The war ended by the Egyptian marrying the Hittite’s daughter, and making with his father-in-law a highly-civilised extradition treaty engraved upon a silver plate.[548] Another invasion, however, took place (circa b.c. 1200) under Ramses III. This ‘Rhampsinitus’ of the Greeks, a compound title, Ramessu-pa-Neter (Ramses the god), has left inscriptions concerning his ‘Campaign of Vengeance’ which cover one side of the temple of Medinah Habu:[549] amongst the conquered foes appears the ‘miserable King of Khita as a living prisoner.’
In later times the Khita became well known to Assyrian story.[550] Shalmaneser II. (b.c. 884–852) mentions the ‘Hittites and the city of Petra’ (Pethor); he takes ‘eighty-nine cities of the land of the Hamathites,’ and Rimonidri of Damascus. Tiglath-pileser II. (b.c. 745–727) speaks of the ‘city of Hamatti’ (Hamath) and the ‘Arumu’ (Aramæans).
According to Wilkinson (I. chap. v.) the Khita are represented on the monuments, the Memnonium, Medinah Habu, and elsewhere, as a shaven race with light red skins. Their dress is the long Assyrian robe falling to the ankles: the hair is crisply curled and at times covered with the tall cap of Phrygian type. A characteristic article, which appears in their hieroglyphs, is the pointed and upturned boot,[551] somewhat like the soleret of the sixteenth century. For armour they had square or oblong shields and quilted coats with bracelets defending their arms. Their weapons were bows, spears, and the short straight Sword, the modern flesh-chopper, then in use among their rival neighbours of the Nile Valley.
These gallant Canaanites[552] were proficients in the art of war. The army was distributed into foot and mounted men. The former consisted of a native nucleus called Tuhir (Táhir?),[553] the ‘chosen ones,’ and a host of mercenaries under Hir-pits or captains. Amongst these were the Shardana, Sardones, commonly translated Sardinians; Brugsch contends that they were Colchians, and derives from them ‘Sardonian linen.’ They were armed with horned helmets and round shields, spears and long Swords. The Kelau or slingers appear to have been a corps d’élite that waited upon the Prince.[554] The tactics included a regular phalanx, a herse or column of spearsmen like the Egyptian; and, although the cavalry rode horses their ‘strength was in chariots.’
‘Hithism’[555] became a study of late years, after the publication of ‘Hittite hieroglyphs,’ first discovered at Hamah, then at Aleppo, gave it an impulse. Two rock-inscriptions with bas-reliefs were discovered by the Rev. E. Davis (of Alexandria) at Ibriz (Áb-ríz), three hours south of Eregli, the old Cybistra on the great Lycaonian plain.[556] The finds at Carchemish added to the scanty store, and there are said to be Hittite seals in the British Museum. In Dr. Schliemann’s ‘Troy’ (p. 352), I find a Hittite hieroglyph on the stamped terra-cotta; the middle figure to the right is apparently the fist or fist-shaped glove, the Egyptian symbol of the hand. I shall presently notice the Lycian coin and a gold incision from Cyprus. Three legible characters—the bull’s head, the cap, and the bent arm—are traced to the so-called prehistoric statue of Niobe, Mount Sipylus. Evidently Hittite, too, is the bronze tablet in M. Peretié’s Museum, Bayrut.[557]
Modern discoveries enable us to characterise Hittite art as a blending of Egyptian with Assyrian, or rather Babylonian, both considerably modified. The former appears in the two sphinxes of Eyub, and in the winged solar disk, which was also borrowed by Mesopotamia from the Nile Valley. The bas-reliefs and gems of Assyria are reflected in the Hittite representations of the human figure; but the stature is shorter, the limbs are thicker and more rounded, and the muscles are not so prominent. At Boghaz-Keui some of the deities stand upon animals, a posture believed to be early Babylonian.[558] Here, too, the goddesses wear mural crowns, the decoration of the Ephesian Artemis, and Prof. Sayce thence infers its Hittite origin. At Eyub is found the double-headed eagle which is supposed to be the prototype of the old Siljukian and modern European monsters.[559]
HITTITE HIEROGLYPHICS.
The Hittite syllabary has systematic affinities with the Egyptian, as shown by the boot, the glove (or hand), the bent arm, the battle-axe, and the short straight chopper-knife. But before reading these ideographs it was necessary to determine the language, and here difficulties arose. Prof. Sayce denies that the Khita were Semites or spoke a Semitic tongue;[560] and in this he is followed by Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen. But the former contended with scant success, that the Cypriote writing was ‘none other than the hieroglyphics of Hamath.’[561] Mr. Hyde Clarke believes that Khita, Etruscan, and Cypriote are kindred tongues; and detects their symbols upon the autonomous coins of Spain. Others have supported the Scythic (Turanian) origin of the Hittites: in our day this was inevitable. The Rev. Dunbar I. Heath bravely pronounces the language Semitic and made a gallant attempt at interpreting the syllabary.[562] But nothing final can be done under present conditions: we have not even collected all the characters.[563]
While the Khita were inlanders, the parallel shore-land of the Mediterranean—Syria and Palestine—was occupied by a host of Semitic and congener tribes. The former is a noble word and by no means the ‘invention of a Greek geographer’; Suríyyah denotes the rocky region from Sur or Tsur (זור = rock), a tower (turris), Tyre, the Zurai of Tiglath-pileser II., and the Tapau of the hieroglyphs. Thus ‘Syria’ and ‘Tyria’ would be synonyms. Herodotus (vii. 63) fathered a sad confusion when he wrote, ‘The people whom the Greeks call Syrians are called Assyrians by the barbarians.’ Assyria is from another root, אשר (Ashur), supposed to signify ‘happiness,’ and applied, as will be seen, to one of the gods. Syria is the hieroglyphic Khar, Kharu, or Khálu, the ‘hinder-land,’ that is, behind or north of Osiris (Egypt), and the Akarru or Akharu of the cuneiforms, both from the ‘Semitic’ root Akhr. ‘Palestine’ (Syria) is simply the ‘land of the Philistines,’ the Zahi of the hieroglyphs and mediæval Filistín; this powerful family, probably connected with the Hyksos, extended eastward from the confines of Egypt, and built Pelusium—‘Philistine-town,’ not town of πηλὸς or mud.
Beyond the Philistines began the Phœnicians—merchants and traders, travellers, explorers, and colonisers—the ‘Englishmen of antiquity.’ When Herodotus brings the Phœnicians from the ‘Erythrean Sea’ he is generally understood to mean the Persian Gulf, where the islands of Tyrus (or Tylos) and Aradus are supposed to be the mother-sites of the homonymous Mediterranean settlements. The popular derivation of ‘Phœnicia’ is from φοῖνιξ, which again may have been, more Græco, a mere translation of the Egyptian Kefeth, Kefthu, Keft, and Kefa, a palm-tree. But the question would be solved if it can be proved that the Phœnicians are the ‘Fenekh’[564] of the monuments and the Moslem El-Fenish. Mariette Pasha derived the term Punoi, Pœni, from Pun or Punt, by which he understood Somali-land; he is easily reconciled with Herodotus by assuming Punt to mean, as most understand it, the opposite Arabian coast.[565] Thus the ‘Port of Punt’ is the mythical Red Sea (primordial matter?), where red Typhon and the red dragon App or Apáp (Apophis) fought against the white god Horus—the prototype of Baldur the Beautiful.[566]