Hamath, and other places. He inferred that a certain sign was the determinative for city, and that the names preceding this sign were names of places. Gaining in this way some values for signs, he read the names of some kings. He found that these names had nominatives ending in s and accusative cases ending in m; he accordingly leaped to the conclusion that the Hittite language was a member of the Indo-European group of languages, as this is the only known group of tongues in which this phenomenon occurs. This inference later research has in part confirmed. Jensen, however, went further and endeavored to show that the Hittites were the ancestors of the Armenians of later time. This theory led to the publication in 1898 of his book, Hittiter und Armenier. Of the correctness of this view he has not been able to convince other scholars. By this time Jensen and others had begun to see that the Mitannians and the Hittites were kindred peoples and worshiped the same gods. It is now recognized that Jensen correctly ascertained the value of some signs, though many of his guesses, like those of his predecessors, have proved incorrect.

(4) Conder.-In 1898 Lieut.-Col. C. R. Conder published The Hittites and Their Language, a work in which he presented still another decipherment of the inscriptions. Conder's decipherment was based on a comparison of the Hittite characters with the Sumerian pictographs on the one hand and the syllabary which was used by Greeks in Cyprus, Caria, and Lydia on the other. He assumed that if a picture had in Sumerian a certain syllabic value, and if the Cypriotic syllabary presented a character somewhat resembling it which had a similar value, the Hittite character which most closely resembled these must have the same value, since the Hittites lived between the two peoples who used the other syllabaries. This system of decipherment has attracted no adherents because it is based on a fallacious inference. It does not follow because a nation lives between two other nations, that its institutions are kindred to those of its neighbors. One could not explain writings of the Indian tribes of Arizona, for example, by comparing them with books printed in English in St. Louis and in Spanish in Los Angeles! In 1899 Messerschmidt, who was collecting in one body all the known Hittite inscriptions for publication, published a study of the language of Mitanni,1 which advanced our knowledge of the language of the letters of Dushratta. In the Mitteilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1899, Heft. 4.

Messerschmidt's later publication of the Hittite inscriptions1 made it far easier for scholars to study the subject.

(5) Sayce's Later Work.-Stimulated by Jensen's efforts, Prof. Sayce returned to the study of Hittite in 1903, and published in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology of that year (Vol. XXV) a new decipherment. He followed Jensen's method, accepting a number of Jensen's readings as proved, and with the originality and daring that characterize so much of his work, launched many new readings. Some of these have commended themselves to his

successors.

In 1909 Ferdinand Bork returned to the problem of the language of Mitanni, and published a pretty complete decipherment of the Mitannian tablets in the El-Amarna letters. In 1911 Dr. B. B. Charles, the philologist of the Cornell expedition to Asia Minor, published as Part II of Volume I of Travels and Studies in the Nearer East, which is to embody the results of the Cornell expedition, his collation of the Hittite inscriptions. This publication added some new texts to those previously known. In 1912 Prof. Clay, of Yale, rendered the subject of Hittiteology a distinct service by including in his volume of Personal Names from Cuneiform Inscriptions of the Cassite Period a list of Hittite and Mitannian proper names, and a list of the nominal and verbal elements which enter into the composition of such names.

(6) Thompson.-The latest attempt on a large scale to unravel the mystery of the Hittite inscriptions is that of R. Campbell Thompson, "A New Decipherment of the Hittite Hieroglyphs," published in Archæologia, second series, Vol. XIV, Oxford, 1913. Mr. Thompson was a member of the British expedition which excavated Carchemish, and gained the idea which gave him the starting-point for his decipherment from an inscription excavated by that expedition. This inscription contained many proper names, and, after passing it and looking at it every day for a long time, it occurred to Mr. Thompson that a certain elaborate sign which frequently occurred in it might be a part of the name of the Hittite King Sangar, who is frequently mentioned by Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmeneser III of Assyria. In seeking proof for this Mr. Thompson was led into a study of the texts which resulted in a new interpretation of the Hittite signs. His work is logical at every point, he makes no inference without first examining all the occurrences

1 In the Mitteilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft, 1900, Hefte 4 and 5.

in the known texts of the group of signs in question, and he tests his inferences wherever possible by the known results of a study of Mitannian and cuneiform Hittite. It is too soon to pronounce a final verdict, but it looks as though Thompson had materially advanced the decipherment of Hittite.

(7) Delitzsch.-After the death of Prof. Winckler, the cuneiform tablets which he had discovered at Boghaz Koi were turned over to Ernst Weidner for publication. That publication is soon to appear, but Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch, under whose general direction Weidner is working, published in May, 1914, a study based on twenty-six fragments of lexicographical texts which are to appear in Weidner's work. These texts defined Hittite words in Sumerian and in Assyrian. Although the texts are very fragmentary, Prof. Delitzsch has been able to gain in this way a vocabulary of about 165 Hittite words, the meanings of most of which are known, and to ascertain some facts about the grammar of Hittite.

