The Hittites — Story, Setting & Ideas

Monuments as Witnesses

The book’s method is archaeological: it treats carved reliefs and ruined cities as primary sources. At Boghaz Keui, Sayce describes a rectangular rock recess lined with processions of figures in 'short tunic, peaked tiara, and boots with upturned ends'—details he identifies as hallmarks of Hittite art. He notes interruptions by figures in 'long Syrian robe,' possibly women, and dwarf-like creatures supporting a crescent moon disk. The description is precise: a goddess with mural crown stands on a panther, a youthful god carries a double-headed battle-axe, and a double-headed eagle closes the northern wall. Sayce reads these as a religious procession, with names in hieroglyphs beside each deity.

Architecture and Urban Layout

Sayce reconstructs Hittite cities from foundations and walls. At Boghaz Keui, the city was surrounded by a 'massive wall of masonry' without towers, fronted by a moat cut through rock and earth, coated with 'smooth and slippery masonry.' Two citadels stood on rock summits. The palace, like that at Eyuk, was built on an artificial terrace; little remained except wall foundations and an overturned stone throne once supported by lion bodies. Lions' heads also decorated column doorposts. Sayce draws an analogy to British colonial practice: 'the same causes which make the English rulers of India to-day retire during the summer to the mountain heights, may have made the Hittite lords of Syria build their summer palace in the Kappadokian highlands.'

The State of Decipherment

Sayce is candid about unresolved puzzles. He notes that Major Conder’s and Mr. Ball’s decipherment systems 'have not yet obtained the adhesion of other scholars.' The Hittite hieroglyphs remain 'dumb,' and Sayce quotes Dr. Wright’s call to labour 'not with the view of finding something sensational' but for the love of knowing. The book thus presents itself as a provisional synthesis, aware that future discoveries may overturn its conclusions. This scholarly caution contrasts with the confident tone of the preface, where Sayce declares that the Hittites have become 'familiar' as 'the friends of Abraham and the race to which Uriah belonged.'

Readers should approach The Hittites as a document of late-Victorian archaeology, where inference from scattered monuments and inscriptions is both necessary and provisional. Sayce’s comparisons to contemporary empires and his reliance on biblical connections reflect the era’s intellectual framework. The book rewards attention to its descriptive passages—the upturned boots, the double-headed eagle, the moat’s masonry—where evidence is presented before interpretation.

I keep thinking about that old Sayce book on the Hittites, how he pieced together a whole lost world from scattered stones and half-read inscriptions. It left a quiet ache, that sense of empires hiding just beneath our feet. Ten years' digging in Egypt, 1881-1891 — Text and Context feels like that same patient uncovering, a slower, gentler whisper from the same dusty century.