The Hittites Part 2

and the Canaanites in the lowlands looked to them for protection. The Israelites had not as yet thrust themselves between the two great powers of the Oriental world: it was still possible for a Hitt.i.te sovereign to visit Egypt, and for an Egyptian traveller to explore the cities of Canaan.

After sixty-six years of vainglorious splendour the long reign of Ramses II. came to an end (B. C. 1322). The Israelites had toiled for him in building Pithom and Raamses, and on the accession of his son and successor, Meneptah, they demanded permission to depart from Egypt. The history of the Exodus is too well known to be recounted here; it marks the close of the period of conquest and prosperity which Egypt had enjoyed under the kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.

Early in his reign Meneptah had sent corn by sea to the Hitt.i.tes at a time when there was a famine in Syria, showing that the peaceful relations established during the reign of his father were still in force. Despatches dated in his third year also exist, which speak of letters and messengers pa.s.sing to and fro between Egypt and Phoenicia, and make it clear that Gaza was still garrisoned by Egyptian troops. But in the fifth year of his reign Egypt was invaded by a confederacy of white-skinned tribes from Libya and the sh.o.r.es of Asia Minor, who overran the Delta and threatened the very existence of the Egyptian monarchy. Egypt, however, was saved by a battle in which the invading host was almost annihilated, but not before it had itself been half drained of its resources, and weakened correspondingly.

Not many years afterwards the dynasty of Ramses the Oppressor descended to its grave in bloodshed and disaster. Civil war broke out, followed by foreign invasion, and the crown was seized by 'Arisu the Phoenician.'

But happier times again arrived. Once more the Egyptians obeyed a native prince, and the Twentieth Dynasty was founded. Its one great king was Ramses III., who rescued his country from two invasions more formidable even than that which had been beaten back by Meneptah. Like the latter, they were conducted by the Libyans and the nations of the Greek seas, and the invaders were defeated partly on the land, partly on the water.

The maritime confederacy included the Teukrians of the Troad, the Lykians and the Philistines, perhaps also the natives of Sardinia and Sicily. They had flung themselves in the first instance on the coasts of Phoenicia, and spread inland as far as Carchemish. Laden with spoil, they fixed their camp 'in the land of the Amorites,' and then descended upon Egypt. The Hitt.i.tes of Carchemish and the people of Matenau of Naharina came in their train, and a long and terrible battle took place on the sea-sh.o.r.e between Raphia and Pelusium. The Egyptians were victorious; the ships of the enemy were sunk, and their soldiers slain or captured. Egypt was once more filled with captives, and the flame of its former glory flickered again for a moment before finally going out.

The list of prisoners shows that the Hitt.i.te tribes had taken part in the struggle, Carchemish, Aleppo, and Pethor being specially named as having sent contingents to the war. They had probably marched by land, while their allies from Asia Minor and the islands of the Mediterranean had attacked the Egyptian coast in ships. So far as we can gather, the Hitt.i.te populations no longer acknowledged the suzerainty of an imperial sovereign, but were divided into independent states. It would seem, too, that they had lost their hold upon Mysia and the far west. The Tsekkri and the Leku, the Shardaina and the Shakalsha are said to have attacked their cities before proceeding on their southward march. If we can trust the statement, we must conclude that the Hitt.i.te empire had already broken up. The tribes of Asia Minor it had conquered were in revolt, and had carried the war into the homes of their former masters. However this may be, it is certain that from this time forward the power of the Hitt.i.tes in Syria began to wane. Little by little the Aramaean population pushed them back into their northern fastnesses, and throughout the period of the Israelitish judges we never hear even of their name. The Hitt.i.te chieftains advance no longer to the south of Kadesh; and though Israel was once oppressed by a king who had come from the north, he was king of Aram-Naharaim, the Naharina of the Egyptian texts, and not a Hitt.i.te prince.

