Hittites Quotes

According to Archibald Henry Sayce FRAS (1845–1933), a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford (1891–1919):

“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.”

“The same double-headed eagle, supporting the figure of a man or a God, is met with at Boghaz Keui, and must be regarded as one of the peculiarities of Hittite symbolism and art. The symbol was adopted in later days by the Turkoman Princes, who had perhaps first seen it on the Hittite monuments of Kappodokia; and the Crusaders brought it to Europe with them in the 14th century. Here it became the emblem of the German Emperors, who have passed it on to the modern Kingdoms of Russia and Austria. It is not the only heirloom of Hittite art which has descended to us of to-day.”

“The great Hittite stronghold on the Euphrates, which had been for so many centuries the visible sign of their power and southern conquests, became once more the possession of a Semitic people. The long struggle that had been carried on between the Hittites and the Semites was at an end; the Semite had triumphed, and the Hittites were driven back into the mountains from whence he had come.”

“Like the Egyptians, the Hittites sat when eating.”

“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.”

“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 Ph?nician alphabet were influenced by the hieroglyphs of the Hittites.”

“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.”

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

“Hittites appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilization of our own Europe owes to them. Our culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were derived from the Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor... The Hittites carried the time-worn civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the grey dawn of European history.”

“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.”

“Prominent among the Hittite priests were the Galli or eunuchs, who on the days of festival cut their arms and scourged themselves in honor 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.”

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

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

“The Hittites, in fact, must be regarded as the first teachers of the rude populations of the West. They brought to them a culture the first elements of which had been inspired by Babylonia;”

“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”

“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 Ph?nicia and Palestine.”

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

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

“Amorites must have been in possession of Palestine long before the Hittites arrived there.”

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

“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.”

“Kadesh was a Hittite stronghold; nevertheless it is described as being 'in the land of the Amaur' or Amorites, and its King is depicted with the physical characteristics of the Amorite, and not of the Hittite.”

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

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

“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.”

According to Walker Percy OblSB (1916-1980), an American writer whose interests included philosophy and semiotics:

“Where are the Hittites? Why does no one find it remarkable that in most world cities today there are Jews but no Hittites, even though the Hittites had a great flourishing civilization while the Jews nearby were a weak and obscure people? When one meets a Jew in New York; New Orleans; Paris, or Melbourne, it is remarkable that no one considers the event remarkable. What are they doing here? But it is even more remarkable to wonder, if there are Jews here, why are there not Hittites? Where are the Hittites? Show me one Hittite in New York City.”

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Food for thought!