1. Polytheism: Names of Deities:
The Hittites like their neighbors adored many gods. Besides Set (or Sutekh), the "great ruler of heaven," and Ishtar (Ashtoreth), we also find mentioned (in Chattusil's treaty) gods and goddesses of "the hills and rivers of the land of the Chatti," "the great sea, the winds and the clouds." Tessupas was known to the Babylonians as a name of Rimmon, the god of thunder and rain. On a bilingual seal (in Hittite and cuneiform characters), now in the Ashmolean Museum, we find noticed the goddess Ischara, whose name, among the Kassites, was equivalent to Istar. The Hittite gods are represented--like those of the Assyrians--standing erect on lions. One of them (at Samala in Syria) is lion-headed like Nergal. They also believed in demons, like the Akkadians and others.
2. Religious Symbolism:
Their pantheon was thus also Mongolic, and the suggestion (by Dr. Winckler) that they adored Indian gods (Indra, Varuna), and the Persian Mithra, not only seems improbable, but is also hardly supported by the quotations from Semitic texts on which this idea is based. The sphinx is found as a Hittite emblem at Eyuk, North of Pterium, with the double-headed eagle which again, at Iasili-kaia, supports a pair of deities. It also occurs at Tel-loh as an Akkadian emblem, and was adopted by the Seljuk Turks about 1000 AD. At Eyuk we have a representation of a procession bringing goats and rams to an altar. At Iflatun-bunar the winged sun is an emblem as in Babylonia. At Mer'-ash, in Syria, the mother goddess carries her child, while an eagle perches on a harp beside her. At Carchemish the naked Ishtar is represented with wings. The religious symbolism, like the names of deities, thus suggests a close connection with the emblems and beliefs of the Kassites and Akkadians.
V Script.
1. Cuneiform and Hieroglyphic:
In the 16th century BC, and down to the 13th century, the Hittites used the cuneiform characters and the Babylonian language for correspondence abroad. On seals and and mace-heads they used their own hieroglyphics, together with the cuneiform. These emblems, which occur on archaic monuments at Hamath, Carchemish and Aleppo in Syria, as well as very frequently in Cappadocia and Pontus, and less frequently as far West as Ionia, and on the East at Babylon, are now proved to be of Hittite origin, since the discovery of the seal of Arnuanta already noticed. The suggestion that they were Hittite was first made by the late Dr. W. Wright (British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1874). About 100 such monuments are now known, including seals from Nineveh and Cappadocia, and Hittite gold ornaments in the Ashmolean Museum; and there can be little doubt that, in cases where the texts accompany figures of the gods, they are of a votive character.
2. Description of Signs:
The script is quite distinctive, though many of the emblems are similar to those used by the Akkadians. There are some 170 signs in all, arranged one below another in the line--as among Akkadians. The lines read alternately from right to left and from left to right, the profile emblems always facing the beginning of each line.
The interpretation of these texts is still a controversial question, but the most valuable suggestion toward their understanding is that made by the late Canon Isaac Taylor (see ALPHABET, 1883). A syllabary which was afterward used by the Greeks in Cyprus, and which is found extensively spread in Asia Minor, Egypt, Palestine, Crete, and even on later coins in Spain, was recognized by Dr. Taylor as being derived from the Hittite signs. It was deciphered by George Smith from a Cypriote-Phoenician bilingual, and appears to give the sounds applying to some 60 signs.
3. Interpretation of Monuments:
These sounds are confirmed by the short bilinguals as yet known, and they appear in some cases at least to be very clearly the monosyllabic words which apply in Akkadian to similar emblems. We have thus the bases of a comparative study, by aid of a known language and script--a method similar to that which enabled Sir H. Rawlinson to recover scientifically the lost cuneiform, or Champollion to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.
See also ASIA MINOR, ARCHAEOLOGY OF; PALESTINE EXPLORATION.
LITERATURE.
The Egyptian notices will be found in Brugsch's A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs, 1879, and the Assyrian in Schrader's Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, English Translation, 1885. The discoveries of Chantre are published in his Mission en Cappadoce, 1898, and those of Dr. H. Winckler in the Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, number 35, December, 1907. The researches of Humann and Puchstein, Reisen in Kleinasien und Nordsyrien, 1890, are also valuable for this question; as is also Dr. Robert Koldewey's discovery of a Hittite monument at Babylon (Die hettische Inschrift, 1900). The recent discovery of sculpture at a site North of Samala by Professor Garstang is published in the Annals of Archaeology, I, number 4, 1908, by the University of Liverpool. These sculptures are supposed to date about 800 BC, but no accompanying inscriptions have as yet been found. The views of the present writer are detailed in his Tell Amarna Tablets, 2nd edition, 1894, and in The Hittites and Their Languages, 1898. Dr. Sayce has given an account of his researches in a small volume, The Hittites, 1888, but many discoveries by Sir C. Wilson, Mr. D.G. Hogarth, Sir W. Ramsay, and other explorers have since been published, and are scattered in various periodicals not easily accessible. The suggestions of Drs. Jensen, Hommel, and Peiser, in Germany, of comparison with Armenian, Georgian and Turkish, have not as yet produced any agreement; nor have those of Dr. Sayce, who looks to Vannic or to Gr; and further light on Hittite decipherment is still awaited. See, further, Professor Garstang's Land of the Hittites, 1910.
C. R. Conder