The land of the Hittites

by John Garstang

In this chapter we take a passing glance at the history of the Hittite lands after the Hittite power had passed, down to the establishment of the Seljûk Turks in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D. It is not a connected story, for with the disappearance of the Hittites the political horizon changed: thereafter the balance of power in the Near East was several times distributed anew. We must therefore be content to sketch an outline of the general course of eventful history in which the lands subsequently shared, and to note in what manner, but not to what extent, the local records and monuments are evidence of the parts they severally played.

We are compelled to make these limitations, for no land on earth can claim a history so momentous as the drama that was worked out in Asia Minor during the centuries that followed the Hittite domination. Here was the scene of a long struggle for supremacy both among its own peoples and between the adjoining portions of the two continents which it connects; a thousand Iliads would do scant justice to the deeds of arms alone. And the struggle of the continents was not merely for the possession of a land itself rich in minerals and for the most part highly fertile, but for a passage-way for great migrations, civilisations, and religions. To this story we have nothing to contribute, no new evidence to bring forward, no new opinions to maintain; the history of Asia Minor has been written by pens more able and more competent to deal with it.[77] In introducing these few pages our object is to subserve our main inquiry: to enable us to distinguish between the works of the various phases of history that we meet with in our wanderings, and especially to appreciate by contrast the peculiarities of the Hittite monuments which we shall next consider.

Though we defer writing the story of the Hittites until we have seen what their own works can tell us, we find ourselves obliged to trace its outline[78] in order to decide at what point that story ends. The Hittites first appear in history about 2000 B.C., when it would appear that they were already powerful enough to overturn the first dynasty of Babylon and sack that city, and that they had settlements in southern Syria on the frontiers of Egypt. Certain Hittite tablets from Central Asia Minor are said to belong to the same age. Nothing is known, however, of the constitution of the Hittites in these early times; but it may be inferred that they subsequently retired from the south or were there submerged. It is not until the fifteenth century B.C. that the name of the Hittites definitely reappears, when successive expeditions of the Pharaohs encountered them in the north of Syria. Then in the fourteenth century their capital is found at Boghaz-Keui, in the ruins of which their archives of this period have been recently unearthed. These, supplemented by the Tell-el-Amarna letters, tell how the King of the ‘Hatti’—the local and at that time dominant element—became Great King of the Hittite confederated peoples and vassal states, whose chief towns included most of the sites identified with Hittite remains, like Hamath, Aleppo, Carchemish, Marash, Malatia, and many city-states as yet unidentified. This was the period of their greatest empire, and it is probable that the regions of Cilicia, Lycaonia, Phrygia, and even Lydia at this time acknowledged the suzerainty of the all-powerful soldier-king. For five or six generations of the Hatti rulers the position of the Hittites as a dominant power in Western Asia was recognised by the Pharaohs and the Kings of Babylon, both in their letters and treaties and by the exchange of ambassadors. During the great migrations of the twelfth century B.C., however, it would seem that the Hatti dynasty was overthrown and the Hittite empire dismembered. This may be inferred from the cessation of their own archives and from the appearance of the Muski, identified in later times with the Phrygians,[79] upon the north-west frontier of Assyria,[80] having thus fought their way across the heart of Asia Minor. These were repulsed,[81] but this incursion was contemporaneous with a shifting of the chief Hittite power to Carchemish, while Hamath on the Orontes and other southern centres come into increased prominence.

In trying to work out the story of the decline and fall of the Hittite power, we are faced with the same difficulty that enshrouded the whole problem of the Hittites until recent discoveries shed the light of internal documentary evidence upon the period of their empire—namely, that for the most part only the events connected with certain of their frontier lands came at all within the horizon of the Assyrian and the Greek historians, and these are seen by us with relative disproportion. To take a single illustration, we fail to find in the Egyptian and Assyrian records any suggestion as to the position of the Hittite capital of the fourteenth century at Boghaz-Keui; and for more than seven hundred years we are without any direct evidence as to its fortunes, until a chance reference by Herodotus in describing the affairs of Lydia tells us of its final overthrow.

