FIG. 50.
HITTITE CHIEFTAIN, A CAPTIVE OF RAMESES III.
A relief of the twelfth century, perhaps the finest representation of a Hittite on the Egyptian monuments; it is evidently a portrait sculpture, so far as the head is concerned. It illustrates, too, the manner in which the heavy plait of hair ends in a curled tail.
(After Meyer.)
She and Teshub, the principal male deity, are here represented meeting, with their processions of deities and attendants. Whether it was from precisely this area that the Hittite tribes descended on their raid down the Euphrates, which hastened the fall of Babylon's First Dynasty and perhaps brought it to an end, we have as yet no means of judging.[31] But during the subsequent centuries we may certainly picture a slow but uninterrupted expansion of the area under Hittite control; and it is probable that authority was divided among the various local kingdoms and chieftainships, which occupied the valleys and upland stretches to the north of the Taurus.
FIG. 51.