Hittite Problems And The Excavation Of Carchemish

Author : D. G. Hogarth
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781332140039
Total Pages : 26 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (4 download)

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Download or read book Hittite Problems and the Excavation of Carchemish (Classic Reprint) written by D. G. Hogarth and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Hittite Problems and the Excavation of Carchemish The commoner and the smaller Hittite products, such as the pottery, terra-cottas, weapons, have never been studied in the light of excavation evidence; yet these, by their wide diffusion and frequent occurrence, should have as much to tell us as the architecture or sculpture or written documents, and often more. If we are ignorant of the common apparatus of Hittite life, we are even more in the dark about Hittite customs in death. No Hittite graves had been found and explored before last spring. In short, Hittite archaeology has been hitherto entirely embryonic. In the hope of new light on historical and archaeological problems, which become every day more interesting and more important with the progress of exploration in Asia Minor, the British Museum resumed last spring the excavations at Jerablus in North Syria, which it had begun on a small scale more than thirty years ago. These excavations are to be continued in the coming season. Therefore anything said now of their results must be purely provisional. But already it may be legitimate to forecast some conclusions to which they tend. The site called the Kaleh, i.e. the castle of Jerablus or Jerabis, situated on the right bank of the Euphrates, about sixty miles northeast of Aleppo, has long been known for its comparatively great size, and for the height of the mound which represents its acropolis and for the bulk of its fortifications. There is no other ancient site on either bank of the river of such obvious importance until Babylon is reached some 500 miles down-stream, and it is therefore natural that Jerablus should be identified with the principal ancient city which is known to have stood actually on the right bank of the middle Euphrates. This is the Gargamis of the Assyrian records, the Carchemish of the Old Testament.2 Here was the capital of a kingdom always referred to as Hittite by the Ninevite scribes from at least the twelfth century B.c., and always a principal objective of the military expeditions which were pushed across the river into what the same scribes habitually called Hatti Land, viz. North and Eastern Syria. They refer, however, to other sites and tribal capitals in North Syria, and there is no evidence to show that Carchemish, when attacked by Assyria, had any lordship over these tribes and capitals, and still less that, as the capital of a Hittite province, it remained politically dependent on the Hittite realm in Cappadocia. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.