Where the Egyptian monuments desert us, those of a.s.syria come to our help. The earliest notices of the Hitt.i.tes found in the cuneiform texts are contained in a great work on astronomy and astrology, originally compiled for an early king of Babylonia. The references to 'the king of the Hitt.i.tes,' however, which meet us in it, cannot be ascribed to a remote date. One of the chief objects aimed at by the author (or authors) of the work was to foretell the future, it being supposed that a particular event which had followed a certain celestial phenomenon would be repeated when the phenomenon happened again. Consequently it was the fashion to introduce into the work from time to time fresh notices of events; and some of these glosses, as we may term them, are probably not older than the seventh century B. C. It is, therefore, impossible to determine the exact date to which the allusions to the Hitt.i.te king belong, but there are indications that it is comparatively late. The first clear account that the a.s.syrian inscriptions give us concerning the Hitt.i.tes, to which we can attach a date, is met with in the annals of Tiglath-pileser I.

Tiglath-pileser I. was the most famous monarch of the first a.s.syrian empire, and he reigned about 1110 B. C. He carried his arms northward and westward, penetrating into the bleak and trackless mountains of Armenia, and forcing his way as far as Malatiyeh in Kappadokia. His annals present us with a very full and interesting picture of the geography of these regions at the time of his reign. k.u.mmukh or Komagene, which at that epoch extended southward from Malatiyeh in the direction of Carchemish, was one of the first objects of his attack. 'At the beginning of my reign,' he says, '20,000 Moschians (or men of Meshech) and their five kings, who for fifty years had taken possession of the countries of Alzi and Purukuzzi, which had formerly paid tribute and taxes to a.s.sur my lord--no king (before me) had opposed them in battle--trusted to their strength, and came down and seized the land of k.u.mmukh.' The a.s.syrian king, however, marched against them, and defeated them in a pitched battle with great slaughter, and then proceeded to carry fire and sword through the cities of k.u.mmukh. Its ruler Kili-anteru, the son of Kali-anteru, was captured along with his wives and family; and Tiglath-pileser next proceeded to besiege the stronghold of Urrakhinas. Its prince Sadi-anteru, the son of Khattukhi, 'the Hitt.i.te,' threw himself at the conqueror's feet; his life was spared, and 'the wide-spreading land of k.u.mmukh' became tributary to a.s.syria, objects of bronze being the chief articles it had to offer. About the same time, 4000 troops belonging to the Kaska or Kolkhians and the people of Uruma, both of whom are described as 'soldiers of the Hitt.i.tes' and as having occupied the northern cities of Mesopotamia, submitted voluntarily to the a.s.syrian monarch, and were transported to a.s.syria along with their chariots and their property. Uruma was the Urima of cla.s.sical geography, which lay on the Euphrates a little to the north of Birejik, so that we know the exact locality to which these 'Hitt.i.te soldiers' belonged. In fact, 'Hitt.i.te' must have been a general name given to the inhabitants of all this district; the modern Merash, for instance, lies within the limits of the ancient k.u.mmukh; and, as we shall see, it is from Merash that a long Hitt.i.te inscription has come.

Tiglath-pileser attacked k.u.mmukh a second time, and on this occasion penetrated still further into the mountain fastnesses of the Hitt.i.te country. In a third campaign his armies came in sight of Malatiyeh itself, but the king contented himself with exacting a small yearly tribute from the city, 'having had pity upon it,' as he tells us, though more probably the truth was that he found himself unable to take it by storm. But he never succeeded in forcing his way across the fords of the Euphrates, which were commanded by the great fortress of Carchemish. Once he harried the land of Mitanni or Naharina, slaying and spoiling 'in one day' from Carchemish southwards to a point that faced the deserts of the nomad Sukhi, the Shuhites of the Book of Job. It was on this occasion that he killed ten elephants in the neighbourhood of Harran and on the banks of the Khabour, besides four wild bulls which he hunted with arrows and spears 'in the land of Mitanni and in the city of Araziqi[4], which lies opposite to the land of the Hitt.i.tes.'

