Blake C.C. - The Hittites

I THINK it is Niebuhr who says somewhere, that he who restores the dead past into being is a real creator. The sleep in which the memories of a mighty nation have slumbered for centuries is now disturbed, and we are beginning to see the evidence of a mighty people arriving at a position in the earth’s history higher than that of the Jews, and peradventure in their time and place scarcely inferior to that of the Persians.

The Hittites of old have their pedigree and their position obscured by the reference to them in Genesis x, 15, where Heth is spoken of as a mere son of Canaan, who had been cursed in the preceding chapter. The intrusive and tyrannical Jewish population were not content with driving out the previously existing civilizations of the land, but gave the dog a bad name after hanging him. We see this spirit in Ezekiel xvi, 3. A daughter of Heth is an epithet equivalent to the word pariah, and the Hittites, like all races, may sink to the level of the Nephilim in Scripture. Partly mythological, and partly political, the blood, and possibly the aspirations of the Hittite female, was concealed under the Hebrew tephilim; the memory of the past Hittite glories was entirely forgotten, and for aught that Biblical students or travellers have done to help us, there might as well have been absolute non-existence of the Hittite people.

Now, however, we have changed all that. The mighty kingdom of the Hittites in its geographical extent seems to have infringed on Troy on the one hand, and shaken hands with Egypt on the other. The whole of Asia Minor seems to have been at one time under Hittite influence. They were far ahead of their neighbors in the arts of war, as in the arts of peace. Into the religion of the Hittites and into their nationality we are beginning to inquire, but it must not be forgotten that the memorials of Hittite inscriptions and traditions generally are very small and few, and that we are scarcely beginning to decipher the history of a nation which, when it is told, may reveal several histories more interesting that of Solomon's temple, and more important than those of the impure Bedawi at Jerusalem, who basked under the shadow of the kingdom, around them, while they secured the patronage of their (tribal) God. The two sources of information before us are Hittite names and Hittite inscriptions. It may be conceded that the language of the Hittites was not Semitic, that it was not of the same family as the language spoken in various dialects by the Jews and other Semitic people. The great mass of the Hittite names that have come down to us are clearly of a non-Semitic origin.

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The real key to the interpretation of the Hittite remains has been given by Captain Conder. Speculators standing on Egypt may look towards Kaffraria for the tomb of their ancestory. Greek civilization may be derived from that of old Cyclopean monuments. Mexico and Peru may suggest prehistoric civilisations excelling the present race in certain abilities. The old (perhaps Atlantean) builders of Tia-huanuco, are an example. The Hittite race has found its relatives; it has found in the old Hyperborean race, ancestors. It was the Secret Doctrine (vol. ii, 7,) that had chosen

“the name Hyperborean for the Second Continent, the land which stretched out its promontories southward and westward from the North Pole to receive the Second Race, and comprised the whole of what is now known as Northern Asia. Such was the name given by the oldest Greeks to the far off and mysterious region, whither their tradition made Apollo, the Hyperborean, travel every year.”

Lenormant had confused the Proto-Medic and Akkadian with the Ugro-Altaic languages, with Finnish, and less closely with Turkish and Magyar. It is the belief of Captain Conder that the Hittites are still represented in Syria, and Palestine, by the Turks, who are to be found even in the plains of Esdrælon and of Sharon. These actual tribes are probably immigrants from the East, but the fact remains that we have to deal with a population that is essentially Mongolic in affinities. Anthropology has a far more remote connexion with mere Biblical Science, than with Theosophical teaching. We are beginning to know all about the Hittites, and what we do know confirms the idea, that the mighty people who lived during the Miocene period, when Greenland was a tropical land, left their impressions on Syrian history. But we are sent to “far Cathay” for the relatives of the Hittite monarchs. This is not so absurd, when we consider the time during which the Hittites dwelt in the land. The old figures on the Ramesseon at Thebes give examples of what the Hittites were like. They all wore boots, the toes of which were turned up. They all had conical caps, probably of fur. Their dress was on the whole, a national costume, which has survived among the Hittites, who had settled in the warm valley of the Orontes; such boots or rather snow shoes, admirably adapted as they were for the snow-clad ranges of the Taurus, being wholly out of place in Syria. If we imagine that this ancient people left their traces in Palestine ages before the Canaanites were there; if we regard the Hittites as the boulder of a prehistoric population, with nothing whatever sui generis with the Perizzites, Jebusites, and Amorites, we see that the mystery of their long continuance in the place may be accounted for in the theory of their being an old race. The Kheta were among the early enemies of Egypt. Brugsch identifies them with the Hittites of Scripture. There were Hittite palaces on the borders of Egypt as early as the 12th dynasty. From the time of Tothmes II, a two hundred years’ war had been carried on with the Hittites. A treaty of peace was at last made, which was engraved on a silver plate, the terms of which show the civilization of the Hittite people. Subsequent wars with 326the Hittites took place from the 12th to the 20th dynasty. If we turn to Egyptian history, the Hittites are of equal importance. They are mentioned in the 19th century b.c., and perhaps much earlier. The wars of Tiglath-Pilezer, Assurdanipal, Shalmanezer, and Sargon, bear witness to the important part their empire played in the mighty state system of Asia. Yet if we knew of them by the Biblical account alone; if we accepted all that the Jews wished us to believe concerning the insignificance of the Hittites, we should have a false rendering of history. The writers of the Hebrew law, however, are at last found out. The Hittites were dwelling in the mountains around Hebron. According to Mariette, one of the Hyksos dynasty was Hittite. The Hyksos were at last driven out of Egypt, and according to Manetho’s statement, returned to Jerusalem. As Conder has said, this statement throws light on one of the obscure statements of the Bible (Ezekiel xvi, 3). Ezekiel and the nobler Jews remained in captivity. The baser Jews remained in Jerusalem, and assumed that because they were inhabitants of the actual holy city they were therefore more noble and more the people of God than their brethren in exile. We also may notice as an article of dress the fingerless glove, which is still used by the peasantry, and is found in all cold countries. The Scriptures show that the Hittites did not belong to a Semitic race. The features are rather those of a northern people, and at the temple of Ibsambul the Hittites have a very Scythic character, with shaven heads and a single lock on the crown. In Cappadocia, the Hittite type can still be recognized, and with regard to one of the priests sculptured at Poreez it is interesting to notice that some of the patterns on the priest’s dress have not yet gone out of fashion among the Cappadocian peasantry. Scattered over the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the Euxine and the Ægean, are the relics of this great nation, and Solomon [his existence being assumed] “was not arrayed like one of these”.

