The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-03-12
THE ANCIENT HITIITES.

Interesting Facts Concerning Them Ee-
 lated by Dr. William Hayes Ward Last | vening-Thcir M numents ana Inscrip- | tions.
 | The second lecture on "The Hittites and Their History" was given at Os- born hall last evening by Rev. pr. Will liam Hayes Ward of New York. The | subject of the first lecture was "The Testimony of Other Nations Regarding the Hittites." The subject considered last evening was "The Evidence of the Hittite Monumental
 pr. Ward said that the Hittite mon uments give us no history further than what we can gain from other sources. as no one has yet been able to read sat 1 isfactoriiy the inscriptions on them. The Hlttites lived only sporadically in the northern region of Palestine. Their capital was at Kadesh in Armenia. l None of their monuments are found along the shores of the Black sea and indications show that they inhabited chiefly the central belt of Asia Minor. They extended down the coast as far as northern Palestine.
 The first of the Hittite monuments found were four stones found at Ha- math, in Asia Minor, in 1871, and in 1872 they were taken to Constantinople by the Turkish government. The stone of the monuments is a hard basaltic rock, and the Inscriptions are raised instead of cut in as they are on other Inonu- ments found in archaeological research. These monuments have now been found even in the most eastern part of Aisa Minor and one of the most inter- esting among them is that of huge lion with five legs, that number being put on all lion monuments placed be- fore gates and doorways. One peculi- arity of the Hittite monuments is the ! great number of winged disks found on them and it is supposed that these disks represented deities. Thothnes IT., the Egyptian conqueror, found no Hittites in Palestine when he conquer ed the country, but heard of them Later the Hittites came down into Syr- ia and took possession of the banks Of the Euphrates. Rameses fought great battles with the Hittites at Kadesh and the war finally ended in a treaty of peace between them as two equal pow CTS. From the campaign of Rameses we know that the Hittites held supreme power in northern Syria. In personal appearance they were of yellow com plexion, with retreating forehead and prominent noses, and were short and stout in built, this fact being gathered from the figures made by themselves on hai, Thov al lrey,f fh0irs heads closely shaven. These people did not belong to Semitic or Assyrian types, but were undoubtedly Mongo- Han race. We find them first mention ed in 1110 B. c. in inscriptions of that time. The Assyrians fought against them with varying success for 400 years until TIT B. C., when the Hittites were overcome. Only 100 years before the Persian kingdom of Cyrus and less than 100 years after the Spartan law giver Lycurgus the blory of the Hittite em- pire came to an end.
 Every Aryan invasion of which we have any account came out of Europe and none were into Europe. It is not likely that any Aryan race inhabited Asia Minor much before 1900 B. C., and therefore the Hittites were not Aryan. They were probably Mongolian, speak ing a Turanian language. Their first home was in Cappadocia, from whence they spread over Armenia, Lydia and Mesopotamia, their great central capi- tai being located in Cappadocia, where even now are the ruins of large city built by them. They wrote inscriptions from top to bottom in marrow columns like the Chinese, their characters being hieroglyphic This was also the form of the old Greek inscriptions. All at tempts to read them have failed. A bi- lingual inscription must first be found.
 Dr. Ward illustrated his lecture with stereopticon views of different Hittite inscriptions found on monuments.