Part 21 (2/2)
He was the war G.o.d of the Hitt.i.tes as well as of the northern Amorites, the Mitannians, and the Ka.s.sites; and he led the Aryans from the Iranian steppes towards the verdurous valley of the Punjab. His wors.h.i.+ppers engraved his image with grateful hands on the beetling cliffs of Cappadocian chasms in Asia Minor, where his sway was steadfast and pre-eminent for long centuries. In one locality he appears mounted on a bull wearing a fringed and belted tunic with short sleeves, a conical helmet, and upturned shoes, while he grasps in one hand the lightning symbol, and in the other a triangular bow resting on his right shoulder. In another locality he is the bringer of grapes and barley sheaves. But his most familiar form is the bearded and thick-set mountaineer, armed with a ponderous thunder hammer, a flas.h.i.+ng trident, and a long two-edged sword with a hemispherical k.n.o.b on the hilt, which dangles from his belt, while an antelope or goat wearing a pointed tiara prances beside him. This deity is identical with bluff, impetuous Thor of northern Europe, Indra of the Himalayas, Tarku of Phrygia, and Teshup or Teshub of Armenia and northern Mesopotamia, Sandan, the Hercules of Cilicia, Adad or Hadad of Amurru and a.s.syria, and Ramman, who at an early period penetrated Akkad and Sumer in various forms. His. .h.i.tt.i.te name is uncertain, but in the time of Rameses II he was identified with Sutekh (Set). He pa.s.sed into southern Europe as Zeus, and became ”the lord” of the deities of the Aegean and Crete.
The Hitt.i.tes who entered Babylon about 1800 B.C., and overthrew the last king of the Hammurabi Dynasty, may have been plundering raiders, like the European Gauls of a later age, or a well-organized force of a strong, consolidated power, which endured for a period of uncertain duration. They were probably the latter, for although they carried off Merodach and Zerpanitu?, these idols were not thrust into the melting pot, but retained apparently for political reasons.
These early Hitt.i.tes are ”a people of the mist”. More than once in ancient history casual reference is made to them; but on most of these occasions they soon vanish suddenly behind their northern mountains.
The explanation appears to be that at various periods great leaders arose who were able to weld together the various tribes, and make their presence felt in Western Asia. But when once the organization broke down, either on account of internal rivalries or the influence of an outside power, they lapsed back again into a state of political insignificance in the affairs of the ancient world. It is possible that about 1800 B.C. the Hitt.i.te confederacy was controlled by an ambitious king who had dreams of a great empire, and was accordingly pursuing a career of conquest.
Judging from what we know of the northern wors.h.i.+ppers of the hammer G.o.d in later times, it would appear that when they were referred to as the Hatti or Khatti, the tribe of that name was the dominating power in Asia Minor and north Syria. The Hatti are usually identified with the broad-headed mountaineers of Alpine or Armenoid type--the ancestors of the modern Armenians. Their ancient capital was at Boghaz-Koi, the site of Pteria, which was destroyed, according to the Greeks, by Croesus, the last King of Lydia, in the sixth century B.C.
It was strongly situated in an excellent pastoral district on the high, breezy plateau of Cappadocia, surrounded by high mountains, and approached through narrow river gorges, which in winter were blocked with snow.
Hitt.i.te civilization was of great antiquity. Excavations which have been conducted at an undisturbed artificial mound at Sakje-Geuzi have revealed evidences of a continuous culture which began to flourish before 3000 B.C.[282] In one of the lower layers occurred that particular type of Neolithic yellow-painted pottery, with black geometric designs, which resembles other specimens of painted fabrics found in Turkestan by the Pumpelly expedition; in Susa, the capital of Elam, and its vicinity, by De Morgan; in the Balkan peninsula by Schliemann; in a First Dynasty tomb at Abydos in Egypt by Petrie; and in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (Minoan) strata of Crete by Evans. It may be that these interesting relics were connected with the prehistoric drift westward of the broad-headed pastoral peoples who ultimately formed the Hitt.i.te military aristocracy.