Towards the end of the twelfth century before our era, therefore, the Hitt.i.tes were still strong enough to keep one of the mightiest of the a.s.syrian kings in check. It is true that they no longer obeyed a single head; it is also true that that portion of them which was settled in the land of k.u.mmukh was overrun by the a.s.syrian armies, and forced to pay tribute to the a.s.syrian invader. But Carchemish compelled the respect of Tiglath-pileser; he never ventured to approach its walls or to cross the river which it was intended to defend. His way was barred to the west, and he never succeeded in traversing the high road which led to Phoenicia and Palestine.

[4] Called Eragiza in cla.s.sical geography and in the Talmud.

After the death of Tiglath-pileser I. the a.s.syrian inscriptions fail us.

His successors allowed the empire to fall into decay, and more than two hundred years elapsed before the curtain is lifted again. These two hundred years had witnessed the rise and fall of the kingdom of David and Solomon as well as the growth of a new power, that of the Syrians of Damascus.

Damascus rose on the ruins of the empire of Solomon. But its rise also shows plainly that the power of the Hitt.i.tes in Syria was beginning to wane. Hadad-ezer, king of Zobah, the antagonist of David, had been able to send for aid to the Arameans of Naharina, on the eastern side of the Euphrates (2 Sam. x. 16), and with them he had marched to Helam, in which it is possible to see the name of Aleppo[5]. It is clear that the Hitt.i.tes were no longer able to keep the Aramean population in subjection, or to prevent an Aramean prince of Zobah from expelling them from the territory they had once made their own. Indeed, it may be that in one pa.s.sage of the Old Testament allusion is made to an attack which Hadad-ezer was preparing against them. When it is stated that he was overthrown by David, 'as he was going to turn his hand against the river Euphrates' (2 Sam. viii. 3), it may be that it was against the Hitt.i.tes of Carchemish that his armies were about to be directed. At any rate, support for this view is found in a further statement of the sacred historian. 'When Toi king of Hamath,' we learn, 'heard that David had smitten all the host of Hadad-ezer, then Toi sent Joram his son unto king David, to salute him, and to bless him, because he had fought against Hadad-ezer and smitten him; for Hadad-ezer had wars with Toi' (2 Sam. viii. 9, 10). Now we know from the monuments that have been discovered on the spot that Hamath was once a Hitt.i.te city, and there is no reason for not believing that it was still in the possession of the Hitt.i.tes in the age of David. Its Syrian enemies would in that case have been the same as the enemies of David, and a common danger would thus have united it with Israel in an alliance which ended only in its overthrow by the a.s.syrians.

[5] Called Khalman in the a.s.syrian texts. Josephus changes Helam into the proper name Khalaman.

As late as the time of Uzziah, we are told by the a.s.syrian inscriptions, the Jewish king was in league with Hamath, and the last independent ruler of Hamath was Yahu-bihdi, a name in which we recognise that of the G.o.d of Israel. Indeed, the very fact that the Syrians imagined that 'the kings of the Hitt.i.tes' were coming to the rescue of Samaria, when besieged by the forces of Damascus, goes to show that Israel and the Hitt.i.tes were regarded as natural friends, whose natural adversaries were the Arameans of Syria. As the power and growth of Israel had been built up on the conquest and subjugation of the Semitic populations of Palestine, so too the power of the Hitt.i.tes had been gained at the expense of their Semitic neighbours. The triumph of Syria was a blow alike to the Hitt.i.tes of Carchemish and to the Hebrews of Samaria and Jerusalem.

