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Now that we have discovered a powerful civilisation in the Greek islands themselves, we see that it would keep Tyre and Sidon in check until it fell into decay about 1000 B.C. After that date, for a few centuries, Phoenicia had a great influence on the development of Europe. The Hittites, on the other hand, are as yet imperfectly known.

Amorite and Hittite, Canaanite and Philistine, were all alike emigrants from other lands. The Hittites had come from the mountains of Asia Minor, the Amorites had probably wandered from the northern coast of Africa, the Canaanites traced their ancestry to the Persian Gulf, the Philistines had sailed from the harbours of the Greek seas.

In places the land is tolerably fertile, and produces good crops of grain, besides mulberries, pears, figs, pomegranates, olives, vines, and pistachio-nuts. Here dwelt, in the time of the Assyrian Empire, the Khatti, or Hittites, whose chief city, Carchemish, appears to have occupied the site of Hierapolis, now Bambuk.

Political refugees, moreover, were to be delivered up to the sovereign from whom they had escaped, but it was stipulated that in this case they should receive a full pardon for the offences they had committed. The Hittite copy of the treaty was engraved on a silver plate, and the gods of Egypt and the Hittites were called upon to witness the execution of it.

Hitherto, these recondite histories had been far beyond my ken. Of the wonderful heretic, Amenhotep the Fourth, I had already heard at the most he had been a mere name; the Hittites a mythical race of undetermined habitat; while cuneiform tablets had presented themselves to my mind merely as an uncouth kind of fossil biscuit suited to the digestion of a prehistoric ostrich.

Two ethnic types have been handed down to us one with beardless faces, resembling that of the Hittites, the other of a people with high fore-heads, curved and pointed noses, thin lips, and well-formed chin. Both, however, wear the same dress.

The Greeks and Hittites after the sacrilege vanished in the reeds, to sail toward the sea afterward. To prevent pursuit they sank the boat which had borne the priestess. Pi-Bast was as excited as a beehive. People talked of nothing else. They even guessed who did the deed. Some suspected Sargon, who had offered Kama the title of wife if she would leave the temple and remove to Nineveh.

Heathen they were in the eyes of the good people of Plymouth Colony, but nations of heathen, without question, as truly as were the Amalekites, the Jebusites, or the Hittites to the infant colony at Shiloh.

And the man went into the land of the Hittites, and built a city, and called the name thereof Luz: which is the name thereof unto this day.

"This series of scenes represents the victory at Kadesh in Syria," explained the guide as we stood before a wall covered with pictorial representations of conflict cut in the stone. "Here is the King in his chariot charging with fury on his foes amid flying arrows. Notice the dead and wounded scattered over the field of battle and the Hittites flying in confusion.