According to Professor Elliot Smith, broad-headed aliens from Asia Minor first reached Egypt at the dawn of history. There they blended with the indigenous tribes of the Mediterranean or Brown Race. A mesocephalic skull then became common. It is referred to as the Giza type, and has been traced by Professor Elliot Smith from Egypt to the Punjab, but not farther into India.[283]
During the early dynasties this skull with alien traits was confined chiefly to the Delta region and the vicinity of Memphis, the city of the pyramid builders. It is not improbable that the Memphite G.o.d Ptah may have been introduced into Egypt by the invading broad heads. This deity is a world artisan like Indra, and is similarly a.s.sociated with dwarfish artisans; he hammers out the copper sky, and therefore links with the various thunder G.o.ds--Tarku, Teshup, Adad, Ramman, &c, of the Asian mountaineers. Thunderstorms were of too rare occurrence in Egypt to be connected with the food supply, which has always depended on the river Nile. Ptah's purely Egyptian characteristics appear to have been acquired after fusion with Osiris-Seb, the Nilotic G.o.ds of inundation, earth, and vegetation. The ancient G.o.d Set (Sutekh), who became a demon, and was ultimately re-exalted as a great deity during the Nineteenth Dynasty, may also have had some connection with the prehistoric Hatti.
Professor Elliot Smith, who has found alien traits in the mummies of the Rameses kings, is convinced that the broad-headed folks who entered Europe by way of Asia Minor, and Egypt through the Delta, at the close of the Neolithic Age, represent ”two streams of the same Asiatic folk”.[284] The opinion of such an authority cannot be lightly set aside.
The earliest Egyptian reference to the Kheta, as the Hitt.i.tes were called, was made in the reign of the first Amenemhet of the Twelfth Dynasty, who began to reign about 2000 B.C. Some authorities, including Maspero,[285] are of opinion that the allusion to the Hatti which is found in the Babylonian _Book of Omens_ belongs to the earlier age of Sargon of Akkad and Naram-Sin, but Sayce favours the age of Hammurabi. Others would connect the Gutium, or men of Kutu, with the Kheta or Hatti. Sayce has expressed the opinion that the Biblical Tidal, identified with Tudkhul or Tudhula, ”king of nations”, the ally of Arioch, Amraphel, and Chedor-laomer, was a Hitt.i.te king, the ”nations” being the confederacy of Asia Minor tribes controlled by the Hatti. ”In the fragments of the Babylonian story of Chedor-laomer published by Dr. Pinches”, says Professor Sayce, ”the name of Tid^{c}al is written Tudkhul, and he is described as King of the _Umman Manda_, or Nations of the North, of which the Hebrew _Goyyim_ is a literal translation. Now the name is. .h.i.tt.i.te. In the account of the campaign of Rameses II against the Hitt.i.tes it appears as Tid^{c}al, and one of the Hitt.i.te kings of Boghaz-Koi bears the same name, which is written as Dud-khaliya in cuneiform.”[286]
One of the racial types among the Hitt.i.tes wore pigtails. These head adornments appear on figures in certain Cappadocian sculptures and on Hitt.i.te warriors in the pictorial records of a north Syrian campaign of Rameses II at Thebes. It is suggestive, therefore, to find that on the stele of Naram-Sin of Akkad, the mountaineers who are conquered by that battle lord wear pigtails also. Their split robes are unlike the short fringed tunics of the Hitt.i.te G.o.ds, but resemble the long split mantles worn over their tunics by high dignitaries like King Tarku-dimme, who figures on a famous silver boss of an ancient Hitt.i.te dagger. Naram-Sin inherited the Empire of Sargon of Akkad, which extended to the Mediterranean Sea. If his enemies were not natives of Cappadocia, they may have been the congeners of the Hitt.i.te pigtailed type in another wooded and mountainous country.
It has been suggested that these wearers of pigtails were Mongolians.
But although high cheek bones and oblique eyes occurred in ancient times, and still occur, in parts of Asia Minor, suggesting occasional Mongolian admixture with Ural-Altaic broad heads, the Hitt.i.te pigtailed warriors must not be confused with the true small-nosed Mongols of north-eastern Asia. The Egyptian sculptors depicted them with long and prominent noses, which emphasize their strong Armenoid affinities.
Other tribes in the Hitt.i.te confederacy included the representatives of the earliest settlers from North Africa of Mediterranean racial stock. These have been identified with the Canaanites, and especially the agriculturists among them, for the Palestinian Hitt.i.tes are also referred to as Canaanites in the Bible, and in one particular connection under circ.u.mstances which afford an interesting glimpse of domestic life in those far-off times. When Esau, Isaac's eldest son, was forty years of age, ”he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hitt.i.te, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hitt.i.te”[287].
