Uriah the Hittite

“ Erelong they began to cause the Assyrians considerable inquietude on their northern frontier, and about 804 B.C. Menuas drove back the Assyrians and attacked the Hittites. Crossing the Euphrates the Urartians exacted tribute from Malatia. [969] The events of the next generation are obscure; but in 776 the Hittite tribes of Syria, notably those under the Amanus, took advantage of the discomfiture of the Assyrians at the hands of the new Urartian king, Argistis of Ararat, to throw off their allegiance; and within a few years most of them were free of the Assyrian yoke. ”

“ But while the art of the Hittites was essentially Babylonian in origin, it was profoundly modified in the hands of the Hittite artists. The deities, indeed, were made to ride on the backs of animals, as upon Babylonian cylinders, the walls of the palaces were adorned with long rows of bas-reliefs, as in Chaldæa and Assyria, and there was the same tendency to arrange animals face to face in heraldic style ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is significant that the peoples whom we suspect from their dress to have descended from the mountains should preserve also in this way the unconscious memory of their ancestral deity. Another figure of like kind follows, but it is the two winged figures that particularly attract our notice. [570] Here in Hittite art we have clearly deities from across the Taurus, [571] claiming place in the ceremony here depicted just as they claim separate mention in the list of Hittite deities in the Egyptian treaty. [572] There follows the image of a priest-king ”

“ One of the bravest of his captains tells us on the walls of his tomb how he had captured prisoners in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, and had waded through the waters of the Euphrates when his master assaulted the mighty Hittite fortress of Carchemish. Kadesh on the Orontes had already fallen, and for a time all Western Asia did homage to the Egyptian monarch, even the king of Assyria sending him presents and courting, as it would seem, his alliance. The Egyptian empire touched the land of Naharina on the east and the 'great land of the Hittites' on the north. ”

“ Assyria 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 Assyrian king. Its trade and wealth passed into Assyrian hands, it was colonised by Assyrians and placed under an Assyrian satrap. The great Hittite 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. ”

“ Of all invasions from the north, that of the Hittites is the most important and the most confusing. The Hittites appear to have moved south from Cappadocia about 2000 B.C., and they are found warring against Babylonia in the eighteenth century. A Hittite dynasty flourished at Mittanni 1420-1411 and in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries they conquered and largely occupied Syria [1154] . Invasions of Phrygians and Philistines from the west followed the breaking up of the Hittite Empire. The last great Semitic migration was the most widespread of all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Hittite occupation of Hamath seems to have lasted for a short time only. Its king, who appears on the Assyrian monuments as the contemporary of Ahab, has the Semitic name of Irkhulena, 'the moon-god belongs to us'; and his successors were equally of Semitic origin. ”

“ These states appear to have reached their zenith after the fall of the great Hittite dynasty which had its capital at Boghaz Koi. Doubtless as time goes on we shall learn of the existence of many other small Hittite kingdoms which flourished at one time or another. At some time, either when the Hyksos were making their way into Egypt or when Subbiluliuma was pushing southward into Syria, the Hittites mentioned in the Old Testament must have made some small settlements in Palestine. ”

“ Babylonia, where the kings of Karduniash sat upon the throne, was too distant to give occasion for anxiety, and in addition the broad tract subject to the Amorite régime was wedged between their respective spheres of influence. In the East the tragic development of affairs among the Mitannians, [781] the murder of Tushratta, the flight of the heir-apparent from the usurper and patricide, Sutatarra, and the invasion of the land by the Assyrians and by the mountaineers of Alshe, were a series of events all favourable to the Hittite cause. ”

“ We have also met with הצּיל construed with מן of the sin in Psa 39:9. He had given Uriah over to death in order to possess himself of Bathsheba. And the accusation of his conscience spoke not merely of adultery, but also of murder. Nevertheless the consciousness of sin no longer smites him to the earth, Mercy has lifted him up; he prays only that she would complete her work in him, then shall his tongue exultingly praise (רנּן with an accusative of the object, as in Psa 59:17) God's righteousness, which, in accordance with the promise, takes the sinner under its protection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the Taurus we descended firstly to the north of Syria, because in the development of Hittite studies this region first attracted attention through the references to it in Egyptian and Assyrian history. But modern research has added to our knowledge of the Hittite lands a wider and different territory on the other side. There the descent to the interior of Asia Minor from the mountains is not so marked, for even around the foot of snow-capped Argæus, the most advanced pinnacle of the system, the plateau is still four thousand feet above the sea. ”

