Writing in 1903 L. Messerschmidt, editor of the best collection of Hittite texts up to date, made a _tabula rasa_ of all systems of decipherment, asserting that only one sign out of two hundred--the bisected oval, determinative of divinity--had been interpreted with any certainty; and in view of this opinion, coupled with the steady refusal of historians to apply the results of any Hittite decipherment, and the obvious lack of satisfactory verification, without which the piling of hypothesis on hypothesis may only lead further from probability, there is no choice but to suspend judgment for some time longer as to the inscriptions and all deductions drawn from them. _Are the Monuments Hittite?_--It is time to ask this question, although a perfectly satisfactory answer can only be expected when the inscriptions themselves have been deciphered. Almost all "Hittitologues" assume a connexion between the monuments and the Kheta-Khatti-Hittites, but in various degrees; e.g. while Sayce has said roundly that common sense demands the acceptance of all as the work of the Hittites, who were the dominant caste throughout a loosely-knit empire extending at one time from the Orontes to the Aegean, Messerschmidt has stated with equal dogmatism that the Hittites proper were only one people out of many[5] in N. Syria and Asia Minor who shared a common civilization, and that therefore they were authors of a part of the monuments only--presumably the N. Syrian, Commagenian and Cataonian groups. O. Puchstein[6] has denied to the Hittites some of the N. Syrian monuments, holding these of too late a date (judged by their Assyrian analogies) for the flourishing period of the Kheta-Khatti, as known from Egyptian and Assyrian records. He would ascribe them to the Kummukh (Commagenians), who seem to have succeeded the Khatti as the strongest opponents of Assyria in these parts. He was possibly right as regards the Sinjerli and Sakchegeuzu sculptures, which are of provincial appearance. The following considerations, however, may be stated in favour of the ascription of the monuments to the Hittites:--