• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library DS 66.G24L2 Land of the HIttites, iiillllii 3 1924 028 539 736 All books are subject to recall after two weeks. Olln/Kroch Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028539736 THE LAND OF THE HITTITES THE LAND OF THE HITTITES AN ACCOUNT OP RECENT EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN ASIA MINOR, WITH DESCRIP- TIONS OP THE HITTITB MONUMENTS With Maps and Plans , Ninety-nine Photographs and a Bibliography BT JOHN GAKSTANG D.Sc. B.Litt. M.A. RANKIN PROFESSOR OF THE METHODS AND PRAOTICB OF AHCH^OLOOT IN THE UNrVERSITY OP LIVERPOOL ; FELLOW OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON HON. MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF NORTHERN ANTIQUARIES, COPENHAGEN NEW ^RK E. P. BUTTON AND CO. 1910 f. ^u University of Liverpool Institute of Archaeology irt- .ytt r-^O"**^^ TO MY WIFE • ; INTRODUCTORY NOTE By the Rev. Professor A. H. Sayce, D.D., D.LiTT., M.A. The history of ancient Oriental civilisation is slowly revealing itself to the excavator and archseologist. Scientific excavations have been carried on in Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Palestine; it is now the turn of Asia Minor, both north and south of the Taurus and there are indications that the revelation which Asia Minor and the neighbouring lands of Syria have in store for us will be even more startling than that which has come from Egypt and Babylonia. There we already knew that great empires and wide-reach- ing cultures had once flourished ; the earlier history of Asia Minor, on the other hand, was a blank. But the blank is beginning to be filled up, and we are learning that there too an empire once existed, which contended on equal terms with those of the Nile and the Euphrates, and possessed a culture that formed a link between the east and the west. What I once called the forgotten empire of the Hittites is at last emerging into the light of day, and before long much viii THE LAND OF THE HITTITES that is still mysterious in the art and religion of Greece and Europe will be explained. This much has already been ascertained by the excavations made by the German expedition under Professor Winckler at Boghaz-Keui, north of the Halys, the site of the Hittite capital. But there are many other sites in Asia Minor and northern Syria where Hittite culture once flourished, and where, therefore, discoveries similar to those which have startled the scientific world at Boghaz-Keui may be expected to be made. Some of these sites were examined by Professor Garstang in his preliminary journeys of exploration ; at another he has begun the work of excavation and brought to light important remains of art and antiquity. Sakje-Geuzi lies at a short distance from Sinjerli, where German excavators have discovered monuments which form the chief attraction of the Hittite section in the Museum of Berlin. The mound of Sakje-Geuzi represents a continuous history of unnumbered cen- turies. The earlier strata are the accumulation of a neolithic people ; above them come the ruins of Hittite and Aramaean builders. The temple dis- interred by Professor Garstang shows us what Hittite art was like in the Syria of the tenth and following centuries before our era, and enables us to guess at the character of the cult that was carried on in it. In the following pages he has given an account of his work and the conclusions that may be drawn from INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix it. This, however, occupies but a small portion of his book. Its main purpose is to review our present knowledge of Hittite history, art, and archaeology; to describe the Hittite monuments now known to exist, and to trace the story of the Hittite empire as it has been revealed to us by recent dis- coveries. Among the great political forces of the ancient Oriental world we now know that none exercised a more profound influence than the Hittites of Asia Minor. It was they who overthrew the Amorite dynasty of Babylonia to which the Amraphel of Genesis belonged ; to them was due the fall of the Egyptian empire in Asia, and it was they who checked for centuries the desolating advance of the Assyrians. In Palestine their influence was supreme, and it is with good reason that in the tenth chapter of Genesis Heth is named second among the sons of Canaan. They were the founders of the Heraklid dynasty in Lydia, and Babylonian art as modified in Asia Minor was carried by them to the Greek seas. Greek religion and mythology owed much to them; even the Ama- zons of Greek legend prove to have been the warrior- priestesses of the great Hittite goddess. Above all, it was the Hittites who controlled the mines of Asia Minor which supplied the ancient world with silver, copper, lead, and perhaps also tin. Before the age of Abraham traders carried the bronze of Asia Minor to Assyria and Palestine, and thus transformed the whole culture of western Asia. The story of the forgotten X THE LAND OF THE HITTITES people is a fascinating one, and the reader cannot do better than study it under the guidance of Professor Garstang, whose work will be the standard authority on the subject for a long while to come. A. H. Saycb. NtJBiA, December 1, 1909 AUTHOR'S PREFACE Since Professor Sayce and Dr. Wright first called atten- tion, more than thirty years ago, to the forgotten empire and civilisation of the Hittites, no book has appeared to keep the English reader abreast of the further informa- tion which has since come to light upon that subject. In the meantime researches made by British and German explorers in northern Syria and Asia Minor, and the studies of numerous scholars who have applied them- selves to this problem, have advanced the position so far that the Hittites are nebulous no longer, but stand revealed in the clear light of history, claiming the attention of all those interested in the story of the Bible Lands, of Asia Minor, and of early Greece. The position and character of Asia Minor lend a wide interest and charm to its past no less than its present. The present volume aims at filling the gap which has already grown too wide. It starts ab initio with a rapid survey of the Hittite lands, and an outline of their history. The Hittite monuments are then passed in review, each described separately and independently, in such a way as to be useful to any one visiting them in situ or in the museums of Constantinople and Berlin, where there are departments devoted specially to this branch of archaeology. The bibliography and numerous xii THE LAND OF THE HITTITES cross-references in the footnotes will, it is hoped, make the work handy to the archaeologist as a book of reference. The author's own theories are mostly con- fined to the last chapter, and an effort has been made to distinguish between facts proved or generally ac- cepted and matters of personal opinion. The attempt to reconstruct the history of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C. from the archives recently dis- covered by Dr. Winckler at Boghaz-Keuiis put forward tentatively, and would doubtless have been better done by a philologist. It has been found impossible to treat the subject of Hittite art and religious symbolism in general within the limited scope of this volume and its title. Some other points are best noted at the outset. One aim. of the book being to interest the English reader in a fascinating but neglected subject, the bibliographical references are given in English wherever translations of foreign authors are available. Unhappily some of the masterpieces of modern scholarship, like Meyer's Geschichte des Alterthums, are not yet rendered into English. The geographical names employed, even at the risk of inconsistency, are those most familiar or in common use. Thus Hamath instead of Hama, Aleppo for Haleb, Carchemish for Jerablus, Tyana for Kilisse Hissar. In regard to the term ' Hittite,' also, the word is primarily used in reference to that class of monu- ments generally known as Hittite, and hence to the ancient people whose handiwork these were. The word Hatti is used in a more restricted sense, to imply AUTHOR'S PREFACE xiii the central and at one time dominant Hittite state or states whose seat and centre of organisation was at Boghaz-Keui. But it should not be forgotten that actually the words Hittite and Hatti are interchange- able. There are many friends who have helped forward the completion of the work at various stages. Among them are the writer's colleagues during two of his journeys of exploration in Asia Minor. The Rev. W. M. Linton Smith has corrected several chapters in proof, and has provided several photographs of the Phrygian monuments. Mr. Arthur Wilkin has kindly supplied the photographs of Ephesus, Sardis, and the goddess on Mount Sipylus. The bulk of the illustra- tions, however, are the handiwork of Mr. Horst Schliep- hack, and they speak for themselves. Any one who has attempted photography under the conditions of travel in Asia Minor will realise the skill with which these results have been obtained. In Constantinople our work has received the constant help of Sir Edwin Pears and Mr. G.

Load more

  620

Copy Link