ed Amorites and Canaanites looked to them for help, and
eventually "the land of the Amorites" to the north of Palestine fell
into their possession. When the first Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty
attempted to recover the Egyptian empire in Asia, they found themselves
confronted by the most formidable of antagonists. Against Kadesh and
"the great king of the Hittites" the Egyptian forces were driven in
vain, and after twenty years of warfare Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the
Oppression, was fain to consent to peace. A treaty of alliance,
offensive and defensive, was drawn up between the two rivals, and Egypt
was henceforth compelled to treat with the Hittites on equal terms. The
Khatta or Khata of the Assyrian inscriptions are already a decaying
power. They are broken into a number of separate states or kingdoms, of
which Carchemish is the richest and most important. They are in fact in
retreat towards those mountains of Asia Minor from which they had
originally issued forth. But they still hold their ground in Syria for a
long while. There were Hittites at Kadesh in the reign of David. Hittite
kings could lend their services to Israel in the age of Elisha (2 Kings
vii. 6), and it was not till B.C. 717 that Carchemish was captured by
Sargon of Assyria, and the trade which passed through it diverted to
Nineveh. But when the Assyrians first became acquainted with the
coastland of the Mediterranean, the Hittites were to such an extent the
ruling race there that they gave their name to the whole district. Like
"Palestine," or "Canaan," the term "land of the Hittites" came to denote
among the Assyrians, not only Northern Syria and the Lebanon, but
Southern Syria as well. Even Ahab of Israel and Baasha the Ammonite are
included by Shalmaneser II. among its kings.

This extended use of the name among the Assyrians is illustrated by the
existence of a Hittite tribe at Hebron in the extreme south of
Palestine. Various attempts have been made to get rid of the latter by
unbelieving critics, but the statements of Genesis are corroborated by
Ezekiel's account of the foundation of Jerusalem. They are, moreover, in
full harmony with the monumental records. As we have seen, Thothmes III.
implies that already in his day there was a second and smaller land of
the Hittites, and the great Babylonian work on astronomy contains
references to the Hittites which appear to go back to early days.

Assyrian and Babylonian texts are not the only cu