We are, it would seem, just on the eve of a complete mastery of the secrets of the Hittite inscriptions. The more our knowledge of the Hittites grows, the less simple seems the problem of their racial affinities. Some features of their speech clearly resemble features of the Indo-European family of languages, but other features would seem to denote Tartar affinities. In a number of instances the influence of the Assyrian language can clearly be traced. The same confusion presents itself when we study the pictures of Hittites as they appear in Egyptian reliefs. Two distinct types of face are there portrayed. One type has high cheek bones, oblique eyes, and wears a pigtail, like the peoples of Mongolia and China; the other has a clean-cut head and face which resemble somewhat the early Greeks. These may well have been Aryans. That there was a strain in the Hittite composition that came from Turkestan or that came through that country is also indicated by the fact that the Hittites were the first of the peoples of western Asia to use the horse. Evidence of the use of the horse as a domestic animal by the people of Turkestan at an early date was brought to light by the excavations of Prof. Pumpelly1 in that land, so that the presence of horses among the Hittites naturally suggests some connection with that region. Among the Hittite allies Semitic Amorites are also pictured. These have receding foreheads and projecting beards.

1 See Pumpelly, Explorations in Turkestan, Washington, 1908, I, p. 50, f.

4. Hittite History.

(1) First Appearance.-The earliest reference to the Hittites which we have in any written record occurs in a Babylonian chronicle, which states that "against Shamsu-ditana the men of the country Khattu marched." Shamsu-ditana was the last king of the first dynasty of Babylon. His reign terminated in 1924 B. C. Khattu land, as will appear further on, was the name later given to the Hittite settlement in Cappadocia. One would naturally suppose that the name would have the same significance here, but of this we cannot be certain. The tablet on which this chronicle was written was inscribed in the Persian or late Babylonian period, but there is evidence that it was copied from an earlier original. If its statement is true, the Hittites had made their appearance in history and were prepared to mingle in that mêlée of the races which occurred when the first dynasty of Babylon was overthrown. Nothing is said in the chronicle as to the location of the land of Khattu, but there can be no doubt that the Hittites approached Babylonia from the northwest. Their seat must have been in the region where we later find the Hittites, or Mitanni. At what period the Hittites came into this region we can only conjecture. The excavations at Sakje-Geuze reveal a civilization there extending back to about 3000 B. C., which resembled that found at Susa in Elam belonging to the same period. This civilization may not have been Hittite in its beginnings. Mr. Woolley, a member of the British expedition which has excavated at Carchemish, in a study of the objects found in tombs at Carchemish and at other places near by, thinks it possible that the coming of the Hittites is marked by a transition period in the art—a period the termination of which he marks by the date of the fall of the first dynasty of Babylon. It may well be that Indo-Europeans followed by Mongols came about 2100 or 2000 into this region, or that the Mongols were there earlier and that the Indo-Europeans then came. In the resultant civilization it would seem, from the information that we have, that there was a mingling of the two races; (see Fig. 24).

(2) Hyksos Possibly Hittites.-Since the Hittites were able to help overthrow the first dynasty of Babylon, some scholars have recognized the possibility that those invaders of Egypt who established the dynasties called Hyksos may have been Hittites, or may have been led by Hittites. There is much evidence that many 1 See L. W. King, Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian Kings, London, 1907, Vol. II, p. 22.

Semites entered Egypt at that time, but as Syria and Palestine were peopled with Semites earlier than this, such an invasion would naturally have had many Semites among its camp followers, if not in its armies, even if the leaders were Hittites. At present, however, this is but a possibility. Some slight evidence in favor of the possibility may be found in the name of the king of Jerusalem who was a vassal of Amenophis IV, and who wrote the letters from Jerusalem which are in the El-Amarna collection. (See Part II, p. 345, ff.) His name was Abdi-Hepa, and Hepa was a Hittite and Mitannian deity. Abdi-Hepa had grown up a trusted subject of the Egyptians. His ancestors must, therefore, have been in Palestine for some time. A settlement of Hittites there in the Hyksos days would account for this. The twenty-third chapter of Genesis represents the city of Hebron as in the possession of the Hittites when Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah as a place of burial for his dead, and, though many scholars regard Genesis 23, which gives this account, as a late composition, its representation would receive some confirmation from archæology, if the Hyksos were Hittites.

There is a possibility that the Hittites were in southern Palestine earlier than this. Brugsch1 thought that he found in an inscription in the Louvre, written by an officer of Amenemhet I, King of Egypt, 2000-1970 в. C., a statement that this officer had destroyed the palaces of the Hittites near the Egyptian frontier of Palestine. This reading is still defended by Prof. Sayce, though other Egyptologists, such as W. Max Müller3 and Breasted, claim that the word that was thought to be Hittites is not a proper name, but a common noun meaning nomads. The text of the passage is uncertain, and no important inference can in any case be made from it.

During the period when we obtain glimpses of the history of the Hittites, they were never united in one empire. Different kingdoms flourished here and there, such as that of the Mitanni in Mesopotamia, the Hittites at Boghaz Koi, the kingdoms of Carchemish, of Hamath, and Tyana. These flourished at different times all the way from 1400 to 700 B. C., and there were doubtless other kingdoms also, for the Hittite sculptures near Smyrna and 1 History of Egypt, II, 404, 405.

Expository Times, November, 1914, p. 91.

Asien und Europa nach altägyptischen Denkmälern, 319, note 3 • Ancient Records, Egypt, I, 227, 228.