On the outer wall of the temple of Karnak we find inscribed the treaty of peace which was made on this or a later occasion, and the terms of the offensive and defensive alliance entered into. It is related that Kheta-sira, King of the Hittites, sent two heralds, bearing a plate of silver, upon which the treaty was engraved. The treaty is between the Grand-Duke of Kheta, Kheta-sira, the puissant, and Rameses, the great ruler of Egypt, the puissant. The arrangement is sanctioned by the Sun and by Sutekh, the chief gods respectively of Egypt and Kheta. There is to be peace and good brotherhood for ever—he shall fraternize with me and I will fraternize with him. The Grand-Duke of Kheta shall not invade the land of Egypt for ever, to carry away anything from it, nor shall Ramessu-Meriamen, the great ruler of Egypt, invade the land of Kheta for ever, to carry away anything from it. If Egypt is invaded by some other enemy, and Pharaoh sends to Kheta for help, the Grand-Duke is to go, or at least to send his infantry and cavalry; and he is, of course, to look for reciprocal aid. If emigrants or fugitives pass from one country to the other they are not to find service and favour, but to be given up; nevertheless, when taken back, they are not to be punished as criminals. In support of the provisions of the treaty the parties thereunto invoke “the thousand gods of the land of Kheta, in concert with the thousand gods of the land of Egypt.” Whosoever shall not observe the provisions of the treaty, the gods shall be against his house and family and servants; but to whomsoever shall observe them the gods shall give health and life—to his family, himself, and his servants.
“In such a form,” says Brugsch, “were peace and friendship made at Ramses, the city in Lower Egypt, between the two most powerful nations of the world at that time—Kheta in the east, and Kemi (Egypt) in the west.”
Following upon the conclusion of this treaty we have a happy dynastic alliance. Kheta-sira, the great king of the Hittites, appeared in Egypt in Hittite costume, accompanied by his beautiful daughter, and Pharaoh made this princess his queen. A memorial tablet at Ibsamboul speaks of this as a great, inconceivable wonder—“she herself knew not the impression which her beauty made on thy heart”—and we may fairly infer that her influence contributed to the international friendship which lasted as long as Rameses lived. We do not know the native name of the Hittite princess, but the name given her on her marriage was Ur-Maa-Noferu Ra.
Since it has become evident that the Hittites were a great people, and not a petty local tribe like the Hivites or the Perizzites, scholars have naturally turned again to the Bible references to see what they really imply. On careful examination the Bible passages are seen to be all consistent with the idea that the Hebrew writers were well acquainted with the power and greatness of the Hittites. Their greatness is nowhere denied; on the contrary there are some passages which seem plainly to imply it. When Solomon imported horses and chariots from Egypt, he sold them to the kings of Syria and to “all the kings of the Hittites” (2 Chron. i. 16). Again, when Ben-hadad, king of Syria, was besieging Samaria, and the Syrians were smitten with panic, believing that they heard “a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host,” what nations did they suppose were alone able to send great hosts into the field with horses and chariots? They said one to another, “Lo, the King of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians” (2 Kings vii. 6). Further—to take an instance nearer to the age of Rameses II.—when the future wide inheritance of Israel is promised to Moses and to Joshua, the description runs thus:—“From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun”—words which had been regarded as a pictorial exaggeration, but which may now be looked upon as literally accurate (Deut. xi. 24; Josh. i. 4).
Exploration and research are now making us acquainted with Hittite works of art and with inscriptions in the Hittite character and language; while, as already stated, we have Egyptian portraits of their soldiers on the Temple wall at Ibsamboul.
Burckhardt the traveller was perhaps the first to discover and describe a Hittite inscription. He gives an account of a stone which he saw in a wall in the city of Hamath, which was covered with hieroglyphs differing from those of Egypt. The discovery was without result at the time; but when the stone had been seen again, with four others, in 1870, by the American visitor, Mr J. A. Johnson, interest began to be aroused. Similar stones have been found at Carchemish, at Aleppo, and in various parts of Asia Minor. Some have been removed to the Museum at Constantinople, some are in the British Museum, and some inscriptions remain on rock faces irremovable. A very good collection of illustrative plates will be found appended to Dr Wm. Wright’s “Empire of the Hittites.” The Hittite hieroglyphs cannot yet be deciphered, although Dr A. H. Sayce and Major Conder may be said to have made a promising beginning. The inquiry has been aided a little by a short inscription in Hittite and Cuneiform characters, engraved on a convex silver plate, which looked like the knob of a staff or dagger, and is known as the boss of Tarkondêmos. We shall probably have to wait for the discovery of some longer bi-lingual inscription before much progress can be made. Meanwhile Major Conder finds much reason to think that the affinities of the Hittites and their language were Mongolian. The inscriptions of course are quite a mystery to the Asiatic folk in whose districts they are found, and they attribute magical virtues to some of them. The particular stone figured above was very efficacious in cases of lumbago: a man had only to lean his back against it and he was effectually cured.
Hamath Inscription (Hittite).
(Specially drawn by W. Harry Rylands, F.S.A.)
We know something of the religion of the Hittites from their invocation of the gods in their treaty with Rameses II. They adored the sun and moon, the mountains, rivers, clouds, and the sea. But their chief deity was Sutekh, “king of heaven, protector of this treaty,” supposed by Brugsch to be a form of Baal, but who is more likely to have been allied to Set or to Dagon. We cannot suppose that their worship was purer than that of the nations round about them; but it may not have been less pure, nor their life less moral. The appeal to the King of Heaven to protect a treaty is admirable so far as it goes. To what height they could sometimes rise in their conceptions of duty is pleasantly shown if, as seems possible, that beautiful passage in Micah vi. 8 is to be attributed to them—“What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” The prophet quotes the sentiment from Balaam, and gives it as Balaam’s answer to the question of Balak, king of Moab, who had sent for him to curse Israel. A conversation took place which may be set forth as follows:—