Participants: David Down
Series Code: DUTP
Program Code: DUTP000003
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00:25 I rather suspect that like me
00:27 most of you have never been to the moon 00:29 and we probably never shall, but the next best place 00:32 to visit is an area called Cappadocia in Turkey, 00:36 and that's where we're going next. 00:38 For it's the land of the lost Empire of the Hittites. 01:18 Well, how do you like these fairy chimneys 01:20 as they're called, with their hat set 01:24 all sorts of rakish angles? 01:27 You just really wonder how they creator 01:29 thought this one up wouldn't you? 01:31 Now, of course, you can tell me it's a natural phenomenon 01:34 and it really is. Actually this was some soft 01:38 stone that was laid all over this area. 01:43 And then on top of that came a layer of lava, 01:48 you know, a volcanic layer spread out all over here. 01:51 And as the harder lava cracked and got worn away, 01:58 then of course what was not covered 02:00 by lava was also worn away. 02:03 But where the lava still stood then of course it was protected. 02:07 And so, here we have these fairy chimneys. 02:27 During the Christian era, there was a lot of persecution 02:31 and so many Christians settled in this area 02:33 not, not that they escaped the persecution, 02:35 but to attracted less attention. 02:38 And so, they were less harassed here. 02:40 And they dug their houses out of the soft rock, 02:43 out of these pinnacles. 02:44 In fact, some people today still live in these houses 02:48 that they dug or build their own houses attached to them. 02:54 I would say this is one of the better class houses, 02:58 it is dug out of the cliff face soft rock, 03:02 easily cut into, you see the pick marks 03:05 where they have chiseled it out. 03:08 And there are recesses, where they could store food 03:12 and other domestic items needed in the house. 03:15 And there are niches where they could place 03:18 their lamps to illuminate the inside of the house 03:21 at night time. 03:23 I'd say they live rather comfortably here. 03:34 The Christians also carved their churches 03:36 and chapels out of this soft rock. 03:38 And adorned the walls of them with very colorful frescoes. 03:44 Many of the Christians went a step further 03:46 and burrowed into the ground, they dug into the cliff face 03:50 and then made just like a rabbit warren, 03:53 they lived right underground. 04:07 They burrowed down through this soft rock, 04:10 there are passages and staircases 04:12 and housing rooms. 04:14 Do you know they went down eight stories, 04:17 eight stories down below the ground surface. 04:25 And there were rooms and houses and places to live down here. 04:30 You're at least close to your neighbors. 04:38 No doubt this was great for the children, 04:40 but what about the adults? 04:42 They must have had a permanently bend back 04:44 to be able to walk along these passages and feel at home. 04:50 And I suppose they were used to it. 04:53 And of course they lived here during the night and evening, 04:57 day time they went out and looked after their fields. 05:12 And of course, they have-to-have some fresh 05:14 air, even the way down here. 05:15 So they dug this shaft from the surface 05:20 right down to the lowest stories, 05:23 so that the fresh air could come down here 05:25 and circulate through the passageways 05:27 and into the rooms in which they were living. 05:42 And I'm still not sure, sure that this 05:44 where I would really like to live. 05:58 This then is Hittite country. 06:02 They occupied all of Cappadocia and Anatolia. 06:06 In other words, what we'd call most of Turkey. 06:09 And there were a very great nation. 06:11 In fact, at one stage in ancient history 06:13 they were the greatest nation in the Middle East. 06:17 And yet the extraordinary part is they were lost, forgotten. 06:22 Scholars even denied their existence. 06:26 It's interesting to look at the Encyclopedia Britannica 06:29 for the year 1861. 06:32 And under the title Hittites, 06:34 do you know what, there's just eight and a half lines. 06:39 And if you examine those eight and half lines carefully, 06:43 you'll find that it's purely and simply 06:45 a summary of what the Bible says. 06:47 Just a brief summary of what the biblical record 06:49 has to say about them. Well, actually there is a lot 06:52 in the Bible about the Hittites. 