The reconstruction, from newly exhumed monuments, of the history of the East, has been the great work of the present century. The startling revelations arising from the decipherment of the Egyptian records were followed by results, still more surprising, afforded by the buried cities of Assyria and Babylonia, and by glimpses into the prehistoric life of Greece obtained from the excavations of Dr. Schliemann on the sites of Troy and MycenÆ. If any one will take the trouble to look into such a book as Rollin’s “Ancient History,” and compare it with Duncker’s “History of Antiquity,” or with the useful series of little volumes published by the Christian Knowledge Society under the title of “Ancient History from the Monuments,” it will be possible to estimate the completeness of the reconstruction of our knowledge. Thus the legendary story of Sesostris, as recorded by Herodotus, has given place to the authentic history of the reigns of the conquering monarchs of the New Empire, Thothmes III., Seti I., and Rameses II., while the Greek romance of Sardanapalus is replaced by the contemporary annals of Assurbanipal; and, more wonderful than all, we discover that Semiramis herself was no mortal Queen of Babylon, but the celestial Queen of the Heavenly Host, the planet Venus, the morning star as she journeys from her eastern realm, the evening star as she passes onward to the west in search of her lost spouse the sun, and to be identified with the Babylonian goddess Istar, the Ashtaroth of the Bible, whose rationalized myth was handed down by Ctesias as sober history. To these marvellous reconstructions Our readers will probably remember a signed article on the Hittites, from the pen of Dr. Wright, which appeared in this Review in 1882. This article has been expanded by its author into a goodly volume, and has been enriched with considerable additions of new and valuable material which bring it well up to the present standard of knowledge. Among these additions are facsimiles of the principal Hittite inscriptions, most of which have already appeared in the transactions of the Society of Biblical ArchÆology, and are now revised by Mr. Rylands; while Sir C. Wilson and Captain Conder have contributed a useful map indicating the sites where Hittite monuments have been found; and Professor Sayce adds a valuable appendix containing the results of his latest researches as to the decipherment of the Hittite script. Till within the last twenty years all It is only by slow degrees that this result has been established. The first light came from Abusimbel, in Nubia, midway between the first and second cataracts of the Nile, where Rameses II., the most magnificent of the Egyptian kings, at a time when the Hebrews were still toiling in Egyptian bondage, caused a vast precipice of rock to be carved into a stupendous temple-cave, to whose walls he committed the annals of his reign and the records of his distant campaigns. On one of the walls of this temple is pictured a splendid battle scene, occupying a space of 57 feet by 24, and containing upwards of 1100 figures. This represents, as we learn from the hieroglyphic explanation, the great battle of Kadesh, fought with the “vile people of the Kheta”—a battle which also forms the theme of the poem of Pentaur, the oldest epic in the world, still extant in a papyrus now preserved in the British Museum. In spite of the grandiloquent boasts of these records, we gather that the battle was indecisive; that Rameses had to retire About twenty years ago it was suggested by De RougÉ that this powerful nation of the Kheta might probably be identified with the Khittim, or Hittites, of the Old Testament; and this conclusion, though never accepted by some eminent Egyptologists, such as Chabas and Ebers, gradually won its way into favor, and has been recently confirmed by Captain Conder’s identification of the site of Kadesh, where the battle depicted on the wall at Abusimbel was fought. From other inscriptions we learn that for five hundred years the Kheta resisted with varying success the attacks of the terrible conquerors of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, their power remaining to the last substantially unshaken. The story is now taken up by the Assyrian records, which prove that from the time of Sargon of Accad—who must be assigned to the nineteenth century B.C., if not to a much earlier period—down to the reigns of Tiglath Pileser I. (B.C., 1130), and for four hundred years afterwards, till the reigns of Assur-nazir-pal and Shalmanezer II., the Khatti of Hamath and Carchemish were the most formidable opponents of the rising power of Assyria, their resistance being only brought to a close by the defeat of their King Pisiris, and the capture of Carchemish, their capital, in 717 B.C., by Sargon II., the king who also destroyed the monarchy of Israel by the capture of Samaria. It seemed strange that no monuments should have been discovered belonging to a people powerful enough to withstand for twelve centuries the assaults of Egypt and Assyria. At last, in 1872, certain inscriptions from Hamath on the Orontes, in a hieroglyphic picture-writing of a hitherto unknown character, were published in Burton and Drake’s “Unexplored Syria.” Dr. Wright, in 1874, published an article in “The British and Foreign Evangelical Review,” suggesting that these monuments were in reality records of the Hittite race. This conjecture, though much ridiculed The arguments by which scholars have been led to these conclusions, together with the existing materials on which future researches must be based, have been collected by Dr. Wright in a handy volume, which we have great pleasure in heartily commending to all students of Biblical archÆology as a substantial contribution to our knowledge. When the Turks permit the mounds at Kadesh and Carchemish, which conceal the ruined palaces and temples of the Hittite capitals, to be systematically explored, and when the Hittite writing shall be completely deciphered, we may anticipate a revelation of the earliest history of the world not inferior, possibly, in interest and importance, to those astonishing discoveries which have made known to this generation the buried secrets of Babylon, Nineveh, and Troy.—British Quarterly Review. |