Hittite Empire

“ Pharaoh's claim to sovereignty was disputed by adversaries as powerful as the ruler of Egypt, if indeed not more powerful, and there was always a refuge among them for those who were oppressed by the Egyptian king. When, however, we speak of a Hittite empire, we must understand clearly what that means. It was not an empire like that of Rome, where the subject provinces were consolidated together under a central authority, obeying the same laws and the same supreme head. ”

“ In trying to work out the story of the decline and fall of the Hittite power, we are faced with the same difficulty that enshrouded the whole problem of the Hittites until recent discoveries shed the light of [54] internal documentary evidence upon the period of their empire—namely, that for the most part only the events connected with certain of their frontier lands came at all within the horizon of the Assyrian and the Greek historians, and these are seen by us with relative disproportion. ”

“ As has been indicated, the greatest puzzle of ancient history is that of the Hittite empire, which seems to have ruled all Asia Minor at some uncertain time, and to have extended over Syria and Palestine. ”

“ At the time (?) of the treaty which Kheta-sira, the great king of the Kheta, made....'
This compact of offensive and defensive alliance proves more forcibly than any description the position to which the Hittite empire had attained. It ranked side by side with the Egypt of Ramses, the last great Pharaoh who ever ruled over the land of the Nile. With Egypt it had contested the sovereignty of Western Asia, and had compelled the Egyptian monarch to consent to peace. Egypt and the Hittites were now the two leading powers of the world. ”

“ A revolution had thus occurred in Africa similar to that which had taken place a century previously in Naharaim, when Sapalulu founded the Hittite empire. A great kingdom rose into being where no state capable of disturbing Egyptian control had existed before. The danger was serious. The Hittites, separated from the Nile by the whole breadth of Kharu, could not directly threaten any of the Egyptian cities; but the Libyans, lords of the desert, were in contact with the Delta, and could in a few days fall upon any point in the valley they chose. ”

“ We may ... rest satisfied with the conclusion that the existence of a Hittite empire extending into Asia Minor is certified, not only by the records of ancient Egypt, but also by Hittite monuments which still exist. In the days of Ramses II., when the children of Israel were groaning under the tasks allotted to them, the enemies of their oppressors were already exercising a power and a domination which rivalled that of Egypt. The Egyptian monarch soon learned to his cost that the Hittite prince was as 'great' a king as himself, and could summon to his aid the inhabitants of the unknown north. ”

“ William Wright independently started the same idea, and gave it expression in his book, The Empire of the Hittites, 1884, 2d ed., 1885. At this period it was impossible to discern more than that there had been a widely scattered Hittite civilization, which might have been an empire.
2. Hittite Monuments.—This civilization, it was seen, had left its monuments at Hamath in Syria, at Carchemish on the Euphrates, at various points in ancient Cappadocia, Lycaonia, and Phrygia, [Pg 69] as well as near Smyrna in Asia Minor and on the Lydian mountains to the west of Sardis. ”

“ Their main Syrian drive occurred in the fourteenth century, when Shubbiluliuma subdued and incorporated many Hyksos and Hurrians into his state. He succeeded in expelling the Egyptians, weakened by theological disputes, from their Syrian holdings, and established a stronghold at Carchemish on the Euphrates from which the Hittites dominated northern Syria. When the Hittite empire was overthrown around 1200 B.C. by invaders from the Aegean, petty native states arose in northern Syria, only to fall one by one to the expanding power of Assyria. ”

“ The changes which had just taken place in Kummukh and Nairi had fully aroused the numerous petty sovereigns of the neighbourhood. The bonds which kept them together had not been completely severed at the downfall of the Hittite empire, and a certain sense of unity still lingered among them in spite of their continual feuds; they constituted, in fact, a sort of loose confederation, whose members never failed to help one another when they were threatened by a common enemy. ”

“ The passage-way along the battlements must have passed through the towers.
(After Puchstein.)
It was not until the reign of Mursil, a younger son of Shubbiluliuma, that the Hittite empire came into armed conflict with Egypt. A change of dynasty in [Pg 235] the latter country, and the restoration of her old religion, had strengthened the government, and now led to renewed attempts on her part at recovering her lost territory. On the first occasion the Hittites were defeated by Seti I. in the north of Syria, and Egypt reoccupied Phoenicia and Canaan. ”

“ But the Canaanite population was already threatened by an enemy from the north. These were the Hittites, to whom references are made in several of the despatches from Syria and Phœnicia. After the weakening of the Egyptian power, in consequence of the religious troubles which followed the death of Khu-en-Aten, the Hittites were enabled to complete their conquests in the south, and to drive a wedge between the Semites of the East and the West. With the revival of the Egyptian empire under the rulers of the nineteenth dynasty the southward course of Hittite conquest was checked ”

“ Those only who enjoyed the quiet of a peaceful and wealthy life would have gratified the taste for animals which the monuments reveal, by importing an animal like the monkey from the distant south. The Hittites were doubtless a warlike people when they first swooped down upon the plains of Syria, but they soon began to cultivate the arts of peace and to become one of the great mercantile peoples of the ancient world.
We learn from the Books of Kings that horses and chariots were exported from Egypt for the Hittite princes, the Israelites serving as intermediaries in the trade. ”