06:54 As far as the Bible is concerned they were never lost. 06:56 Forty-seven references in the Bible to the Hittites. 07:00 Goes right back to the days of Abraham. 07:03 In Genesis chapter 23, when his wife Sarah died, 07:07 it says, "Then Abraham stood up from before his dead 07:10 and spoke to the sons of Heth, 07:12 they're the Hittites you see saying, 07:14 give me property for a burial place." 07:16 And he purchased a place to bury his wife Sarah. 07:20 And many references in respect of the Israelites 07:23 coming into the Promised Land. 07:26 For instance in Genesis 7 verse 1 it says, 07:28 "When the Lord your God brings you into the land 07:30 which you go to possess, and has cast out 07:32 many nations before you. 07:34 The Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites 07:38 and the Canaanites and the Perizzites 07:39 and the Hivites and the Jebusites." 07:41 Now, there are seven nations there, 07:42 and you'll notice the Hittites are at the top of the list 07:45 And yet the Amorites, the Canaanites, 07:47 we're very familiar with them and they were 07:50 very well-known and strong nation. 07:52 Yet they Hittites are put at the top of the list. 07:56 Now, there's another verse that should have 07:58 caused the scholars to do a little deep thinking on. 08:01 And that's in Second Kings chapter 7 and in verse 6, 08:05 where it says, I'm referring to the Syrians besieging Samaria 08:11 and all of a sudden the besieging army 08:13 packed up and fled. 08:15 And what was the reason? 08:16 Well, it tells us here, "For the Lord had caused 08:19 the army of the Syrians to hear the noise 08:21 of the chariots and the noise of the horses. 08:24 The noise of a great army. 08:25 So they said to one and another, 08:27 look the King of Israel has hired against us 08:31 the Kings of the Hittites and the Kings of the Egyptians 08:34 to attack us." 08:35 Now, everyone knew that the Egyptians 08:37 were very strong and powerful. 08:39 But here it puts the Hittites ahead of the Egyptian army. 08:44 Now, quite obviously the Bible knew 08:46 that they were a very powerful nation. 08:48 You've got these 47 references 08:51 and yet they were lost and forgotten. 08:53 For a long time, the story of their discovery 08:56 is a very exciting one, 08:58 it's one of the long drawn out dramas. 09:02 And I want to tell you all about that. 09:22 Our story really doesn't begin here in this village, 09:26 it began in the City of Hamath in the Northern Syria 09:30 in the year 1810, when Johann Burckhardt, 09:34 the man who discovered Petra later on, 09:38 was visiting there and he found built into a house, 09:43 some stones that had some strange writings on it. 09:46 And he wrote later in his book called, "Travels In Syria," 09:49 of this stones, he said there were hieroglyphics. 09:53 But they weren't Egyptians hieroglyphics. 09:55 But of course he didn't know who was responsible 09:57 for these strange writings and he simply recorded it. 10:01 Now, the scholars should have picked it up, 10:02 but I suppose there were so many other exciting 10:04 things in his book they just didn't notice this. 10:08 So, the next thing was in the year 1834, 10:11 when Charles Texier was traveling through Turkey 10:15 and he was looking for a lost city. 10:17 The lost City of Tavium, a Roman city. 10:19 And he would go from village-to-village, 10:21 town-to-town and he would say, are there any ruins here? 10:25 And he'd go and look at them to try 10:27 and identify them as Tavium you see. 10:30 And when he came here, he asked his usual question, 10:32 are there any ruins around here? 10:34 And they said, yeah, sure there are ruins here. 10:38 There's plenty up on the hill. So, up on the hill he went. 10:43 What Texier saw here really made him gasp. 10:47 There was this King's Gate as it is called. 10:49 It was partially buried in his day of course, 10:51 but in the front of it here there is a figure that 10:57 I thought it was the King really looks like a priced fighter 11:00 you know, doesn't he, actually one of the Hittite Gods. 11:03 This is not the original, the original is in the museum. 11:06 This one is simply a plastic cast and it's rather badly worn. 11:10 When I first came here, it was in very good condition. 11:13 And then Texier went up on the look wall 11:16 and what he saw there made him even more amazed. 