With a.s.sur-natsir-pal, whose reign extended from B. C. 885 to 860, contemporaneous a.s.syrian history begins afresh. His campaigns and conquests rivalled those of Tiglath-pileser I., and indeed exceeded them both in extent and in brutality. Like his predecessor, he exacted tribute from k.u.mmukh as well as from the kings of the country in which Malatiyeh was situated; but with better fortune than Tiglath-pileser he succeeded in pa.s.sing the Euphrates, and obliging Sangara of Carchemish to pay him homage. It is clear that Carchemish was no longer as strong as it had been two centuries before, and that the power of its defenders was gradually vanishing away. There was still, however, a small Hitt.i.te population on the eastern bank of the Euphrates; at all events, a.s.sur-natsir-pal describes the tribe of Bakhian on that side of the river as. .h.i.tt.i.te, and it was only after receiving tribute from them that he crossed the stream in boats and approached the land of Gargamis or Carchemish. But his threatened a.s.sault upon the Hitt.i.te stronghold was bought off with rich and numerous presents. Twenty talents of silver--the favourite metal of the Hitt.i.te princes--'cups of gold, chains of gold, blades of gold, 100 talents of copper, 250 talents of iron, G.o.ds of copper in the form of wild bulls, bowls of copper, libation cups of copper, a ring of copper, the mult.i.tudinous furniture of the royal palace, of which the like was never received, couches and thrones of rare woods and ivory, 200 slave-girls, garments of variegated cloth and linen, ma.s.ses of black crystal and blue crystal, precious stones, the tusks of elephants, a white chariot, small images of gold,'

as well as ordinary chariots and war-horses,--such were the treasures poured into the lap of the a.s.syrian monarch by the wealthy but unwarlike king of Carchemish. They give us an idea of the wealth to which the city had attained through its favourable position on the high-road of commerce that ran from the east to the west. The uninterrupted prosperity of several centuries had filled it with merchants and riches; in later days we find the a.s.syrian inscriptions speaking of 'the maneh of Carchemish' as one of the recognised standards of value. Carchemish had become a city of merchants, and no longer felt itself able to oppose by arms the trained warriors of the a.s.syrian king.

Quitting Carchemish, a.s.sur-natsir-pal pursued his march westwards, and after pa.s.sing the land of Akhanu on his left, fell upon the town of Azaz near Aleppo, which belonged to the king of the Patinians. The latter people were of Hitt.i.te descent, and occupied the country between the river Afrin and the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Antioch. The a.s.syrian armies crossed the Afrin and appeared before the walls of the Patinian capital.

Large bribes, however, induced them to turn away southward, and to advance along the Orontes in the direction of the Lebanon. Here a.s.sur-natsir-pal received the tribute of the Phoenician cities.

Shalmaneser II., the son and successor of a.s.sur-natsir-pal, continued the warlike policy of his father (B. C. 860-825). The Hitt.i.te princes were again a special object of attack. Year after year Shalmaneser led his armies against them, and year after year did he return home laden with spoil. The aim of his policy is not difficult to discover. He sought to break the power of the Hitt.i.te race in Syria, to possess himself of the fords across the Euphrates and the high-road which brought the merchandise of Phoenicia to the traders of Nineveh, and eventually to divert the commerce of the Mediterranean to his own country. By the overthrow of the Patinians he made himself master of the cedar forests of Ama.n.u.s, and his palaces were erected with the help of their wood. Sangara of Carchemish, it is true, perceived his danger, and a league of the Hitt.i.te princes was formed to resist the common foe.

Contingents came not only from k.u.mmukh and from the Patinians, but from Cilicia and the mountain ranges of Asia Minor. It was, however, of no avail. The Hitt.i.te forces were driven from the field, and their leaders were compelled to purchase peace by the payment of tribute. Once more Carchemish gave up its gold and silver, its bronze and copper, its purple vestures and curiously-adorned thrones, and the daughter of Sangara himself was carried away to the harem of the a.s.syrian king.