Apparently the Hitt.i.te ladies considered themselves to be of higher caste than the indigenous peoples and the settlers from other countries, for when Ezekiel declared that the mother of Jerusalem was a Hitt.i.te he said: ”Thou art thy mother's daughter, that lotheth her husband and her children.”[288] Esau's marriage was ”a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah”.[287] The Hebrew mother seems to have entertained fears that her favourite son Jacob would fall a victim to the allurements of other representatives of the same stock as her superior and troublesome daughters-in-law, for she said to Isaac: ”I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?”[289]
Isaac sent for Jacob, ”and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Padan-aram, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother's father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban, thy mother's brother.”[290]
From these quotations two obvious deductions may be drawn: the Hebrews regarded the Hitt.i.tes ”of the land”
as one with the Canaanites, the stocks having probably been so well fused, and the worried Rebekah had the choosing of Jacob's wife or wives from among her own relations in Mesopotamia who were of Sumerian stock and kindred of Abraham.[291] It is not surprising to find traces of Sumerian pride among the descendants of the evicted citizens of ancient Ur, especially when brought into a.s.sociation with the pretentious. .h.i.tt.i.tes.
Evidence of racial blending in Asia Minor is also afforded by Hitt.i.te mythology. In the fertile agricultural valleys and round the sh.o.r.es of that great Eur-Asian ”land bridge” the indigenous stock was also of the Mediterranean race, as Sergi and other ethnologists have demonstrated. The Great Mother G.o.ddess was wors.h.i.+pped from the earliest times, and she bore various local names. At Comana in Pontus she was known to the Greeks as Ma, a name which may have been as old as that of the Sumerian Mama (the creatrix), or Mamitu? (G.o.ddess of destiny); in Armenia she was Anaitis; in Cilicia she was Ate ('Atheh of Tarsus); while in Phrygia she was best known as Cybele, mother of Attis, who links with Ishtar as mother and wife of Tammuz, Aphrodite as mother and wife of Adonis, and Isis as mother and wife of Osiris.
The Great Mother was in Phoenicia called Astarte; she was a form of Ishtar, and identical with the Biblical Ashtoreth. In the Syrian city of Hierapolis she bore the name of Atargatis, which Meyer, with whom Frazer agrees, considers to be the Greek rendering of the Aramaic 'Athar-'Atheh--the G.o.d 'Athar and the G.o.ddess 'Atheh. Like the ”bearded Aphrodite”, Atargatis may have been regarded as a bis.e.xual deity. Some of the specialized mother G.o.ddesses, whose outstanding attributes reflected the history and politics of the states they represented, were imported into Egypt--the land of ancient mother deities--during the Empire period, by the half-foreign Rameses kings; these included the voluptuous Kadesh and the warlike Anthat. In every district colonized by the early representatives of the Mediterranean race, the G.o.ddess cult came into prominence, and the G.o.ds and the people were reputed to be descendants of the great Creatrix. This rule obtained as far distant as Ireland, where the Danann folk and the Danann G.o.ds were the children of the G.o.ddess Danu.
Among the Hatti proper--that is, the broad-headed military aristocracy--the chief deity of the pantheon was the Great Father, the creator, ”the lord of Heaven”, the Baal. As Sutekh, Tarku, Adad, or Ramman, he was the G.o.d of thunder, rain, fertility, and war, and he ultimately acquired solar attributes. A famous rock sculpture at Boghaz-Koi depicts a mythological scene which is believed to represent the Spring marriage of the Great Father and the Great Mother, suggesting a local fusion of beliefs which resulted from the union of tribes of the G.o.d cult with tribes of the G.o.ddess cult. So long as the Hatti tribe remained the predominant partner in the Hitt.i.te confederacy, the supremacy was a.s.sured of the Great Father who symbolized their sway. But when, in the process of time, the power of the Hatti declined, their chief G.o.d ”fell... from his predominant place in the religion of the interior”, writes Dr. Garstang. ”But the Great Mother lived on, being the G.o.ddess of the land.”[292]
In addition to the Hitt.i.te confederacy of Asia Minor and North Syria, another great power arose in northern Mesopotamia. This was the Mitanni Kingdom. Little is known regarding it, except what is derived from indirect sources. Winckler believes that it was first established by early ”waves” of Hatti people who migrated from the east.
The Hitt.i.te connection is based chiefly on the following evidence. One of the G.o.ds of the Mitanni rulers was Teshup, who is identical with Tarku, the Thor of Asia Minor. The raiders who in 1800 B.C. entered Babylon, set fire to E-sagila, and carried off Merodach and his consort Zerpanitu?, were called the Hatti. The images of these deities were afterwards obtained from Khani (Mitanni).
At a later period, when we come to know more about Mitanni from the letters of one of its kings to two Egyptian Pharaohs, and the Winckler tablets from Bog-haz-Koi, it is found that its military aristocracy spoke an Indo-European language, as is shown by the names of their kings--Saushatar, Artatama, Sutarna, Artashshumara, Tushratta, and Mattiuza. They wors.h.i.+pped the following deities:
Mi-it-ra, Uru-w-na, In-da-ra, and Na-sa-at-ti-ia--
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