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

780 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
According to the Assyrian inscriptions Mut(d)allu of
Kommagene was also in possession of Melitene from 712 to
708 b. c. Hence it is in the highest degree probable that
he is the king of the lion-hunt. Considerations which shall
be given later place the matter beyond any doubt. From
Mut(d)allu's inscription we get the word-group for Kommagene
and Khati, two names which for the period to which
the inscription presumably belongs have been preserved to
us in the forms Kummukhi and Khati(?).
Four inscriptions, all emanating from kings of the same
realm, have been found northwest of
the Taurus, while another
apparently cognate with them, that on the bowl, has
been discovered in the ruins of Babylon. One of these
monarchs, according to his inscription, possessed at least the
territory of Karkemish on the Euphrates, if not Karkemish
itself; while according to the bowl inscription, another of
them, perhaps the son or more probably the grandson of
the former, was in possession of Karkemish itself. This
bowl inscription, to judge from its character, must be one
of the very latest of the so-called Hittite inscriptions. A
king who bore sway at once over the land west of the
Taurus and over the lands of Karkemish must have been
lord of the intervening territory of Cilicia also. We know
nothing of a temporary conquest of Cilicia in post-Assyrian
times, to which date the inscription in question must belong,
since according to it the territory of Karkemish is neither
independent nor yet held by Assyria. It is therefore
highly probable that the kings of these inscriptions were
kings of Cilicia ruling also over the territory beyond the
Taurus to the west, and that the hieroglyph for their
country is that for Cilicia, the native form of which name
would probably be Khilik with a vowel at the end, to
judge from the
Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek transliterations.
In the first line of his inscription, one of these kings, per-