11:22 When Texier got up here, he could look along 11:26 the wall and trace it going right up the hill there, 11:30 you can see it at the top of the hill, 11:32 partially reconstructed up there. 11:34 And following it around, he found that altogether 11:38 it was about five kilometers in circumference. 11:41 Well, this certainly wasn't Tavium, 11:43 it was far too big for that. 11:46 But what was it? 11:47 The locals couldn't tell him and he didn't have a clue. 11:51 So, what was this place? 11:56 The following year 1835, a British explorer by the name 12:00 of William Hamilton came on the scene and he stumbled 12:03 across a place called Alacahuyak. 12:07 This is the entrance to Alacahuyak and these 12:11 sphinxes on the side here are very well carved 12:14 and these were obvious to William Hamilton 12:16 when he first came here, there's one each side 12:18 of this gateway. 12:20 He couldn't identify them, he didn't know 12:23 who was responsible for them and he simply recorded them. 12:26 Then in the year 1862, 12:29 George Perrow came across this place, 12:32 it's called the Nishan Tash, and here were some strange 12:35 hieroglyphic characters which again were the similar 12:39 to the ones on the Hamath stones. 12:42 And of course, he couldn't identify who is responsible 12:45 for these hieroglyphs, but he recorded them. 12:49 And then in the year 1870, two American explorers 12:54 by the name of Johnson and Jessup also visited 12:57 Hamath and recorded their visit and noted 13:02 the Hamath stones with the hieroglyphs on them. 13:06 But then in the year 1872, a man of a totally different character 13:12 came on the scene, and he was William Wright, 13:17 who was an Irish missionary in Hamath. 13:20 Now, he spoke the language, 13:23 he understood the Arabs and the Turks 13:25 and he saw these stones and recognized their value. 13:30 And what was more important, he was on friendly terms 13:34 with the Turkish governor Subhi Pasha. 13:37 And so he went to the governor and he said look, 13:41 it would be in the interest of the Turkish government 13:43 to have these stones removed and send off to the museum. 13:47 And so Subhi Pasha being an enlightened man, 13:51 agreed to that. 13:52 And so, next day he sent his soldiers 13:54 along statues, chiseling the stones out of the wall. 13:56 And that is where the trouble started 13:59 because the locals regarded these not only as 14:03 important stones and the building itself and, 14:06 they didn't want the building spoiled. 14:09 But they also had a superstition that these stones 14:12 had magical qualities, especially for eye diseases of 14:16 which it was no shortage at that time. 14:18 And so, they violently objected. 14:21 However, the army was on the governor's side and 14:24 they took the stones, took them back to the palace. 14:27 Well, that night, whirling dervishes raced 14:29 through the streets, stirring up the passions of the crowd. 14:32 And they tried to storm the gates of the governor's palace. 14:37 And William Wright, who was also there was a little 14:39 frightened inside, but the soldiers held out. 14:42 Next morning the governor received a delegation 14:46 and the delegation came in and stated their case. 14:49 Now, what it made matters worse was during the night 14:51 there had been a fall of meteorites. 14:55 And these falling stars that really aroused 14:58 the superstitions of the people. 15:00 And so the delegation came in 15:02 and the governor listened to them. 15:04 And finally after their protests he said, 15:08 now let me see, did these falling stars do any, 15:13 kill anyone? 15:14 And they said, no. 15:16 And he said, did they kill any cattle or sheep? 15:19 No. And he said, did they damage any buildings? 15:24 No. Ah! Said the governor. 15:27 Then what better evidence do we have of Allah's 15:31 good pleasure on what we have done. 15:34 And with that choice bit of eastern logic, 15:36 the whole delegation came to an end. 15:39 And the Hamath stones were removed 15:41 to the Constantinople museum, where there are today. 15:47 In 1876, excavations were conducted at Carchemish. 15:52 Now, that's a way down long way from here in Northern Syria. 15:55 And in these excavations these strange artifacts 15:59 belonging to this same people started turning up. 16:01 It was quite apparent that whoever it was had 16:04 an impact extending right down as far as Northern Syria. 