“ They refer chiefly to the brigandage of the Amorites, whom the Hittite king is asked to keep in order, and punish as being his vassals. It is interesting to notice also the influence which Hattusil exerted, through the forceful language of his ambassador at the Babylonian court, and his own almost threatening diplomatic letters, interfering even in the settlement of the succession to the Babylonian throne. ”

“ Uriah did not do so, but slept near the king with the rest of his armor-bearers. When the king was informed of this, he asked him why he did not go home to his house, and to his wife, after so long an absence; which is the natural custom of all men, when they come from a long journey. He replied, that it was not right, while his fellow soldiers, and the general of the army, slept upon the ground, in the camp, and in an enemy's country, that he should go and take his rest, and solace himself with his wife. ”

“ Now the name is Hittite. In the account of the campaign of Ramses II. against the Hittites it appears as Tidcal, and one of the Hittite kings of Boghaz-Keui bears the same name, which is written Dud-khaliya in cuneiform. The name is evidently a compound of Dud or Tud—with which we may compare Tadu-Khipa—and the territorial divinity Khaliya (Greek Halys; cp. the Lydian Alyattes) .
‘In the Bogche inscription [p. 155] the king who erected the monument is called Khaleis “the Khalian,” and we probably have the same name in Khulli, the father of the Cilician Amris. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A beginning has already been made. Within a month after my Paper had been read before the Society of Biblical Archæology, which announced the discovery of a Hittite empire and the connection of the curious art of Asia Minor with that of Carchemish, I had fallen across a bilingual inscription in Hittite and cuneiform characters. This was on the silver boss of King Tarkondêmos, the only key yet found to the interpretation of the Hittite texts. ”

“ Messerschmidt also points to the analogy of the name of a king of Jerusalem, Abd-khipa (T. A. Letters) , with those of Putu-khipa (wife of Hattusil the Hittite) and Tadu-khipa (wife of Tushratta of Mitanni) . Winckler (Mitteilungen D.O.G. 1907, 35, pp. 47 ff.) attributes these early references and the appearance of the Hittites in these times in southern Syria and Babylonia, to the settlement of the Mitannians, whom he regards as a kindred but earlier stock. Among these he finds an Indo-Germanic element (op. cit., p. 51) ”

“ Hittite art was originally borrowed from Babylonia, but modified by the borrowers in a peculiar way. The borrowing took place before the rise of Assyria. The astronomical and astrological tablets belonging to the great work on the heavenly bodies which was compiled for the library of Sargon I of Accad speak from time to time of the Khattâ or Hittites, a clear proof that already at that remote epoch they had moved down from their northern home into their new quarters in Syria. ”

“ We may regard these 'Holy Cities,' placed under the protection of a goddess and wholly devoted to her worship, as peculiarly characteristic of the Hittite race. Their two southern capitals, Kadesh and Carchemish, were cities of this kind, and their stronghold at Boghaz Keui was presumably also a consecrated place. Their progress through Asia Minor was characterised by the rise of priestly cities and the growth of a class of armed priestesses. ”

“ But certain indications incline us to believe that the idea of the death of the god was not unfamiliar to the Hittite religion or to some of the communities under Hittite influence. On the Boghaz-Keui relief we have noted the presence in the religious procession of those mysterious animals, calves, or bulls, wearing caps of peculiar Hittite fashion.252.1 Are not these “theanthropic animals” to be sacrificed as a communion-link between man and God? We know that the bull was worshipped as an incarnation of a Hittite deity ”

“ 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". ”

“ 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 ”

“ Then those whose territory lay at the extremities began to feel the disadvantages of their isolated position, and after one or two victories gave up all hope of ever establishing a supremacy over the whole country. The Hittite sphere of influence never at any time extended much further southwards than the sources of the Orontes, while that of the Hebrews in their palmiest days cannot have gone beyond the vicinity of Hamath. ”

“ And Uriah went thence, and the king sent to him his dish with meat. Uriah would not go home, but lay before the gate of the king's house with other servants of the king's. And it was told to the king that Uriah went not home, and then David said to Uriah: Thou comest from a far way, why goest thou not home? And Uriah said to David: The ark of God and Israel and Judah be in the pavilions, and my lord Joab and the servants of thee, my lord, lie on the ground, and would ye that I should go to my house? By thy health and by the health of my soul I shall not do so. ”