Pethor, the city of Balaam, was turned into an a.s.syrian colony, its very name being changed to an a.s.syrian one. The way into Hamath and Phoenicia at last lay open to the a.s.syrian host. At Aleppo Shalmaneser offered sacrifices to the native G.o.d Hadad, and then descended upon the cities of Hamath. At Karkar he was met by a great confederacy formed by the kings of Hamath and Damascus, to which Ahab of Israel had contributed 2000 chariots and 10,000 men. But nothing could withstand the onslaught of the a.s.syrian veterans. The enemy were scattered like chaff, and the river Orontes was reddened with their blood. The battle of Karkar (in B.C. 854) brought the a.s.syrians into contact with Damascus, and caused Jehu on a later occasion to send tribute to the a.s.syrian king.

The subsequent history of Shalmaneser concerns us but little. The power of the Hitt.i.tes south of the Taurus had been broken for ever. The Semite had avenged himself for the conquest of his country by the northern mountaineers centuries before. They no longer formed a barrier which cut off the east from the west, and prevented the Semites of a.s.syria and Babylon from meeting the Semites of Phoenicia and Palestine. The intercourse which had been interrupted in the age of the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt could now be again resumed. Carchemish ceased to command the fords of the Euphrates, and was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of the a.s.syrian invader. In fact, the Hitt.i.tes of Syria had become little more than tributaries of the a.s.syrian monarch. When an insurrection broke out among the Patinians, in consequence of which the rightful king was killed and his throne seized by an usurper, Shalmaneser claimed and exercised the right to interfere. A new sovereign was appointed by him, and he set up an image of himself in the capital city of the Patinian people.

The change that had come over the relations between the a.s.syrians and the Hitt.i.te population is marked by a curious fact. From the time of Shalmaneser onwards, the name of Hitt.i.te is no longer used by the a.s.syrian writers in a correct sense. It is extended so as to embrace all the inhabitants of Northern Syria on the western side of the Euphrates, and subsequently came to include the inhabitants of Palestine as well.

Khatta or 'Hitt.i.te' became synonymous with Syrian. How this happened is not difficult to explain. The first populations of Syria with whom the a.s.syrians had come into contact were of Hitt.i.te origin. When their power was broken, and the a.s.syrian armies had forced their way past the barrier they had so long presented to the invader, it was natural that the states next traversed by the a.s.syrian generals should be supposed also to belong to them. Moreover, many of these states were actually dependent on the Hitt.i.te princes, though inhabited by an Aramean people.

The Hitt.i.tes had imposed their yoke upon an alien race of Aramean descent, and accordingly in Northern Syria Hitt.i.te and Aramean cities and tribes were intermingled together. 'I took,' says Shalmaneser, 'what the men of the land of the Hitt.i.tes had called the city of Pethor (_Pitru_), which is upon the river Sajur (_Sagura_), on the further side of the Euphrates, and the city of Mudkinu, on the eastern side of the Euphrates, which Tiglath-pileser (I.), the royal forefather who went before me, had united to my country, and a.s.sur-rab-buri king of a.s.syria and the king of the Arameans had taken (from it) by a treaty.' At a later date Shalmaneser marched from Pethor to Aleppo, and there offered sacrifices to 'the G.o.d of the city,' Hadad-Rimmon, whose name betrays the Semitic character of its population. The Hitt.i.tes, in short, had never been more than a conquering upper cla.s.s in Syria, like the Normans in Sicily; and as time went on the subject population gained more and more upon them. Like all similar aristocracies, they tended to die out or to be absorbed into the native population of the country.

They still held possession of Carchemish, however, and the decadence of the first a.s.syrian empire gave them an unexpected respite. But the revolution which placed Tiglath-pileser III. on the throne of a.s.syria, in B. C. 725, brought with it the final doom of Hitt.i.te supremacy.

a.s.syria entered upon a new career of conquest, and under its new rulers established an empire which extended over the whole of Western Asia. In B. C. 717 Carchemish finally fell before the armies of Sargon, and its last king Pisiris became the captive of the a.s.syrian king. Its trade and wealth pa.s.sed into a.s.syrian hands, it was colonised by a.s.syrians and placed under an a.s.syrian satrap. The great Hitt.i.te stronghold on the Euphrates, which had been for so many centuries the visible sign of their power and southern conquests, became once more the possession of a Semitic people. The long struggle that had been carried on between the Hitt.i.tes and the Semites was at an end; the Semite had triumphed, and the Hitt.i.te was driven back into the mountains from whence he had come.

