Monuments to the Truth of the Scriptures. 15 of Hittite families in Palestine itself. It was of a Hittite (Gen. 23:10) that Abraham bought his burying-place at He bron. Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, had been the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and Esau had two Hittite wives. Hittites are also mentioned as dwelling with the Jebusites and Amontes in the mountain region of Canaan. Until the decipherment of the inscriptions on the monu ments of Egypt and Assyria, the numerous references in the Bible to this mysterious people were unconfirmed by any other historical authorities, so that many regarded the biblical state ments as mythical, and an indication of the general untrust worthiness of biblical history. A prominent English biblical critic declared not many years ago that an alliance between Egypt and the Hittites was as improbable as would be one at the present time between England and the Choctaws. But, alas for the over-confident critic, recent investigations have shown, not only that such an alliance was natural, but that it actually occurred. From the monuments of Egypt we learn that Thothmes III. of the eighteenth dynasty, in 1470 B. C., marched to the banks of the Euphrates and received tribute from “the Greater Hit tites” to the amount of 3,200 pounds of silver and a ^ great piece of crystal.” Seven years later tribute was again sent from “the king of the Greater Hittite land.”. Later, Ame- nophis III. and IV. are said, in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, to have been constantly called upon to aid in repelling the at tacks of the Hittite king, who came down from the north and intrigued with the disaffected Canaanitish tribes in Pales tine; while in B. C. 1343, Rameses the Great attempted to capture the Hittite capital at Kadesh, but was unsuccessful, and came near losing his life in the attempt, extricating himself from an ambuscade only by most heroic deeds of valor. Four years later a treaty of peace was signed between the Hittites and the Egyptians, and a daughter of the Hittite king was given in marriage to Rameses.
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