Solomon subjected the remaining Hittites to the same tribute of bond-service as the other remnants of the Ca- naanitish nations (1 Kings ix, 20). Of all these the Hit- tites appear to have been the most important, and to have been tnuler a king of their own ; for " the kings of the Hittites" are, in 1 Kings x, 29, coupled with t he kings of Syria as purchasers of the chariots Avhich Solomon im- ported from Egypt. It appears that this was some dif- ferent division of the Hittite family Uving far away some- where in the north ; although, from their connection in 2 Kings vii, 6, with the Egyptians, others have inferred that the noise came from the south, from which quarter it seems they and the Egyptians were the only jieople who coidd be expected to make an attack with chariots. This woidd identify them with the southern Hivites, who were subject to the sceptre of Judah, and show also that it was they who purchased Egyptian chariots from the factors of Solomon. It is evident in any case, how- ever, that they were a distinct and independent body, apparently outside the bounds of Palestine. The Hit- tites were' still present in Palestine as a distinct people after the Exile, and are named among the alien tribes with whom the returned Israelites contracted those marriages which Ezra urged and Nehemiah compelled them to dissolve (Ezra ix, 1, etc. ; comp. Neh. xiii, 23-
IIITTITE
280
IIITTITE
28). After this we hear no more of the Hittites, who probably lost their national identity by intermixture with the neighboring tribes or nations. (See Hamels- vcld, iii, 51 sq. ; Joiirn. of Sac. Lit. Oct. 1851, p. IGO.) — Kitto, a. V. ; Smith, s. v. See Heathkx.
4, Nothing is said of the religion or worship of the Hittites. Even in the enumeration of Solomon's itlola- trous worship of the gods of his wives — among whom were Hittite women (1 Kings xi, 1)— no Hittite deity is alluded to (see 1 Kings xi, 5, 7 ; 2 Kings xxiii, 13). See below.
5. The names of the individual Hittites mentioned in the Bible are as follow. They are all susceptible of in- terpretation as Hebrew words, which would lead to the belief either that the Hittites spoke a dialect of the Aramaic or Hebrew language, or that the words were Hebraized in their transference to the Bible records.
Adah (a woman), Gen. xxxvi, 2. AiiiMKLEon, 1 Sam. xxvi, 6.
Basiiemath, accurately IJAs'iiATir (a woman) ; possibly a second name of Adah, Gen. xxvi, 34. Beeri (lather of .Judith, below), Gen. xxvi, 34. Er.oN (father of Basmath), Gen. xxvi, 34. Epiiron, Gen. xxiii, 10, 13, 14, etc. JtnnTii (a woman), Gen. xxvi, 34. Uriaij, 2 Sam. xi, 3, etc. ; xxiii, 39, etc. ZouAR (father of Ephron), Gen. xxiii, S.
In addition to the above, Sibbeciiai, who in the He- brew text is always denominated a Hushathite, is by Josephus {Ant. vii. 12, 2) styled a Hittite.— Smith, s. v. II. Notices in A ncient Inscriptions. — 1. The Egyptian monuments give us much information as to a Hittite nation that can only be that indicated in the two pas- sages in the books of Kings above noticed. The kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties made exten- sive conquests in Syria and Mesopotamia. They were opposed by many small states, which probably always formed one or more confederacies. In the time of Thoth- mes III (B.C. cir. 1450), the leading nation was that of the RUTEN (or luten), which appears to have once headed a confederacy defeated by that king before jMe- giddo (De Rouge, Bevue A rcheolor). n. s., iv, 346 sq.). The KiieTA were conquered by or tributary to Thoth- mes HI (Birch, Annals of Thothmes II f, p. 21); but it is not until the time of Rameses II (B.C. cir. 1306), sec- ond king (according to Manetlio) of the nineteenth dy- nasty, that we tind them occupying the most important place among the eastern enemies of the Egyptians, the place before held by the rutex. The name is general- ly written Kiiex, and sometimes KiiexA, and was prob- ably in both cases pronounced kiiat. It is not easy to determine whether it properly denotes the people or the countrA-; perhaps it denotes the latter, as it rarely has a plural termination ; but it is often used for the former. This name is identical in radicals with that of the Hit- tites, and that it designates them is clear from its being connected with a name equally representing that of the Amorites, and from the correspondence of this warlike people, strong in chariots, with the non-Palestinian Hit-
\ tites mentioned in the Bible. The chief or strongest city of the KiiexA, or at least of the territory subject to or confederate with the king of the KHexA, was KeresH, on the river arnut, anurta, or arunata. Keresn
I w&s evidently a Kadesh, "a sacred city," Dip, but no city of that name, which could correspond to this, is known to us in Biblical geography. It is represented in the Egyptian sculptures as on or near a lake, which Dr. Brugsch has traced in the modern lake of Kedes, fed by
, the Orontes, southward of Hems (Emesa). The Oron-
I tes, it must be observed, well corresponds to the ari'xa- TA. The town is also stated to have been in the land of AMAR (or amara), that is, of the Amorites. The position of this Amoritish territory is further defined by