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Hamath Inscription (Hittite).

(Specially drawn by W. Harry Rylands, F.S.A.)

We know something of the religion of the Hittites from their invocation of the gods in their treaty with Rameses II. They adored the sun and moon, the mountains, rivers, clouds, and the sea. But their chief deity was Sutekh, “king of heaven, protector of this treaty,” supposed by Brugsch to be a form of Baal, but who is more likely to have been allied to Set or to Dagon. We cannot suppose that their worship was purer than that of the nations round about them; but it may not have been less pure, nor their life less moral. The appeal to the King of Heaven to protect a treaty is admirable so far as it goes. To what height they could sometimes rise in their conceptions of duty is pleasantly shown if, as seems possible, that beautiful passage in Micah vi. 8 is to be attributed to them—“What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” The prophet quotes the sentiment from Balaam, and gives it as Balaam’s answer to the question of Balak, king of Moab, who had sent for him to curse Israel. A conversation took place which may be set forth as follows:—

King—Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?

Prophet—Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?

King—Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

Prophet—He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?[2]

In the Book of Numbers we find that Balaam had been sent for from another country, and came from the city of Pethor. Now, in the temple of Karnak, Thothmes III. gives a list of two hundred and eighteen towns in Syria and Aram, which he claims to have conquered, and among them we find Pethor. It was a city on the Upper Euphrates, not far from Carchemish, and so was well within the circle of the Hittite dominion. Balaam, then, may be regarded as a Hittite, or as belonging to the Hittite confederacy,[3] and since the text quoted shows his idea of the Divine requirements, it indicates the standard of duty which had been arrived at by some among that people.

The rock inscriptions prove that the Hittites possessed a written language, and this is further shown by their engraved treaty sent to Rameses II. They appear even to have possessed a literature, for the Egyptian records mention a certain Khilp-sira as a writer of books among the Hittites. One of their cities in the south of Palestine was called Kirjath-Sepher, or Book-Town, so that the place must have been noted for writings of some kind.

The fact that the copy of the treaty sent to Rameses was engraved upon a silver plate, with a figure of the god Sutekh in the middle, shows that the Hittites were an artistic people also. In fact their civilisation was far advanced. “They had walled towns, chased metal work, chariots and horses, skilled artificers. They could carve in stone, and could write in hieroglyphic character. All this wonderful cultivation they possessed while Israel as yet was hardly a nation. Thus the Bible account of the Canaan overrun by Joshua is fully confirmed by monumental evidence.”[4]

[Authorities and Sources:—“A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs.” By Henry Brugsch-Bey. “The Empire of the Hittites.” By William Wright, D.D. “The Hittites: the Story of a forgotten Empire.” By A. H. Sayce, LL.D. “Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology.”]