HITTITE, a dominant race mentioned in 1 Kings x. 29 and 2 Kings vii. 6. They held mastery in Syria in the era of the Hebrew judges and earlier kings. They were called Khcta by the Egyptians, and Khatta by the Assyrians. In B.C. 835, Shalmaneser received tribute from all the kings of the llittites. Their last monarch, Wiwi), wi), was defeated mid slain lie. 717, and Carchemish was made the seat of an Assyrian governor. But at one time the Hittite empire stretched from the Euphrates to the Dardan elles, and they disputed for several centuries the sway of Central Asia with Ramesside Pharaohs on the one side, and with Assyria's mightiest monarchs on the other. The Hittites were defeated, and their city Ketesh destroyed, by an Egyptian king (Rameses u. of Egypt ?), about 1340 s.c. A great battle, figured in Sir G. Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, was fought between Rameses ii. and the Ilittites, near their sacred city of Kadash, which is shown as a city with a double moat, crossed by bridges. beside a broad stream running into a lake. The lake has been generally identified with the Baheiret Horns, through which the Orontes passes south of Homs. The site of the city, as important in Hittite records as the northern capital of Carchemish, Lieutenant Conder has identified with the ruins known as the Tell Neby Mendeh. They lie on the left bank of the Orontes, four English miles south of the lake. The modern name belongs to a sacred shrine on the highest part of the hill on which the ruins lie, and the name of Kadesh still sur vives, an instance of the vitality of prior names lingering in the minds of the people long after they have forgotten the Roman, Greek, or Cru saders' names. Lieut. Conder writes,—' Looking down from the summit of the Tell, we appeared to see the very double moat of the Egyptian picture ; for while the stream of the Orontes is dammed up so as to form a small lake 50 yards across on the S.E. of the site, a fresh brook flows
in the W. and N. to join the river, and an outer line of moat is formed by earthen banks, which flank a sort of aqueduct parallel with the main stream.' He gives a full account of the ruins, the position of the place, and the disposition of the Egyptian forces before the battle.
Their writing character was displaced by the Assyrian cuneiform. The Assyrian King Sargon 722-705) is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. It was in the time of Sargon that Assyrian culture first gained a pennanent footing in the 1V. ; while the overthrow of Carchemish and the last relics of Hittite power in B.C. 717 naturally led to the disuse of the Hittite mode of writing, and the spread of the cuneiform characters employed by the Assyrian conquerors. The well-known pas sage in Pliny (II. N. vii. 57), Literas semper arbitror Assyrias fuisse ; sed alii apud iEgyptios a Mercurio ut Genius ; alii apud Syros repertas volunt.' Mr. Sayce sees in this an allusion to the Hittite graphic system. In this case, he remarked, the passage in Pliny would be a record of the three independent modes of writing which the east invented, and would contain a half-forgotten tradition of that strange system of hieroglyphics from which in all probability the syllabary of Asia Minor and Cyprus was derived. Ilittite monu ments have been found at Kiz Hisser, which is supposed to represent the Wm' 'Tyana of Xenophon, built, according to .Stmbo, on the tomb of Semiramis.
Ill-UL or Hi-el, the grand festival of the Ger man tribes of the Baltic.