Excavations Throw Light On Hittites

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 7, 4 July 1949, Page 5

Excavations Throw Light On Hittites

Important finds by Turkish archaeologists in Anatolia —inscribed tables, beautiful pottery, fresh and fine after some 38 centuries, and other notable survivals of Hittite art and industry—add a new chapter to thq fascinating story of this ancient* people. One Hittite king married the daughter of a Pharaoh, but it was the successful warfare of the Hittites against the Pharaohs that changed Egyptian history; for it was they who compelled Egypt to abandon her Asian conquests and to become for all time simply an African power. These old Hittites had a talent for organising their neighbours into unity with themselves, and developed so high a civilisation that the Hittite women were trained to share the duties of high official rank. They had a literature, with writings covering whole libraries of inscribed tablets, and they were architects and sculptors of a very high order, many of whose winged bulls and human figures are still preserved after being dug up from mounds and pits where they had lain through many a long century.