The land of the Hittites

by John Garstang

From a sketch by Mr. Horst Schliephack. (See [p. 16, note 2], and cf. [p. 48].)

We do not press the argument of these suggestions, but only regret the paucity of evidence available. For the present we must be content that we have been able to find some evidence as to the antiquity of the Hittite settlement. We cannot suppose that the mounds of Sakje-Geuzi stand alone: indeed a myriad others, that remain unexamined,[729] are evidence to the contrary, and considerable inference may be made with these as basis from the disposition of the Hittite tribes as revealed by the first light of history. One powerful branch must have early seized the position of Carchemish, while others settled in the plains that lie westward of the Euphrates. Others again found their homes in the valleys of the Kara Su and the Orontes, while some branches passed the Lebanon and mingled with the aboriginal people of southern Syria, where they were gradually submerged. If we are right in our argument, the habitable valleys of the Taurus and anti-Taurus regions must have been earlier peopled; and to judge from the relationship we have indicated, the western extension of these tribes in Asia Minor must have been considerable even as early as neolithic times. Whether the Hatti rulers themselves were part of a later immigration is still open to consideration; upon that point we await further evidence. The Hittites would seem to have brought with them (sooner or later) a new cycle of deities, with Babylonian prototypes, including their national Sandes or Sandan, lord of heaven, a god of the skies with lightning in his hand, in one of his various forms; and they seem to have absorbed into their pantheon a number of acceptable nature-cults, like the worship of mountains and streams and of the mother-goddess of earth, already practised by an earlier population whom they overlaid. The sun-god they seem to have received from contact with the Semite, and to have identified him with their own chief god. With regard to other aspects of their primitive culture, we can argue from the one site of Sakje-Geuzi alone, and from the reflected witness of later times. There is only one general assumption, therefore, that we make, that once settled in a metal-producing country, in contact with the rich mines of the Caucasus,[730] and the copper sources in Cyprus and the Taurus, their civilisation would share to the full in the stimulus of the copper and bronze ages as these arose. It is at the latter stage that they emerge into the full light of history[731] in the fourteenth century B.C.

PLATE LXXXV

THE WESTWARD DRIFT: NOMADS PASSING INTO ASIA MINOR THROUGH THE CILICIAN GATES.

The earliest allusions to the Hittites, however, in oriental records take us back to the period of the great movements in western Asia some five or six centuries before. These references are naturally scanty, but they occur in the records of three different peoples, and are in a sense parallel to one another, so that the main facts bear the stamp of historical accuracy. From the Babylonian archives it appears that about 1800 B.C., or before, the Hittites were chiefly responsible for the overthrow of the first dynasty that ruled at Babylon;[732] while of even earlier date in the same dynasty are references to the king of the Hittites and his doings, contained in the great Babylonian work on astrology,[733] and there is an allusion of possibly much older date.[734] The mention of the Hittites at the beginning of the second millennium is almost synchronous with the earliest dated reference from Egyptian sources, in an inscription of the twelfth dynasty,[735] from which it would appear that settlements of the Hittites had been established in southern Syria, and that these were among the objectives of a military expedition. The historical setting of this record is apparent, and it is confirmed and amplified by the references in Hebrew history, which claim our consideration no less than the inscriptions carved by loyal subjects of the Pharaoh. These passages show us that in local tradition of the time of the Patriarchs the Hittite settlements were no matter for special comment.[736] On the other hand, their name was practically synonymous with that of Canaanites,[737] and, like the Amorites, they were long looked upon as one of the settled peoples of the land.[738] For some centuries, however, we are without dated records, nor is there any direct evidence as to the history and doings of the Hittites until the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. One thing, however, is clear, that the ‘Hyksos’ peoples who overran Egypt in the meanwhile were deeply imbued with the elements of a culture which, if not purely Hittite nor directly traceable to them at this date, was still largely shared by the Hittites in historic times.[739] The people that had overthrown the dynasty of Babylon was clearly an established power already organised.

Though the earliest kings[740] and dynasties of the Hittites remain unknown, the nature of the Hittite organisation in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. is now made clear by the archives recently discovered at Boghaz-Keui. These cover the reigns of six generations of the Hatti dynasty of kings, making allusion in all to eight of their sovereigns. They include treaties with internal states in Syria and elsewhere, with Mitanni, with the Amorites, and with Egypt, most of them prefaced by historical notes of events leading up to the conclusion of the treaty in question. There is also correspondence of a diplomatic character with the courts of Thebes, of Babylonia and of Mitanni, and other documents of varied sorts. These are written in cuneiform, and the language employed in foreign affairs is the Assyro-Babylonian: only in some internal matters the Hittite language is used. Though the documents have not yet disclosed the full nature of their contents, the archives as a whole[741] have already thrown as much light upon the history of the Hittites at this period as did the Tell el Amarna tablets, with which they are in part contemporary, on the foreign affairs of Egypt during the eighteenth dynasty.

The story opens with a bid for empire under the Hatti leadership in the person of Subbi-luliuma.[742] This ruler (known in Egyptian records as Sapalulu) had inherited only the kingship of his city-state of Kû-sar [or Sû-sar], which was possibly at Boghaz-Keui itself, from his father, Hattusil I.; but so well were his plans laid, and so accomplished his military leadership, that before his death he had won for himself the title of Great King.[743] We cannot follow the story of his doings in Asia Minor, for unfortunately the names of the places mentioned in Hittite in this and the succeeding reign cannot yet be identified; but it will be clear from what follows that his western frontiers, if not already peopled by Hittite tribes and subject to his authority, must have claimed his first attention. In other directions his policy and movements are revealed more clearly. Among his own peoples he seems to have arranged a series of alliances; other lands which he overran he parcelled out among his followers, while to some non-Hittite tribes he granted terms of vassalage.

Though we have no clear allusion to the kingdoms in the Taurus regions at this time, we may infer that the two great Hittite states of Arzawa[744] and Khali-rabbat,[745] which lay on either side of his pathway, were already allied with him in one or other of these ways, before he descended to the north of Syria, and ventured to enter the political arena of western Asia, where the older powers were stationed to resist his oncoming. The whole of Syria as far northward as Aleppo had indeed for something like a century been within the sphere of influence of the Pharaohs. It is claimed for the Egyptian monarch Thothmes I. that before the close of the sixteenth century B.C. he had set up the boundary of his empire somewhere near Carchemish on the Euphrates, in the ‘land of Naharain.’ Three of his successors by occasional expeditions, beginning with that of Thothmes III. about 1469 B.C.,[746] had sought to retain this boundary, and had come into conflict with the Hittite tribes already settled in these regions. These seem to have submitted like other northern states, nominally at any rate, to the Egyptian supremacy, and to have regularly sent their tribute to the Pharaoh. But though Amenhetep III. inherited the full power and dominion of his predecessors, he seems to have found it necessary to send an expedition at the beginning of his reign to maintain his suzerainty.