Patriarchal PalestineSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
History
Patriarchal Palestine
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Jews -- History -- To 953 B.C.; Palestine -- History
coastland of the Mediterranean, the Hittites were to such an extent the
ruling race there that they gave their name to the whole district. Like
"Palestine," or "Canaan," the term "land of the Hittites" came to denote
among the Assyrians, not only Northern Syria and the Lebanon, but
Southern Syria as well. Even Ahab of Israel and Baasha the Ammonite are
included by Shalmaneser II. among its kings.
This extended use of the name among the Assyrians is illustrated by the
existence of a Hittite tribe at Hebron in the extreme south of
Palestine. Various attempts have been made to get rid of the latter by
unbelieving critics, but the statements of Genesis are corroborated by
Ezekiel's account of the foundation of Jerusalem. They are, moreover, in
full harmony with the monumental records. As we have seen, Thothmes III.
implies that already in his day there was a second and smaller land of
the Hittites, and the great Babylonian work on astronomy contains
references to the Hittites which appear to go back to early days.
Assyrian and Babylonian texts are not the only cuneiform records which
make mention of the "Khata" or Hittites. Their name is found also on the
monuments of the kings of Ararat or Armenia who reigned in the ninth and
eighth centuries before our era, and who had borrowed from Nineveh the
cuneiform system of writing. But the Khata of these Vannic or Armenian
texts lived considerably to the north of the Hittites of the Bible and
of the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments. The country they inhabited lay
in eastern Asia Minor in the neighbourhood of the modern Malatiyeh.
Here, in fact, was their original home.
Thanks to the Egyptian artists, we are well acquainted with the Hittite
physical type. It was not handsome. The nose was unduly protrusive,
while the chin and the forehead retreated. The cheeks were square with
prominent bones, and the face was beardless. In colour the Hittites were
yellow-skinned with black hair and eyes. They seem to have worn their
hair in three long plaits which fell over the back like the pigtail of a
Chinaman, and they were distinguished by the use of boots with upturned
toes.
We might perhaps imagine that the Egyptian artists have caricatured
their adversaries. But this is not the case. Precisely the same profile
of face, sometimes even exaggerated in its ugliness, is represented on
the Hittite monuments by the native sculptors themselves. It is one of
the surest proofs we possess that these monuments, with their still
undeciphered inscriptions, are of Hittite origin. They belong to the
people whom Israelites, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Armenians united in
calling Hittites.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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