The Hittites were governed by twelve ‘kings,’ probably satraps, under the Khita-sir or supreme chief. The ‘kings of the Hittites’ are mentioned as joining the Egyptians (2 Kings iii. 6).[541] Although the Hebrews were ordered utterly to destroy the race, their books prove that the Khita were often in intimate relation with the intruders, as in the case of Uriah the Hittite, one of the thirty of David’s body-guard. They worshipped Baal Sutech (Sutekh) the War-god, the ‘man of war,’ a counterpart of Amun, with his wife (Sakti or active energy), Astartha-Anata, and they also venerated Targatha, Derketo or Atargatis—two Syro-Greek words for one and the same person. The Egyptians at times rank the Khita as a ‘great people,’ and their habitat as a ‘great country’; holding them, in fact, almost as their peers: they also speak with reverence of their gods. Like their neighbours of Kemi, the ‘Hittites’ were a literary nation: the monuments of Nile-land mention a certain Kirab-sar (or sir), ‘writer of the books of the Chief of the Khita,’ and the determinative is papyrus or parchment. Hebron was also originally called Kirjath- (Kariyat) Sepher’—settlement of books. The Khita were formidable opponents to Kemi between the seventeenth and the fourteenth centuries B.C. They fought doughtily against Thut-mes III. (_circa_ B.C. 1600) during his Syrian campaign, when this ‘Alexander the Great of Egyptian history’ overthrew the chief of Kadesh, built a fortress on the Lebanon-range and mastered ‘Naharayn.’[542] Three centuries later, Kadesh was taken by Osirei or Seti I. (B.C. 1366). A few years afterwards took place the great campaign of his son,[543] Ramses II., or the Great, ‘who made Egypt anew,’ and who is famous as the Sesostris of Herodotus.[544] He was nearly defeated at the historic battle of ‘Kadesh, the wicked’;[545] but at last he succeeded in ‘throwing the foe one upon another, head over heels into the waters of the Orontes.’ Wilkinson (i. 400) shows a city with a double moat, crossed by two bridges: at the outer defence, formed by the river running into a lake, a phalanx of the Khita is drawn up as a reserve corps. ‘Wonderfully rich,’ says Brugsch, ‘is the great picture which represents the fight of the chariots: while the gigantic form of Ramses,[546] in the very midst of the hostile war-cars, performs deeds of derring-do, astonishing friend and foe, his gallant son, Prahiunamif, commander-in-chief of the charioteers, heads the attack upon those of the enemy. The Khita warriors are thrown into the river, and among them is the King of Khilibi (Aleppo), whom the warriors try to revive by holding his legs in the air with his head hanging down.’[547] This was the victory that gave birth to the first of Epic poems, the ‘Song of Pentaur the Scribe.’ [Heading: _THE HITTITE SWORD._]