The Hittite Monuments from Boghaz-Keui—Mementos of an Imperial People In 1906 Professor Hugo Winkler of Berlin began excavations at Boghaz-Keui, a site that lies ninety miles east of Ankara in the great bend of the Halys River in Asia Minor. It was discovered that this was an ancient Hittite capital. Numerous clay tablets were dug up written in texts containing six different languages. A large number of these were inscribed in the cuneiform characters of the Hittite language. Eventually deciphered through the labors of three men and particularly of the Czech scholar Friedrich Hrozny, this language proved to be the key to a great deal of background of interest to the biblical student. Before the Boghaz-Keui tablets revealed the Hittites to be an ancient people, the biblical references to them used to be regarded in critical circles as historically worthless. In the five books of Moses, references to the Hittites as inhabiting the land of Canaan and as among those whom the Israelites drove out occur in several places (Ex. 33:2; Deut. 7:1; 20:17; Josh. 3:10; 24:11). In the various lists the order varies, and there is not an inkling that one reference might be the name of a powerful imperial people and the other a small local tribe. Less than a century ago the “Hittites” meant little more to the reader of the Bible than the “Hivite” or the “Perizite” still does. It was commonly known from the biblical record that when Abraham settled in Hebron he had Hittites as neighbors. It was everyday knowledge that one of David’s eminent soldiers was Uriah, a Hittite. But who would have expected that “Hittites” were more prominent than “Gadites” or “Beerothites”? Now it is known that two great periods of Hittite power are to be noted. The first goes back to about 1800 b.c., and the second is dated from around 1400 to 1200 b.c. In this latter period of Hittite supremacy the powerful rulers reigned at Boghaz-Keui. One of these was named Suppiluliuma. This great conqueror extended his empire to the confines of Syria Palestine. The great Rameses II of Egypt, in the famous battle of Kadesh, collided with Hittite power. A Hittite treaty of peace with the pharaoh in the twenty-first year of the latter’s reign was confirmed by a royal marriage. About 1200 b.c. the great Hittite Empire collapsed, and the Hittite city of Boghaz-Keui fell. However, important centers of Hittite power remained at Carchemish, Sengirli, Hamath, and other places in north Syria. As a result of the excavation and decipherment of various Hittite monuments, the whole context of the ancient biblical world has been illuminated. Because of this increased background knowledge, such allusions as those to the “kings of the Hittites” (1 Kin. 10:29; 2 Chr. 1:17) are much better understood. Also Ezekiel’s reference to unfaithful Jerusalem as having an Amorite for a father and a Hittite for a mother (Ezek. 16:45) are now comprehensible. The manner in which archaeology has brought to light the ancient Hittites furnishes a good example of the way this important science is expanding biblical horizons.
Posted on: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 22:08:41 +0000