'[If servants shall flee away] out of the territories of Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, to betake themselves to the great king of Kheta, the great king of Kheta shall not receive them, but the great king of Kheta [34] shall give them up to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, [that they may receive their punishment.
'If servants of Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, leave his country], and betake themselves to the land of Kheta, to make themselves servants of another, they shall not remain in the land of Kheta; [they shall be given up] to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt.
'If, on the other hand, there should flee away [servants of the great king of Kheta, in order to betake themselves to] Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, [in order to stay in Egypt], then those who have come from the land of Kheta in order to betake themselves to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, shall not be [received by] Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, [but] the great prince of Egypt, Ramessu Miamun, [shall deliver them up to the great kingof Kheta].
'[And if there shall leave the land of Kheta persons] of skilful mind, so that they come to the land of Egypt to make themselves servants of another, then Ramessu Miamun will not allow them to settle, he will deliver them up to the great king of Kheta.
'When this [treaty] shall be known [by the inhabitants of the land of Egypt and of the land of Kheta, then shall they not offend against it, for all that stands written on] the silver tablet, these are words which will have been approved by the company of the gods among the male gods and among the female gods, among those namely of the land of Egypt. They are witnesses for me [to the validity] of these words, [which they have allowed.
'This is the catalogue of the gods of the land of Kheta:—
[35]
(1) 'Sutekh of the city] of Tunep [Note: now Tennib in Northern Syria],
(2) 'Sutekh of the land of Kheta,
(3) 'Sutekh of the city of Arnema,
(4) 'Sutekh of the city of Zaranda,
(5) 'Sutekh of the city of Pilqa,
(6) 'Sutekh of the city of Khisasap,
(7) 'Sutekh of the city of Sarsu,
(8) 'Sutekh of the city of Khilip (Aleppo),
(9) 'Sutekh of the city of . . . .,
(10) 'Sutekh of the city of Sarpina,
(11) 'Astarta [Note: Also read Antarata] of the land of Kheta,
(12) 'The god of the land of Zaiath-khirri,
(13) 'The god of the land of Ka . . .,
(14) 'The god of the land of Kher . . .,
(15) 'The goddess of the city of Akh . . .,
(16) '[The goddess of the city of . . .] and of the land of A . . ua,
(17) 'The goddess of the land of Zaina,
(18) 'The god of the land of . . nath . . er.
'[I have invoked these male and these] female [gods of the land of Kheta, these are the gods] of the land, [as witnesses to] my oath. [With them have been associated the male and the female gods] of the mountains and of the rivers of the land of Kheta, the gods of the land of Qazauadana, Amon, Ra, Sutekh, and the male and female gods of the land of Egypt, of the earth, of the sea, of the winds, and of the storms.
'With regard to the commandment which the silver tablet contains for the people of Kheta and for the people of Egypt, he who shall not observe it shall be given over [to the vengeance] of the company of the [36] gods of Kheta, and shall be given over [to the vengeance] of the gods of Egypt, [he] and his house and his servants.
'But he who shall observe these commandments which the silver tablet contains, whether he be of the people of Kheta or [of the people of Egypt], because he has not neglected them, the company of the gods of the land of Kheta and the company of the gods of the land of Egypt shall secure his reward and preserve life [for him] and his servants and those who are with him and who are with his servants.
'If there flee away of the inhabitants [one from the land of Egypt], or two or three, and they betake themselves to the great king of Kheta [the great king of Kheta shall not] allow them [to remain, but he shall] deliver them up, and send them back to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt.
'Now with respect to the [inhabitant of the land of Egypt], who is delivered up to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, his fault shall not be avenged upon him, his [house] shall not be taken away, nor his [wife] nor his [children]. There shall not be [put to death his mother, neither shall he be punished in his eyes, nor on his mouth, nor on the soles of his feet], so that thus no crime shall be brought forward against him.
'In the same way shall it be done if inhabitants of the land of Kheta take to flight, be it one alone, or two, or three, to betake themselves to Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt. Ramessu Miamun, the great prince of Egypt, shall cause them to be seized, and they shall be delivered up to the great king of Kheta.
'[With regard to] him who [is delivered up, his crime [37] shall not be brought forward against him]. His [house] shall not be taken away, nor his wives, nor his children, nor his people; his mother shall not be put to death; he shall not be punished in his eyes, nor on his mouth, nor on the soles of his feet, nor shall any accusation be brought forward against him.
