Further research by such eminent orientalists as Halevy, in France; Hrozny of Austria; Jensen and Winckler, in Germany; Sayce and Hogarth, in England, showed that the builders of these forgotten cities and the authors of the strange script which was written in boustrephedon fashion were no other than the people of whom the Bible speaks of as the Hettites or Hittites.[292] All our knowledge of this mysterious people, outside of the brief references to them in the Sacred Text, is what has been gained since the publication in this country of the first Hittite inscriptions in 1872. We now know that as a power “The Land of the Hittites” became a memory of the past when the Assyrians took possession of Carchemish and when, following their capture of this celebrated stronghold, they entered Asia Minor in 718 B. C.--but a few years after the foundation of Rome. Thenceforward the region so long inhabited by the Hittites was ruled in succession by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Ottoman Turks. Notwithstanding, however, the fact that scholars now have at their disposition many and valuable Hittite monuments they have, nevertheless, thus far sought in vain for a bilingual inscription that will serve as a key to the Hittite language and which will force the Hittite sphinx to reveal her long-guarded secret. This much desired key may any day be uncovered by the spade of the archæologist. What the results of such a discovery will be can only be conjectured. Many who are competent to judge think they will compare in importance with those that followed the decipherment of the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia--that they will disclose an intimate relation between the culture of the Hittites and the earliest civilizations of Cyprus and Crete, Greece and Italy, and that they will contribute immensely to our knowledge of the earliest connection of the peoples of Western Asia with those of southeastern Europe and of their influences on one another in the divers domains of religion, art, literature, and politics.[293] As I gazed on the mysterious block of basalt at Aleppo with its soon--one hopes--to-be-deciphered inscription and thought of the wonderful Hittite records that have been unearthed during the last few years and the promise which they hold of priceless contributions to the history of our race, I recalled what the distinguished French savant, the late Vicomte E. M. de Voguë, once said of the East, “_L’Orient, qui ne sait plus faire d’histoire, a le noble privilège de conserver intacte celle d’autrefois_,” the Orient which no longer makes history has the noble privilege of preserving intact that of former times. CHAPTER XII FROM THE EUPHRATES TO THE TIGRIS