The Hittites : $b The story of a forgotten empireSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
History
The Hittites : $b The story of a forgotten empire
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Hittites
The 'spear-armed host' of the Amazons, which came from Kappadokia, which
conquered Asia Minor, and was so closely connected with the worship of
the Ephesian Artemis, can be no other than the priestesses of the
Hittite goddess, who danced in her honour armed with the shield and bow.
In ancient art the Amazons are represented as clad in the Hittite tunic
and brandishing the same double-headed axe that is held in the hands of
some of the Hittite deities on the rocks of Boghaz Keui, while the
'spear' lent to them by the Greek poet brings to our recollection the
spear held by the warriors of Karabel. We cannot explain the myth of the
Amazons except on the supposition that they represented the armed
priestesses of the Hittite goddess, and that a tradition of the Hittite
empire in Asia Minor has entwined itself around the story of their
arrival in the West. The cities they are said to have founded must have
been the seats of Hittite rule.
The Hittites were intruders in Syria as well as in Western Asia Minor.
Everything points to the conclusion that they had descended from the
ranges of the Taurus. Their costume was that of the inhabitants of a
cold and mountainous region, not of the warm valleys of the south. In
place of the trailing robes of the Syrians, the national costume was a
tunic which did not quite reach to the knees. It was only after their
settlement in the Syrian cities that they adopted the dress of the
country; the sculptured rocks of Asia Minor represent them with the same
short tunic as that which distinguished the Dorians of Greece or the
ancient inhabitants of Ararat. But the most characteristic portion of
the Hittite garb were the shoes with upturned ends. Wherever the figure
of a Hittite is portrayed, there we find this peculiar form of boot. It
reappears among the hieroglyphs of the inscriptions, and the Egyptian
artists who adorned the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes have placed it
on the feet of the Hittite defenders of Kadesh. The boot is really a
snow-shoe, admirably adapted for walking over snow, but ill-suited for
the inhabitants of a level or cultivated country. The fact that it was
still used by the Hittites of Kadesh in the warm fertile valley of the
Orontes proves better than any other argument that they must have come
from the snow-clad mountains of the north. It is like the shoe of
similar shape which the Turks have carried with them in their migrations
from the north and introduced amongst the natives of Syria and Egypt. It
indicates with unerring certainty the northern origin of the Turkish
conqueror. He stands in the same relation to the modern population of
Syria that the Hittites stood to the Arameans of Kadesh three thousand
years ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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