Plate 19
Small ivory lion from Ahab’s palace
Author’s collection (Photo by Dworshak)
Plate 20
Fragmentary frieze showing ancient chariots (Museum of the University of Pennsylvania)
King Solomon, the merchant prince, had developed business relations with all of the many chieftains and kings of the Hittite peoples, and had a well developed trade in the horses and chariots for which the Hittites were famous in their day. (See [Plate 20].) This coincidence of affairs began when Abraham consummated the first commercial transaction that is mentioned in human history. Before Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees to begin his strange pilgrimage, the Hittites were already established in Canaan. It must not be thought that Abraham at that time was the ancient prototype of our modern hobo, wandering from point to point with no estate! The pastoral pursuits of Abraham had built up for him flocks and herds that made him enormously wealthy. He was an able strategist, and his military skill, combined with his personal valor, had elevated him to a high position of power and influence.
In the land of Canaan he was treated with honor and admiration as befitted his station and position. His armed retainers constituted a formidable army for that day, and this trained manpower compelled respect for Abraham, the wandering prince. When Sarah died, the Hittites were in possession of the land and Abraham recognized the validity of their title when he opened the negotiations for a burial plot for Sarah, by defining himself as a stranger and a sojourner in their land. With typical oriental courtesy in bargaining, the Hittites replied to his request for a burying place for his dead wife by saying, “Hear us, my lord, thou art a mighty prince among us,” and they offered him freely and without price the choice of a plot for a sepulchre. Abraham designated the cave of Machpelah as his choice and offered to pay the full value of the site. This courtesy, of course, was expected of him. Though it had been offered as a free gift, it would have been a breach of manners of the worst type, according to the customs of that day, for him to have accepted the gift.
It will be noted in this account in Genesis that when Abraham weighed out the requested price of four hundred shekels of silver, the statement was made that it was the shekel which was the current money with the merchants. The sum was equivalent to about $300 in our present system of values. This is the first reference made to coinage, and it fits in beautifully with the archeological indications that the Hittites were the inventors of the principle of coining both gold and silver as a medium of exchange.
From this first moment of their contact with Abraham there is no period of Hebrew history, up to the time of the fall of Samaria, where the people of Israel lost contact with the nation of the Hittites. Their mercenary soldiers became captains in the army of David and Solomon, and they were occasionally allied in important battles in which the people of Israel fought side by side with them. It is amazing that the critics, in the face of the tremendous emphasis laid upon the Hittite empire by the writers of the Scripture, did not exercise some discretion in their repudiation of the historicity of this people. Even while the tongues of the unbelieving were clamoring with loud denunciations of the text of the Word of God, Libya, Syria, and Asia Minor in general exhibited magnificent sculpture, incised stones, and monuments written in a strange system of hieroglyphics that none had been able to read. These proved later to be the records of the Hittite peoples as they themselves had cut them with their own hands.