“ From Northern Syria to Southern Palestine the Egyptian governors and vassal rulers vainly attempt to quell rebellion and to hold back invading tribes.
The source of a good deal of the trouble was the great Hittite power, away to the north in the mountains of Anatolia. The Hittite kings had formed a confederation of their own peoples north of the Taurus, and they were now pressing southwards into Phœnicia and the Lebanon. They coveted the fertile plains of Northern Syria, and Egypt was the power that blocked their path. ”

“ It is evident, therefore, that we must see in the Hittite 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. 'Hittite' was their true title, 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 title under which they were known. ”

“ Unfortunately we have no collateral evidence as to the plateau of Asia Minor to help in answering these questions; yet if the Hittite culture had taken root in the north of Syria before the second millennium B.C., it may readily be believed that it had been planted equally long upon the tableland, where in historic times its chief power is found. The high standard of Hittite culture, as revealed by their own archives and monuments at the dawn of their history in the fourteenth century B.C., argues in itself a long period of settlement and development under civilised conditions ”

“ The name Hittite is commonly employed in three [318] senses which we must distinguish: it may be used in reference to the whole confederacy of peoples as depicted in the Egyptian scenes, or to the smaller and more homogeneous band of Hittite tribes, or to the dominant tribe of Hatti within the Halys, which seems to have given its name in antiquity to the whole. The Egyptian artists indeed recognised the mixed character of the confederates in their day, and noted some of their peculiarities, but did not distinguish between them with sufficient clearness or consistency for our purpose. ”

“ Our culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were derived from the Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor. The Hittite warriors who still guard the Pass of Karabel, on the very threshold of Asia, are symbols of the position occupied by the race in the education of mankind. The Hittites carried the time-worn civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the grey dawn of European history. ”

“ After 950 B.C. the Hittites of North Syria, having shaken off the last semblance of Assyrian authority, revived their power, and enjoyed a full century of independence and prosperity. In Cappadocia their kinsmen had freed themselves at an earlier period from the yoke of the Muski, who had suffered so severely at the hands of Tiglath-pileser I. The Hittite buildings and rock sculptures of this period testify to the enduring character of the ancient civilization of the "Hatti". ”

“ In the neighbourhood of Carchemish Hittites and Arameans were mingled together, and Pethor was at once a Hittite and an Aramean town. In short, the Hittites in Syria were like a conquering race everywhere; they formed merely the governing and upper class, which became smaller and smaller the further removed they were from their original seats. Like the Normans in Sicily or the Etruscans in ancient Italy, they tended gradually to disappear or else to be absorbed into the subject race. ”

“ They appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. ”

“ We now know that the Hittites invaded Babylonia during the reign of Samsu-ditana, the last king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and that this was the indirect cause of the fall of this dynasty (about 1750 B.C.) . Scholars are beginning to suspect that the invasion of Egypt at this time was either led by the Hittites or [Pg 53] due to Hittite pressure back of the tribes in Syria-Palestine. Their kings were called Hyksos, and from a doubtful etymology of this name they are still styled the "Shepherd kings." ”

“ We may expect to discover hereafter that the influence exercised by the Hittites upon their Syrian neighbours was almost as profound as that exercised by them upon their neighbours in Asia Minor, and through these upon the fathers of the Greeks. For the present, however, we must be content with the startling results that have already been obtained in this new field of research. A people that once played an important part in the history of the civilised world has been again revealed to us after centuries of oblivion, and a forgotten empire has been again brought to light. ”

“ The Hittite kingdom acted as a kind of buffer between the Nile valley and these nations, both civilized and barbarous; it was a strongly armed force on the route of the invaders, and would henceforth serve as a protecting barrier, through which if the enemy were able to pass it would only be with his strength broken or weakened by a previous encounter. The sovereigns loyally observed the peace which they had sworn to each other, and in his XXXIVth year the marriage of Ramses with the eldest daughter of Khâtusaru strengthened their friendly relations. ”

“ It was indeed to Hattusil’s intervention that the Amorite prince owed his life at the time of his disaffection; and now, with a Hittite princess (Gashuliawi) for wife, [347] Put-akhi was united in his allegiance by a double bond.
Later in his reign, about 1271 B.C., Hattusil succeeded in bringing about a definite offensive and defensive alliance, and treaty of extradition, ‘a good treaty for friendship and concord, which was to assure peace, for a longer period than beforetime’ with the Pharaoh. ”

“ In the meanwhile the Hittite states found the opportunity for a remarkable revival. The readiness of these peoples, though no longer politically united, to combine against a common enemy is well shown by the experiences of the Assyrian king, who had no sooner crossed the frontier at Malatia, than he was assailed on his right flank by twenty-three chieftains, [915] while in front lay sixty others whose domains extended to the Upper Sea. ”

“ Though for the frontier wars with Egypt, fought out mostly near the Lebanon, the Hittite doubtless employed a strategic base in northern Syria, such as Carchemish, yet for his Syrian campaigns, and for the general control of his Syrian dependencies, it becomes almost self-evident that there must have been one route at least available for wheeled traffic connecting with the interior and the capital. ”

“ In its turn Greek has been superseded in these modern times by Turkish.
Languages, however, may change and perish, but the races that have spoken them remain. The characteristics of race, once acquired, are slow to alter. Though the last echoes of Hittite speech have died away centuries ago, the Hittite race still inhabits the region from which in ancient days it poured down upon the cities of the south. ”