The discovery was made in 1879. Recent exploration and excavation had shown that the primitive art and culture of Greece, as revealed, for example, by Dr. Schliemann’s excavations at Mykenæ, were influenced by a peculiar art and culture emanating from Asia Minor. Here, too, certain strange monuments had been discovered, which form a continuous chain from Lydia in the west to Kappadokia and Lykaonia in the east. The best known of these are certain rock sculptures found at Boghaz Keui and Eyuk, on the eastern side of the Halys, and two figures in relief in the Pass of Karabel, near Sardes, which the old Greek historian, Herodotus, had long ago supposed to be memorials of the Egyptian conqueror Sesostris, or Ramses II. Meanwhile other discoveries were being made in lands more immediately connected with the Bible. Scholars had learned from the Egyptian inscriptions that before the days of the Exodus the Egyptian monarchs had been engaged in fierce struggles with the powerful nation of the Hittites, whose two chief seats were at Kadesh on the Orontes and Carchemish on the Euphrates, and who were able to summon to their aid subject-allies not only from Palestine, but also far away from Lydia and the Troad, on the western coast of Asia Minor. Ramses II himself, the Pharaoh of the oppression, had been glad to make peace with his antagonists; and the treaty, which provided, among other things, for the amnesty of political offenders who had found a shelter during the war among one or other of the two combatants, was cemented by the marriage of the Egyptian king with the daughter of his rival. A century or two afterwards Tiglath-Pileser I of Assyria found his passage across the Euphrates barred by the Hittites of Carchemish and their Kolkhian mercenaries. From this time forward the Hittites proved dangerous enemies to the Assyrian kings in their attempts to extend the empire towards the west, until at last in B.C. 717 Sargon succeeded in capturing their rich capital, Carchemish, and in making it the seat of an Assyrian satrap. Henceforth the Hittites disappear from history.