Indian Antiquary Vol 51

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 132

124
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JUNE, 1922
those attached to the figures of various deities at Boghaz Keui. A few weeks later I was standing by the side of the figures and taking a squeeze of the inscription. My prophecy was fulfilled; the characters were Hittite like the figure itself, and bore witness to the march of Hittite conquerors as far westward as the shores of the Ægean.
The Tel-el-Amarna tablets brought the Hittites once more to the fore. They showed that in the age of the Exodus, when Palestine was nominally under Egyptian dominion, it was to a large extent actually governed by Hittite chieftains from Asia Minor, whose troops garrisoned the cities of Canaan. It is with good reason that the writer of Genesis describes Heth as the second-born of Canaan. Even the King of Jerusalem bears a Hittite name, and the Khabiri whose attacks he fears, and in whom some scholars have seen the Hebrews, in spite of historical improbability, now turn out to be the mercenary bodyguard of the Hittite Kings. If they eventually captured Jerusalem, as is generally supposed, they would have been the Jebusites of Scripture.
In 1893-4 M. Chantre made some excavations at Boghaz Keui, one result of which was the discovery of fragments of cuneiform tablets. It then became clear that the Hittities employ. ed the cuneiform script as well as their native hieroglyphs and that if excavations could be made on a sufficient scale at Boghaz Keui, a library of cuneiform tablets might be found there similar to those of Assyria and Babylonia. In 1905 I was at Constantinople with Dr. Pinches, and there we obtained a tablet, said to come from Yurghat, near Boghaz Keui, and inscribed with cuneiform characters in the same language as the fragments discovered by Chantre. It was the first tablet of the kind that had come to light which was not only of large size, but also fairly perfect, and an edition of it was published by the Royal Asiatic Society as one of its special monographs.
The discovery had the effect of making the German Oriental Society keenly anxious to excavate at Boghaz Keui, as Dr. Belok and others had already urged them to do. I too, on my side, was equally anxious that British excavations should be undertaken there, more especially as Professor Garstang, the most capable of excavators, was as much interested in the Hittites as I was myself, and was ready to give up his work in Egypt for the purpose. Hamdi Bey had promised me to do all he could to further my plans. But the funds for exca. vating were slow in being provided ; Germany was omnipotent in Constantinople, and the ex-Kaiser instructed his ambassador there to demand a firmån for the work, to the expenses of which he himself contributed. Eventually I received a letter from Hamdi Bey stating that he could hold out no longer, and that the firmân would be given to Germany. Accordingly, in the summer of 1906, Winckler, the Assyriologist, started for Boghaz Keui with money supplied by the Vorderasiatische Gesellschaft, and there took possession of the site, and the following year a regular expedition was sent out under the auspices of the German Oriental Society and the conduct of Winckler and one or two architects. Unfortunately, no archæologist was attached to the expedition, so that had it not been for the fortunate accident that Professor Garstang happened to visit Boghaz Kaui while the excavations were going on, its archæological record would have been entirely lost; as it is we are still in the dark as to the historical sequence of its pottery.
Winckler was a good Assyriologist, and he devoted himself to copying and deciphering the tablets, of which a very large number was found. Indeed, I hear from Berlin that there are now about 20,000 tablets or fragments of tablets there, those which had been kept at Constantinople having been removed to Berlin during the war. The result of his researches was published in December 1907 in a provisional Report, and opened up a new chapter in