Quotes from A. H. SAYCE.

The Hittites and Amorites were therefore mingled together in the mountains of Palestine like the two races which ethnologists tell us go to form the modern Kelt.

Even the buckle, with the help of which the prehistoric Greek fastened his cloak, has been shown by a German scholar to imply an arrangement of the dress such as we see represented on the Hittite monument of Ibreez.

The direction in which the characters look determines the direction in which they should be read. This alternate or boustrophedon mode of writing also characterises early Greek inscriptions, and since it was not adopted by either Phœnicians, Egyptians, or Assyrians, the question arises whether the Greeks did not learn to write in such a fashion from neighbours who made use of the Hittite script.

So, too, we may imagine that the sight of the hieroglyphs of Egypt, and the knowledge that thoughts could be conveyed by them, suggested to some Hittite genius the idea of inventing a similar means of intercommunication for his own people.

How the resurrection of Hittites has been accomplished, by putting together the fragmentary evidence of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions, of strange-looking monuments in Asia Minor, and of still undeciphered hieroglyphics

It is not probable that the Hittite system of writing passed away without leaving its influence behind it ... There is reason to think that the curious syllabary which continued to be used in Cyprus as late as the age of Alexander the Great was derived from the Hittite hieroglyphs ... It is also possible that the names assigned to the letters even of the Phœnician alphabet were influenced by the hieroglyphs of the Hittites.

Elephants' tusks were among the tribute paid by the Hittites to the Assyrian kings. It may be that the extinction of the elephant in this part of Asia was due to Hittite huntsmen.

Like the Egyptians, the Hittites sat when eating.

It is clear, then, that the Amorites of Canaan belonged to the same white race as the Libyans of Northern Africa, and like them preferred the mountains to the hot plains and valleys below. The Libyans themselves belonged to a race which can be traced through the peninsula of Spain and the western side of France into the British Isles.

There are no traces of the Hittites at Shechem or on the eastern side of the Jordan

We must regard the Amorites as the earlier population, among a part of whom the Hittites in later days settled and intermarried.

The age of Hittite supremacy belongs to an earlier date than the rise of the monarchy in Israel; earlier, we may even say, than the Israelitish conquest of Canaan.

The Hittites were intruders in Syria as well as in Western Asia Minor.

Bath-sheba was not only the mother of Solomon, but also the distant ancestress of Christ. For us, therefore, these Hittites of Judæa have a very special and peculiar interest.

There was thus a Hittite population which clustered round Hebron, and to whom the origin of Jerusalem was partly due.

As Membij took the place of Carchemish, so Emesa or Homs took the place of Kadesh.

The Jebusites ... belonged to one or other of these two great races; perhaps, indeed, to both (i.e., Amorites and Hittites).

Prominent among the Hettite priests were the Galli or eunuchs, who on the days of festival cut their arms and scourged themselves in honour of their deities. Such actions remind us of those priests of Baal who 'cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.

The Semite had avenged himself for the conquest of his country by the northern mountaineers centuries before. They no longer formed a barrier which cut off the east from the west, and prevented the Semites of Assyria and Babylon from meeting the Semites of Phœnicia and Palestine.