'That which is in the middle of this silver tablet and on its front side is a likeness of the god Sutekh .... surrounded by an inscription to this effect: "This is the [picture] of the god Sutekh, the king of heaven and [earth]." At the time (?) of the treaty which Kheta-sira, the great king of the Kheta, made . . .'
The treaty was ratified by the visit of the Hittite prince Kheta-sira to Egypt in his national costume, and the marriage of his daughter to Ramses in the thirty-fourth year of the Pharaoh's reign (B.C. 1354). She took the Egyptian name of Ur-maa Noferu-Ra, and her beauty was celebrated by the scribes of the court. Syria was handed over to the Hittites as their legitimate possession; Egypt never again attempted to wrest it from them, and if the Hittite yoke was to be shaken off it must be through the efforts of the Syrians themselves. For a while, however, 'the great king of the Hittites' preserved his power intact; his [38] supremacy was acknowledged from the Euphrates in the east to the Aegean Sea in the west, from Kappadokia in the north to the tribes of Canaan in the south. Even Naharina, once the antagonist of the Egyptian Pharaohs, acknowledged his sovereignty, and Pethor, the home of Balaam, at the junction of the Euphrates and the Sajur, became a Hittite town. The cities of Philistia, indeed, still sent tribute to the Egyptian ruler, but northwards the Hittite sway seems to have been omnipotent. The Amorites of the mountains allied themselves with 'the children of Heth,' 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 Hittite 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 Hittites 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 passing to and fro between Egypt and Phoenicia, and make it clear that Gaza was still garrisoned by Egyptian troops. But in the fifth [39] year of his reign Egypt was invaded by a confederacy of white-skinned tribes from Libya and the shores 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 Hittites of Carchemish and the people of Matenau of Naharina came in their train, and a long and terrible battle took place on the sea-shore 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, [40] and the flame of its former glory flickered again for a moment before finally going out.
The list of prisoners shows that the Hittite 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 Hittite 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 Hittite 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 Hittites 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 Hittite 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 Hittite prince.
Where the Egyptian monuments desert us, those of Assyria come to our help. The earliest notices of the Hittites found in the cuneiform texts are contained in a great work on astronomy and astrology, originally [41] compiled for an early king of Babylonia. The references to 'the king of the Hittites,' 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 Hittite king belong, but there are indications that it is comparatively late. The first clear account that the Assyrian inscriptions give us concerning the Hittites, 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 Assyrian 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. Kummukh 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 Assur my lord—no king (before me) had opposed them in battle—trusted [42] to their strength, and came down and seized the land of Kummukh.' The Assyrian 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 Kummukh. 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 Hittite,' threw himself at the conqueror's feet; his life was spared, and 'the wide-spreading land of Kummukh' became tributary to Assyria, 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 Hittites' and as having occupied the northern cities of Mesopotamia, submitted voluntarily to the Assyrian monarch, and were transported to Assyria along with their chariots and their property. Uruma was the Urima of classical geography, which lay on the Euphrates a little to the north of Birejik, so that we know the exact locality to which these 'Hittite soldiers 'belonged. In fact, 'Hittite '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 Kummukh; and, as we shall see, it is from Merash that a long Hittite inscription has come.
Tiglath-pileser attacked Kummukh a second time, and on this occasion penetrated still further into the mountain fastnesses of the Hittite 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, [43] 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' (1) [Note: Called Eragiza in classical geography and in the Talmud.], which lies opposite to the land of the Hittites'
Towards the end of the twelfth century before our era, therefore, the Hittites were still strong enough to keep one of the mightiest of the Assyrian 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 Kummukh was overrun by the Assyrian armies, and forced to pay tribute to the Assyrian 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.
After the death of Tiglath-pileser I. the Assyrian 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 [44] 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 Hittites 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 (1) [Note: Called Khalman in the Assyrian texts. Josephus changes Helam into the proper name Khalaman.]. It is clear that the Hittites 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 passage 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 Hittites 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 Hittite city, and there is no reason for not believing that it was still in the possession of the Hittites in the [45] 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 Assyrians.
As late as the time of Uzziah, we are told by the Assyrian 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 God of Israel. Indeed, the very fact that the Syrians imagined that 'the kings of the Hittites' were coming to the rescue of Samaria, when besieged by the forces of Damascus, goes to show that Israel and the Hittites 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 Hittites had been gained at the expense of their Semitic neighbours. The triumph of Syria was a blow alike to the Hittites of Carchemish and to the Hebrews of Samaria and Jerusalem.