But he did not yield without a struggle. The year following the capture of Carchemish saw Sargon confronted by a great league of the northern peoples, Meshech, Tubal, Melitene and others, under the leadership of the king of Ararat. The league, however, was shattered in a decisive battle, the king of Ararat committed suicide, and in less than three years Komagene was annexed to the a.s.syrian empire. The Semite of Nineveh was supreme in the Eastern world.

Ararat was the name given by the a.s.syrians to the district in the immediate neighbourhood of Lake Van, as well as to the country to the south of it. It was not until post-Biblical days that the name was extended to the north, so that the modern Mount Ararat obtained a t.i.tle which originally belonged to the Kurdish range in the south. But Ararat was not the native name of the country. This was Biainas or Bianas, a name which still survives in that of Lake Van. Numerous inscriptions are scattered over the country, written in cuneiform characters borrowed from Nineveh in the time of a.s.sur-natsir-pal or his son Shalmaneser, but in a language which bears no resemblance to that of a.s.syria. They record the building of temples and palaces, the offerings made to the G.o.ds, and the campaigns of the Vannic kings. Among the latter mention is made of campaigns against the Khate or Hitt.i.tes.

The first of these campaigns was conducted by a king called Menuas, who reigned in the ninth century before our era. He overran the land of Alzi, and then found himself in the land of the Hitt.i.tes. Here he plundered the cities of Surisilis and Tarkhi-gamas, belonging to the Hitt.i.te prince Sada-halis, and captured a number of soldiers, whom he dedicated to the service of his G.o.d Khaldis. On another occasion he marched as far as the city of Malatiyeh, and after pa.s.sing through the country of the Hitt.i.tes, caused an inscription commemorating his conquests to be engraved on the cliffs of Palu. Palu is situated on the northern bank of the Euphrates, about midway between Malatiyeh and Van, and as it lies to the east of the ancient district of Alzi, we can form some idea of the exact geographical position to which the Hitt.i.tes of Menuas must be a.s.signed. His son and successor, Argistis I, again made war upon them, and we gather from one of his inscriptions that the city of Malatiyeh was itself included among their fortresses. The 'land of the Hitt.i.tes,' according to the statements of the Vannic kings, stretched along the banks of the Euphrates from Palu on the east as far as Malatiyeh on the west.

The Hitt.i.tes of the a.s.syrian monuments lived to the south-west of this region, spreading through Komagene to Carchemish and Aleppo. The Egyptian records bring them yet further south to Kadesh on the Orontes, while the Old Testament carries the name into the extreme south of Palestine. It is evident, therefore, that we must see in the Hitt.i.te tribes fragments of a race whose original seat was in the ranges of the Taurus, but who had pushed their way into the warm plains and valleys of Syria and Palestine. They belonged originally to Asia Minor, not to Syria, and it was conquest only which gave them a right to the name of Syrians. 'Hitt.i.te' was their true t.i.tle, and whether the tribes to which it belonged lived in Judah or on the Orontes, at Carchemish or in the neighbourhood of Palu, this was the t.i.tle under which they were known.

We must regard it as a national name, which clung to them in all their conquests and migrations, and marked them out as a peculiar people, distinct from the other races of the Eastern world. It is now time to see what their own monuments have to tell us regarding them, and the influence they exercised upon the history of mankind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SLAB FOUND AT MERASH.]

CHAPTER III.

THE HITt.i.tE MONUMENTS.

