Human Origins

by S. Laing

KING OF THE HITTITES. (From photograph by Flinders Petrie, from Egyptian Temple at Luxor.)

The earliest mention of them is found in the tablets which were compiled for the library of Sargon I. of Accad, in which reference is made to the Khatti, which probably means Hittites, showing that at this remote period, about 3800 b.c., they had already moved down from their northern home into the valley of the Euphrates and Upper Syria.

Their affinity with the Accadians of Chaldæa is clearly proved by their language, which the recent discovery of papyri at Tell-el-Amara, containing despatches from the tributary King of the Hittites to Amenophus IV., written in cuneiform characters, has proved to be almost identical with Accadian. It seems probable that part of the army which fought in defence of Troy may have been Hittite, and there are many indications that the Etruscans, who were generally believed to have come from Lydia, were of the same race and spoke the same language.

It is in Egyptian records, however, that we meet with the first definite historical data respecting this ancient Hittite Empire. In these they are referred to as "Kheta," and probably formed part of the great Hyksos invasion; but the first certain mention of them occurs in the reign of Thotmes I., about 1600 b.c., and they appear as a leading nation in the time of Thotmes III., who defeated a combined army of Canaanites and Hittites under the Hittite King of Kadesh, at Megiddo, and in fourteen victorious campaigns carried the Egyptian arms to the Euphrates and Tigris.

For several subsequent reigns we find the Hittites enumerated as one of the nations paying tribute to Egypt, whose extensive Empire then reckoned Mesopotamia, Assyria, Phœnicia, Palestine, Cyprus, and the Soudan among its tributary states. Gradually the power of Egypt declined, and in the troubled times which followed the attempt of the heretic King Ku-en-Aten to supersede the old religion of Egypt by the worship of the solar disc, the conquered nations threw off the yoke, and the frontiers of Egypt receded to the old limits. As Egypt declined, the power of the Hittites evidently increased, for when we next meet with them it is contending on equal terms in Palestine with the revival of the military power of Egypt under Ramses I., the founder of the nineteenth dynasty, and his son Seti I.

The contest continued for more than a century with occasional treaties of peace and various vicissitudes of fortune, and at last culminated in the great battle of Kadesh, commemorated by the Egyptian epic poem of Pentaur, and followed by the celebrated treaty of peace between Ramses II. and Kheta-Sira, "the great King of the Hittites," the Hittite text of which was engraved on a silver tablet in the characters of Carchemish, and the Egyptian copy of it was engraved in hieroglyphics on the walls of the temples of Ramses, of which we fortunately possess the entire text. The alliance was on equal terms, defining the frontier, and providing for the mutual extradition of refugees, and it was ratified by the marriage of Ramses with the daughter of the Hittite King.

The peace lasted for some time; but in the reign of Ramses III. of the twentieth dynasty, we find the Hittites again heading the great confederacy of the nations of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Mediterranean, who attacked Egypt by sea and land. The Hittites formed the greater part of the land army, which was defeated with great slaughter after an obstinate battle at Pelusium, about 1200 b.c. From this time forward the power both of the Hittites and of Egypt seems to have steadily declined. We hear no more of them as a leading power in Palestine and Syria, where the kingdoms of Judah, Israel, and Damascus superseded them, until all were swallowed up by the Assyrian conquests of the warrior-kings of Nineveh, and finally the Hittites disappear altogether from history with the capture of their capital Carchemish by Sargon II. in 717 b.c.

The wide extent, however, of the Hittite Empire when at its height is proved by the fact that at the battle of Kadesh the Hittite army was reinforced by vassals or allies from nearly the whole of Western Asia. The Dardanians from the Troad, the Mysians from their cities of Ilion, the Colchians from the Caucasus, the Syrians from the Orontes, and the Phœnicians from Arvad are enumerated as sending contingents; and in the invasion of Egypt in the reign of Ramses III., the Hittites headed the great confederacy of Hittites, Teucrians, Lycians, Philistines, and other Asiatic nations who attacked Egypt by land, in concert with the great maritime confederacy of Greeks, Pelasgians, Tuscans, Sicilians, and Sardinians who attacked it by sea.

The mere fact of carrying on such campaigns and forming such political alliances is sufficient to show that the Hittites must have attained to an advanced state of civilization. But there is abundant proof that this was the case from other sources. They were a commercial people, and their capital, Carchemish, was for many centuries the great emporium of the caravan trade between the East and West. The products of the East, probably as far as Bactria and India, reached it from Babylon and Nineveh, and were forwarded by two great commercial routes, one to the south-west to Syria and Phœnicia, the other to the north-west through the pass of Karakol, to Sardis and the Mediterranean. The commercial importance of Carchemish is attested by the fact that its silver mina became the standard of value at Babylon, and throughout the whole of Western Asia. The Hittites were also great miners, working the silver mines of the Taurus on an extensive scale, and having a plentiful supply of bronze and other metals, as is shown by the large number of chariots attached to their armies from the earliest times. They were also a literary people, and had invented a system of hieroglyphic writing of their own, distinct alike from that of Egypt and from the cuneiform characters of the Accadians. Inscriptions in these peculiar characters, associated with sculptures in a style of art different from that of either Egypt or Chaldæa, but representing figures identical in dress and features with those of Hittites in the Egyptian monuments, have been found over a wide extent of Asia Minor, at Hamath and Aleppo; Boghaz-Keni and Eyuk in Cappadocia; at the pass of Karakol near Sardis, and at various other places. Several of those attributed by the Greeks to Sesostris or to fabulous passages of their own mythology, have been proved to be Hittite, as, for instance, the figure carved on the rocks of Mount Sipylos, near Ephesus, and said to be that of Niobe, is proved to be a sitting figure of the great goddess of Carchemish.

For a long time these inscriptions were an enigma to philologists, but the researches of Professor Sayce and other scholars have quite recently thrown much light on the subject, and enabled us partially to decipher some of them, and the recent discovery of papyri at Tel-el-Amara written partly in the Hittite language in cuneiform characters, removes all doubt as to its nature and affinities.