With Assur-natsir-pal, whose reign extended from B.C. 885 to 860, contemporaneous Assyrian 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 ex- acted tribute from Kummukh as well as from the kings of the country in which Malatiyeh was situated; but with better fortune than Tiglath-pileser he succeeded in passing 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 [46] vanishing away. There was still, however, a small Hittite population on the eastern bank of the Euphrates; at all events, Assur-natsir-pal describes the tribe of Bakhian on that side of the river as Hittite, 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 assault upon the Hittite stronghold was bought off with rich and numerous presents. Twenty talents of silver—the favourite metal of the Hittite princes—'cups of gold, chains of gold, blades of gold, 100 talents of copper, 250 talents of iron, gods of copper in the form of wild bulls, bowls of copper, libation cups of copper, a ring of copper, the multitudinous 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, masses 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 Assyrian 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 Assyrian 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 Assyrian king.
Quitting Carchemish, Assur-natsir-pal pursued his [47] march westwards, and after passing 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 Hittite descent, and occupied the country between the river Afrin and the shores of the Gulf of Antioch. The Assyrian 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 Assur-natsir-pal received the tribute of the Phoenician cities.
Shalmaneser II., the son and successor of Assur-natsir- pal, continued the warlike policy of his father (B.C. 860- 825). The Hittite 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 Hittite 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 Amanus, 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 Hittite princes was formed to resist the common foe. Contingents came not only from Kummukh and from the Patinians, but from Cilicia and the mountain ranges of Asia Minor. It was, however, of no avail. The Hittite forces were driven from the field, and their leaders were compelled to purchase peace by the payment of tribute. Once [48] 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 Assyrian king. Pethor, the city of Balaam, was turned into an Assyrian colony, its very name being changed to an Assyrian one. The way into Hamath and Phoenicia at last lay open to the Assyrian host. At Aleppo Shalmaneser offered sacrifices to the native god 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 Assyrian 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 Assyrians into contact with Damascus, and caused Jehu on a later occasion to send tribute to the Assyrian king.
The subsequent history of Shalmaneser concerns us but little. The power of the Hittites 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 Assyria 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 Assyrian invader. In fact, the Hittites of Syria had become little more than tributaries of the [49] Assyrian 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 Assyrians and the Hittite population is marked by a curious fact. From the time of Shalmaneser onwards, the name of Hittite is no longer used by the Assyrian 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 'Hittite' became synonymous with Syrian. How this happened is not difficult to explain. The first populations of Syria with whom the Assyrians had come into contact were of Hittite origin. When their power was broken, and the Assyrian 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 Assyrian generals should be supposed also to belong to them. Moreover, many of these states were actually dependent on the Hittite princes, though inhabited by an Aramean people. The Hittites had imposed their yoke upon an alien race of Aramean descent, and accordingly in Northern Syria Hittite and Aramean cities and tribes were intermingled together. 'I took,' says Shalmaneser, 'what the men of the land of the Hittites 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 [50] eastern side of the Euphrates, which Tiglath-pileser (I.), the royal forefather who went before me, had united to my country, and Assur-rab-buri king of Assyria 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 god of the city,' Hadad-Rimmon, whose name betrays the Semitic character of its population. The Hittites, in short, had never been more than a conquering upper class 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 Assyrian empire gave them an unexpected respite. But the revolution which placed Tiglath-pileser III. on the throne of Assyria, in B.C. 725, brought with it the final doom of Hittite supremacy. 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. The long struggle that had been carried on between the Hittites and the Semites was at an end; the Semite had triumphed, and the Hittite [51] 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 Assyrian empire. The Semite of Nineveh was supreme in the Eastern world.
Ararat was the name given by the Assyrians 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 title 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 Assur-natsir-pal or his son Shalmaneser, but in a language which bears no resemblance to that of Assyria. They record the building of temples and palaces, the offerings made to the gods, and the campaigns of the Vannic kings. Among the latter mention is made of campaigns against the Khate or Hittites.
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 Hittites. Here he plundered the cities of Surisilis and Tarkhi-gamas [52] belonging to the Hittite prince Sada-halis, and captured a number of soldiers, whom he dedicated to the service of his god Khaldis. On another occasion he marched as far as the city of Malatiyeh, and after passing through the country of the Hittites, 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 Hittites of Menuas must be assigned. 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 Hittites' 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 Hittites of the Assyrian 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 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 [53] Palu, this was the title 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.