It seemed strange that no monuments should have been discovered belonging to a people powerful enough to withstand for twelve centuries the assaults of Egypt and Assyria. At last, in 1872, certain inscriptions from Hamath on the Orontes, in a hieroglyphic picture-writing of a hitherto unknown character, were published in Burton and Drake’s “Unexplored Syria.” Dr. Wright, in 1874, published an article in “The British and Foreign Evangelical Review,” suggesting that these monuments were in reality records of the Hittite race. This conjecture, though much ridiculed at the time, has gradually fought its way to universal acceptance, mainly owing to the skilful advocacy of Professor Sayce, who, in ignorance of Dr. Wright’s suggestion, arrived independently at the same conclusion, and shortly afterwards identified a monument at Karabel, near Ephesus, described by Herodotus as a figure of Sesostris, as the effigy of a Hittite king. Subsequent discoveries of Hittite monuments in other parts of Asia Minor, taken in conjunction with the Biblical notices, and the Egyptian and Assyrian records, prove that at some remote period a great Hittite empire must have extended from Hebron to the Black Sea, and from the Euphrates to the Ægean; while it is now generally admitted that, to some extent, the art, the science, and the religion of prehistoric Greece must have been derived ultimately from Babylon, having been transmitted, first to the Hittite city of Carchemish, and thence to Lydia, through the Hittite realm in Asia Minor. It is now believed by many scholars of repute that the Ephesian Artemis must be identified with the great Hittite goddess Atargatis, and ultimately with the Babylonian Istar; that the Niobe of Homer, whose effigy may still be seen on Mount Sipylus, near Smyrna, was an image of Atargatis, whose armed priestesses gave rise to the Greek legend of the Amazons, a nation of female warriors; that the Euboic silver standard was based upon the mina of Carchemish; and that in all probability the characters found on Trojan whorls by Schliemann, as well as certain anomalous letters in the Lycian alphabet, and even the mysterious Cypriote syllabary itself were simply cursive forms descended from the Hittite hieroglyphs used in the inscriptions on the pseudo-Niobe and the pseudo-Sesostris in Lydia, and pictured on the stones obtained by Dr. Wright from Hamath, and by Mr. George Smith from Carchemish. The arguments by which scholars have been led to these conclusions, together with the existing materials on which future researches must be based, have been collected by Dr. Wright in a handy volume, which we have great pleasure in heartily commending to all students of Biblical archæology as a substantial contribution to our knowledge.