Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

DURING 19 CENTURY: HITTITES 759
tions by the name Hittite.
at first sight to be inappropriate.
But such a designation appears
For the name Hittite, derived
as it is from the name of a country, could properly
speaking only be employed if it was sure that all the inscriptions
were found in the so-called land of Khate, which they
were not ; or that they were the product of a people belonging
exclusively to Khate, something that could not be known.
In the latter case they could tell us nothing at all as to the
particular nationality of this people. But even supposing
that the name Khittim (= Hittite), and its equivalents in the
above mentioned inscriptions, applied to a single definite
people (and no more) belonging to the
country Khate, and
that the Khate-folk of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and pre-
Indogermanic Armenians were therefore all
one stock, which
is a mere hypothesis ; and supposing futhermore that these
Hittites from Khate had at a certain time been settled in
Asia Minor, or had even enjoyed a
supremacy there — the
proof that they, and they alone, were the authors of the
hieroglyphic inscriptions in Syria and Asia Minor is still
lacking unless we are able definitely to assign the inscriptions
in question to their period. Therefore in order to
arrive at a positive knowledge, we must first of all determine
the time when the inscriptions were written. This fundamental
work having been omitted by Sayce and Wright,
their hypothesis lacked the necessary confirmation.
The problem may be attacked from more than one side.
It would be a great step in advance, if with some degree of
certainty we could fix
the relative chronology of the inscriptions,
the relative order of their composition. It is a species
of picture writing that we have to deal with, and in
the inscriptions, though not in
to a considerable extent, may still
many of
all, the constituent characters,
be recognized as pictures.
Thus in some instances we find an animal head with certain
characteristic features ; in others, however, we find corresponding
to it what is recognized to be an animal head only