority of the
monuments which the peoples of Asia Minor have left to us,
and it is one of the most striking indications of the
northern origin of the Khâti. The Egyptian artists and
modern draughtsmen have often neglected it, and the majority
of them have represented the Khâti without shoes.