In the tenth century, however, during the temporary decline of Assyria and the withdrawal of the Phrygians, the Hittite states may be inferred to have largely recovered their power and independence. But though there were frequent alliances between neighbouring states, there does not seem to have been any over-lord, as of old, powerful enough to unite them all under his leadership and to maintain a consistent policy. Malatia and Marash appear as the chief cities of kingdoms in Taurus, while in the Anti-Taurus the kingdom of Tabal (or Tubal) probably included the districts of Komana, Ekrek, Mazaca, and Fraktin. On the plateau the kingdom of the Khilakku, which we may call Greater Cilicia (embracing the region from Tyana to the Kara Dagh, and from Karaburna to Bulghar-Madên), replaced the original state of Hatti within the Halys as chief representative of Hittite power and tradition. But it was not for long: if the Muski had retreated it was only to gather strength; while in the east a new rival, of force and character similar to the Hittites, had appeared in the region of Lake Van, pressing down to the Euphrates and even into Syria, where also the steady infiltration of Aramæan peoples was already challenging the dominance of the old Hittite stock.

From the middle of the ninth century also the struggles of the weakening Hittite tribes against the reviving power of Assyria were renewed; and this time they were doomed. Their lands of Syria and in the Taurus were thereafter the objective of many punitive expeditions on the part of successive Assyrian kings, who claim always to have conquered and exacted tribute. For over a century, however, though many times defeated and severely punished, these states as often found opportunity for casting off the yoke. But Sargon, late in the eighth century, adopted with stern determination the policy which his predecessors had initiated, of transporting large numbers of the rebellious population and replacing them by Assyrian colonists. One by one the greater Hittite centres on his frontiers were absorbed, and when the Assyrian forces passed into Asia Minor to challenge the supremacy of the Phrygian Midas, about 718 B.C., it is clear that these two powers had divided the Hittite territory between them. The appearance, too, in the north, of the Cimmerians, in wellnigh irresistible strength, had changed the political horizon.[82]

From one point of view, however, it would be natural to point to the destruction of Pteria by Crœsus, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., as the last event of Hittite history, and so begin our post-Hittite story from that time. The conquest by Cyrus and the reunification of all the Hittite lands under Persian rule a few years later, in 546, would provide a suitable starting-point; yet, in fact, from the age of Sargon, a century and a half before, there can be traced no real semblance of surviving Hittite power nor any of the old Hittite individuality in the local arts. Their very name then almost disappeared from Oriental history, and was retained but as a memory; while in Asia Minor the power of the Phrygian kings was then at its zenith, and in the presence of Phrygian inscriptions at Eyuk,[83] near the old Hittite capital, and at Tyana,[84] which seems to have replaced Pteria in importance in the revival of the tenth century, there is indication that the Hittite day was already ended. But though the Hittite power was broken and disintegrated, their civilisation faded only gradually from view. Long after the sun had set upon its pride it lingered on, felt rather than seen, in the twilight that obscures our vision of the tableland in the early part of the first millennium B.C., surviving long enough here and there, as we shall see, in the form of institutions and religious customs, to have left a trace in the pages of Greek history. Thereafter we have several clear phases to review, interrupted by others of considerable disturbance and obscurity. Following the overthrow of Assyria on the one hand, and the decline of Phrygia on the other, two new powers appeared in the sixth century in the Medes and the Lydians, who similarly divided Asia Minor, with the Halys as their mutual boundary. By 546, however, Cyrus had annexed the whole country to the Persian Empire, in the continuous history of which it shared until the advent, in B.C. 324, of Alexander, who once more established the supremacy of the West. With his death the tribal struggles of antiquity reappear in new guise, and history is occupied chiefly with the varying fortunes of the kingdoms of Pergamum, of Pontus, and of the Seleucids, until in the first century B.C. Roman organisation gathered together the loose threads of independence and retied the knot in a manner that remained firm, in fine, for several hundred years. The next great landmark is not till 668 A.D., when, forty-six years after the flight of Mohammed, the Saracen army laid siege to Constantinople. In 1067 the Seljûks appeared from the east, followed two centuries later by the Osmanli-Turks, though these were not finally re-established in power, after the Mongol invasions, until 1413 A.D.

PLATE XXIV

MONUMENTS OF PHRYGIA