It was a warm and sunny September morning when I left the little town of Nymphi near Smyrna with a strong escort of Turkish soldiers, and made my way to the Pa.s.s of Karabel. The Pa.s.s of Karabel is a narrow defile, shut in on either side by lofty cliffs, through which ran the ancient road from Ephesos in the south to Sardes and Smyrna in the north. The Greek historian Herodotos tells us that the Egyptian conqueror Sesostris had left memorials of himself in this place. 'Two images cut by him in the rock' were to be seen beside the roads which led 'from Ephesos to Phokaea and from Sardes to Smyrna. On either side a man is carved, a little over three feet in height, who holds a spear in the right hand and a bow in the left. The rest of his accoutrement is similar, for it is Egyptian and Ethiopian, and from one shoulder to the other, right across the breast, Egyptian hieroglyphics have been cut which declare: "I have won this land with my shoulders."'

These two images were the object of my journey. One of them had been discovered by Renouard in 1839, and shortly afterwards sketched by Texier; the other had been found by Dr. Beddoe in 1856. But visitors to the Pa.s.s in which they were engraved were few and far between; the cliffs on either side were the favourite haunt of brigands, and thirty soldiers were not deemed too many to protect my safety. My work of exploration had to be carried on under the shelter of their guns, for more than twenty bandits were lurking under the brushwood above.

The sculpture sketched by Texier had subsequently been photographed by Mr. Svoboda. It represents a warrior whose height is rather more than life-size, and who stands in profile with the right foot planted in front of him, in the att.i.tude of one who is marching. In his right hand he holds a spear, behind his left shoulder is slung a bow, and the head is crowned with a high peaked cap. He is clad in a tunic which reaches to the knees, and his feet are shod with boots with turned-up ends. The whole figure is cut in deep relief in an artificial niche, and between the spear and the face are three lines of hieroglyphic characters. The figure faces south, and is carved on the face of the eastern cliff of Karabel.

It had long been recognised that the hieroglyphics were not those of Egypt, and Professor Perrot had also drawn attention to the striking resemblance between the style of art represented by this sculpture and that represented by certain rock-sculptures in Kappadokia, as well as by the sculptured image of a warrior discovered by himself at a place called Ghiaur-kalessi, 'the castle of the infidel,' in Phrygia, which is practically identical in form and character with the sculptured warrior of Karabel.

What was the origin of this art, or who were the people it commemorated, was a matter of uncertainty. A few weeks, however, before my visit to the Pa.s.s of Karabel, I announced[6] that I had come to the conclusion that the art was. .h.i.tt.i.te, and that the hieroglyphics accompanying the figure at Karabel would turn out, when carefully examined, to be Hitt.i.te also. The primary purpose of my visit to the pa.s.s was to verify this conclusion.

[6] In the _Academy_ of Aug. 16th, 1879.

Let us now see how I had arrived at it. The story is a long one, and in order to understand it, it is necessary to transport ourselves from the Pa.s.s of Karabel in Western Asia Minor to Hamah, the site of the ancient Hamath, in the far east. It was here that the first discovery was made which has led by slow degrees to the reconstruction of the Hitt.i.te empire, and a recognition of the important part once played by the Hitt.i.tes in the history of the civilised world.

As far back as the beginning of the present century (in 1812) the great Oriental traveller Burckhardt had noticed a block of black basalt covered with strange-looking hieroglyphics built into the corner of a house in one of the bazaars of Hamah[7]. But the discovery was forgotten, and the European residents in Hamah, like the travellers who visited the city, were convinced that 'no antiquities' were to be found there. Nearly sixty years later, however, when the American Palestine Exploration Society was first beginning its work, the American consul, Mr. Johnson, and an American missionary, Mr. Jessup, accidentally lighted again upon this stone, and further learned that three other stones of similar character, and inscribed with similar hieroglyphics, existed elsewhere in Hamah. One of them, of very great length, was believed to be endowed with healing properties. Rheumatic patients, Mohammedans and Christians alike, were in the habit of stretching themselves upon it, in the firm belief that their pains would be absorbed into the stone. The other inscribed stones were also regarded with veneration, which naturally increased when it was known that they were being sought after by the Franks; and the two Americans found it impossible to see them all, much less to take copies of the inscriptions they bore. They had to be content with the miserable attempts at reproducing them made by a native painter, one of which was afterwards published in America. The publication served to awaken the interest of scholars in the newly discovered inscriptions, and efforts were made by Sir Richard Burton and others to obtain correct impressions of them. All was in vain, however, and it is probable that the fanaticism or greed of the people of Hamah would have successfully resisted all attempts to procure trustworthy copies of the texts, had not a lucky accident brought Dr. William Wright to the spot. It is to his energy and devotion that the preservation of these precious relics of Hitt.i.te literature may be said to be due. 'On the 10th of November, 1872,' he tells us, he 'set out from Damascus, intent on securing the Hamah inscriptions. The Sublime Porte, seized by a periodic fit of reforming zeal, had appointed an honest man, Subhi Pasha, to be governor of Syria.

