The Land of the Hittites: An Account of Recent Explorations and Discoveries in Asia Minor with Descriptions of the Hittite Monuments

The history of ancient Oriental civilisation is slowly revealing itself to the excavator and archæologist. Scientific excavations have been carried on in Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Palestine; it is now the turn of Asia Minor, both north and south of the Taurus; and there are indications that the revelation which Asia Minor and the neighbouring lands of Syria have in store for us will be even more startling than that which has come from Egypt and Babylonia. There we already knew that great empires and wide-reaching cultures had once flourished; the earlier history of Asia Minor, on the other hand, was a blank. But the blank is beginning to be filled up, and we are learning that there too an empire once existed, which contended on equal terms with those of the Nile and the Euphrates, and possessed a culture that formed a link between the east and the west. What I once called the forgotten empire of the Hittites is at last emerging into the light of day, and before long much that is still mysterious in the art and religion of Greece and Europe will be explained.

This much has already been ascertained by the excavations made by the German expedition under Professor Winckler at Boghaz-Keui, north of the Halys, the site of the Hittite capital. But there are many other sites in Asia Minor and northern Syria where Hittite culture once flourished, and where, therefore, discoveries similar to those which have startled the scientific world at Boghaz-Keui may be expected to be made. Some of these sites were examined by Professor Garstang in his preliminary journeys of exploration; at another he has begun the work of excavation and brought to light important remains of art and antiquity.

Sakje-Geuzi lies at a short distance from Sinjerli, where German excavators have discovered monuments which form the chief attraction of the Hittite section in the Museum of Berlin. The mound of Sakje-Geuzi represents a continuous history of unnumbered centuries. The earlier strata are the accumulation of a neolithic people; above them come the ruins of Hittite and Aramæan builders. The temple disinterred by Professor Garstang shows us what Hittite art was like in the Syria of the tenth and following centuries before our era, and enables us to guess at the character of the cult that was carried on in it.

In the following pages he has given an account of his work and the conclusions that may be drawn from it. This, however, occupies but a small portion of his book. Its main purpose is to review our present knowledge of Hittite history, art, and archæology; to describe the Hittite monuments now known to exist, and to trace the story of the Hittite empire as it has been revealed to us by recent discoveries.

Among the great political forces of the ancient Oriental world we now know that none exercised a more profound influence than the Hittites of Asia Minor. It was they who overthrew the Amorite dynasty of Babylonia to which the Amraphel of Genesis belonged; to them was due the fall of the Egyptian empire in Asia, and it was they who checked for centuries the desolating advance of the Assyrians. In Palestine their influence was supreme, and it is with good reason that in the tenth chapter of Genesis Heth is named second among the sons of Canaan. They were the founders of the Heraklid dynasty in Lydia, and Babylonian art as modified in Asia Minor was carried by them to the Greek seas. Greek religion and mythology owed much to them; even the Amazons of Greek legend prove to have been the warrior-priestesses of the great Hittite goddess. Above all, it was the Hittites who controlled the mines of Asia Minor which supplied the ancient world with silver, copper, lead, and perhaps also tin. Before the age of Abraham traders carried the bronze of Asia Minor to Assyria and Palestine, and thus transformed the whole culture of western Asia. The story of the forgotten people is a fascinating one, and the reader cannot do better than study it under the guidance of Professor Garstang, whose work will be the standard authority on the subject for a long while to come.