ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF A “HITTITE” CITY.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2307, 26 August 1881, Page 3

ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF A “HITTITE” CITY.

Mr James Glaisher writes to the “ Times ” from the office of the Palestine Exploration fund :—“ I shall be much obliged if you will allow me space to announce through your columns a discovery of very great interest. A great battle, figured in Sir G. Wilkinson’s ‘ Ancient Egyptians,’ was fought between Baineses 11. and the Hittites near their sacred city of Kadash, which is shown as a city with a double moot, crossed by bridges beside a broad stream running into a lake. The lake has been generally identified with the Baheiret Homs, through which the ©routes passes south of Homs, but the site of the city, as important in Hittite records at the northern capital of Csrchemish, remained to be discovered. We now learn from a despatch received from Lieutenant Oonder, the officer in charge of our new expedition, that he has identified the lost site with the rums known as the Tell Noby 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 survives, so that here is another instance of the vitality of the old names which linger in the minds of the people long after they have forgotten the Homan, Greek, or Oruiaders’ names. Not only the name is preserved, but the ancient moat of the city itself. Lieutenant Oonder 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 fifty yards across on the south-east of the site, a fresh brook flows in the west and north 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.” Lieutenant Condor gives a full account of the ruins, the position of the place and the disposition of the Egyptian forces before the battle. The rest of his despatch is occupied with an account of observations, discoveries of inscriptions, &0., made at Tripoli, Baalbac, Kulat et Hoen, and other places.