Subhi Pasha brought a conscience to his work, and, not content with redressing wrongs that succeeded in forcing their way into his presence, resolved to visit every district of his province, in order that he might check the spoiler and discover the wants of the people. He invited me to accompany him on a tour to Hamah, and I gladly accepted the invitation.'

Along with Mr. Green, the English Consul, accordingly, Dr. Wright joined the party of the Pasha; and, fearing that the same fate might befall the Hamath stones as had befallen the Moabite Stone, which had been broken into pieces to save it from the Europeans, persuaded him to buy them, and send them as a present to the Museum at Constantinople. When the news became known in Hamah, there were murmurings long and deep against the Pasha, and it became necessary, not only to appeal to the cupidity and fear of the owners of the stones, but also to place them under the protection of a guard of soldiers the night before the work of removing them was to commence.

[7] _Travels in Syria_, p. 146.

The night was an anxious one to Dr. Wright; but when day dawned, the stones were still safe, and the labour of their removal was at once begun. It 'was effected by an army of shouting men, who kept the city in an uproar during the whole day. Two of them had to be taken out of the walls of inhabited houses, and one of them was so large that it took fifty men and four oxen a whole day to drag it a mile. The other stones were split in two, and the inscribed parts were carried on the backs of camels to the' court of the governor's palace. Here they could be cleaned and copied at leisure and in safety.

But the work of cleaning them from the acc.u.mulated dirt of ages occupied the greater part of two days. Then came the task of making casts of the inscriptions, with the help of gypsum which some natives had been bribed to bring from the neighbourhood. At length, however, the work was completed, and Dr. Wright had the satisfaction of sending home to England two sets of casts of these ancient and mysterious texts, one for the British Museum, the other for the Palestine Exploration Fund, while the originals themselves were safely deposited in the Museum of Constantinople. It was now time to inquire what the inscriptions meant, and who could have been the authors of them.

Dr. Wright at once suggested that they were the work of the Hitt.i.tes, and that they were memorials of Hitt.i.te writing. But his suggestion was buried in the pages of a periodical better known to theologians than to Orientalists, and the world agreed to call the writing by the name of Hamathite. It specially attracted the notice of Dr. Hayes Ward of New York, who discovered that the inscriptions were written in _boustrophedon_ fashion, that is to say, that the lines turned alternately from right to left and from left to right, like oxen when plowing a field, the first line beginning on the right and the line following on the left. The lines read, in fact, from the direction towards which the characters look.

Dr. Hayes Ward also made another discovery. In the ruins of the great palace of Nineveh Sir A. H. Layard had discovered numerous clay impressions of seals once attached to doc.u.ments of papyrus or parchment.

The papyrus and parchment have long since perished, but the seals remain, with the holes through which the strings pa.s.sed that attached them to the original deeds. Some of the seals are a.s.syrian, some Phoenician, others again are Egyptian, but there are a few which have upon them strange characters such as had never been met with before. It was these characters which Dr. Hayes Ward perceived to be the same as those found upon the stones of Hamah, and it was accordingly supposed that the seals were of Hamathite origin.