Of the manner and customs of the Hittites we know, of course little, as twenty years ago their existence was unknown. But we have a few inscriptions, some of which have an interest to Theosophists. The ☉ has, according to Captain Conder, the phonetic value of the syllable an = God. The pentacle, or rather five-pointed star ⛤ has the phonetic value to = down, or descend. The sign for nan is = protection, in Cypriot. The Pramantha is not represented in the Svastika form, but is a log of wood, into which the firestick is inserted, while sparks are issuing from the log. It would be necessary for a competent Senzar scholar to go carefully over the work of Captain Conder, and it might be advisable not to attempt to read the inscriptions till the transliteration is accomplished. It is much to be regretted that we have so few inscriptions, and that the attempted translations of Drake, Palmer, Burton, Hyde Clarke, Dunbar Heath, C. S. Wake, and myself, have all proved miserable failures. How then can we read 327Hittite inscriptions, I say? By accepting the theory of Captain Conder, that they are the products of a nation in which the prehistoric civilization of Northern Tartary has preserved a trace of the old Hyperborean race. The Hittites seem to have imported their Gods from Babylonia. We have Abargatis as a chief divinity, we have also the Ashtoreth of the Canaanites, and the Sun God of Babylon, the Baal of the land of Canaan, and the Attys of the Hittite. The Astarte of Phœnicia became the Artemis of the Ephesians. Our old friend Set, the God of the Jews, glares at us like Bottom, with an ass’s head. The Amazons were all robed in Hittite costume, and armed with the double-headed axe. The dances they performed with shield and bow in honor of the Goddesses of war and love, gave rise to the myths which saw in them a nation of women warriors. The old Egyptian treaty on the silver tablet, to which we have alluded, gives examples how the Hittite deities, who appear generally to have been each the patron of a city, had each a communal status. These deities, each of whom, no doubt, was a village Hampden, were not necessarily on speaking terms with the deity of the neighboring town; and each of these Teraphim was subordinate to the ☉ = God. Since the date of the execution of this treaty a new religious redistribution of Seats has, of course, modified the position of these tribal Gods. It is in the arts of civilization that the Hittites seem to have particularly excelled. The earliest coinage was attributed to the Lydians, and we now know that the Hittite influence extended to Lydia. The Hittites were well acquainted with silver, and Professor Sayce has frequently drawn attention to their presence in the vicinity of silver mines. The bargain with the patriarch Abraham at Hebron, involved the earliest money transaction on record, and the shekel referred to in current money with the merchant was doubtless the forerunner of the coins with which we are acquainted.

We see here considerable progress in commercial, legal, and civil institutions with the Hittites. They used silver as the standard of value, balances for weighing it, and a regular recognized form of sale and conveyances. They seem to have given standard weights to their neighbors, and it has been proved once that the Hittite Mina of Carchemish continues to be the standard weight throughout Asia Minor, and used by the Greeks long after the break-up of the Hittite Empire; and if we can believe him, Schlieman has discovered in his excavations at Hissarlik silver blocks which served as a standard, according to which certain electron coins were struck. Repoussé work was common. Hittite inscriptions unlike Assyrian, Phœnician, Greek, or Roman, are of cameo raised character, and doubtless those who carved them were persons of exalted taste, as these models are of the highest artistic complexity and beauty. All the inscriptions that may be assigned to Hittite origin begin from right to left, and proceed Boustrophêdon. If it had been brought into contact with the Greeks, we may have expected that they would have assigned it an equal position of 328importance with the Persians or Egyptians. A Theosophist who contemplates its existence, may consider that the law of Karma has appointed the time for the unveiling of the monuments of the Hittite kingdom at the end of the cycle which has witnessed the fate of many equally mighty nations.

C. Carter Blake, Doct. Sci., F.T.S.

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