16:07 And during the next few years, artifacts where turning up 16:11 all over Turkey and the scholars were embarrassed 16:13 because the public were asking them. 16:16 Listen you fellows, this was a great empire 16:19 and you don't know who it was? 16:22 Then in 1880, the archeological bombshell burst. 16:27 Archibald Henry Sayce announced to an august 16:31 gathering of scholars in London, 16:33 his conclusion that all these artifacts, 16:36 all these evidences should be attributed 16:39 to none other than the biblical Hittites. 16:43 Well, the scholars went off in appeals of laughter. 16:47 They said, Sayce, you're mad. They dubbed him 16:50 the inventor of the Hittites. 16:52 But the factor accumulating, 16:55 and in 1881, the Encyclopedia Britannica, 16:58 once more came out. 16:59 This time not eight and a half lines, 17:02 but two whole pages. 17:04 And down at the bottom of the article 17:06 there was this statement. 17:08 "We wait longingly for a confirmation of professor 17:11 Sayce's view, that the Hittites were the authors 17:14 of the Hamath art hieroglyphs. 17:17 If this be proved this wonderful nation steps into 17:21 a position hardly surpassed by that of any of the nations 17:25 of the distant east." 17:27 Well, it was a prophetic statement 17:29 that really came true. 17:30 statement that really came true. 17:31 And during the next few years more-and-more 17:34 information came in. 17:36 And in 1894, our friend William Wright 17:40 published a book called "The Empire of the Hittites," 17:43 in which he produced so much information 17:45 and evidence that the scholars just had to back down 17:48 and admit that Sayce was right and that these people 17:52 were the biblical Hittites. 17:55 Then in 1897, there was a very interesting development. 18:00 In that year, what known as the Tell El-Amarna 18:03 letters were discovered, not here in Turkey, 18:05 but away over there in Egypt. 18:07 They were letters in the cuneiform script, 18:10 at first of course the scholars said that they were forgeries 18:13 because nobody expected 18:14 the cuneiform would be found in Egypt. 18:16 But when they were read and understood, 18:19 here were some letters that were found 18:22 in the Assyrian cuneiform script, but in the, 18:28 an unknown language which scholars rightly 18:31 concluded was the Hittite language. 18:35 They were known as the Assyrian letters, 18:38 and scholars went to work on trying to decipher 18:41 the Hittite language. 18:43 There was a scholar in 1902 by the name of Knudsen, 18:47 who concluded and announced 18:50 that the Hittite language was actually 18:52 an Indo-European language. 18:55 That also made the scholars laugh. 18:57 Indo-European, why it might be some other, 19:00 it might be Semitic language or it might be Hermetic, 19:04 but not Indo-European. 19:06 And they produced so many arguments that poor 19:09 Knudsen recanted and admitted that he had made a mistake. 19:14 Time was to prove that Knudsen was correct. 19:19 In the year 1906, a very eccentric German came here, 19:26 who was totally unsuited to the harsh 19:30 Middle East Turkish conditions. 19:32 And he was not really an archeologist, 19:36 he was an epigraphist, that means he was an expert 19:40 in inscriptions and he was looking for tablets. 19:45 And so, he came to this place, Bogazkoy, 19:48 known to the Hittites as Hattusas. 19:52 And his interest was to find tablets. 19:56 And so, he came to these Acropolis or high place, 19:59 the citadel and started searching. 20:03 Well, would you believe it? He started digging here 20:07 and he found no less than 10,000 tablets. 20:10 And most of them were in the cuneiform script, 20:13 which he could read like you read your daily newspaper 20:17 and in the Syrian language which of course, 20:20 was his language, he was very familiar with that. 20:23 And so, he was able to learn a lot about the Hittites. 20:26 Well he, night-by-night, he was very hard working man. 20:29 And night-by-night by the flickering light of his lamp 20:32 you know, he'd pick up a tablet and translate it, 20:34 pick up a tablet, and one night he picked up a tablet, 20:38 and you could hardly believe what he saw there? 20:41 He found himself reading the Hittite version of the peace 20:45 treaty between Ramses the Great, and Hattusilis. 20:48 The very one that was on the wall at Karnack 20:51 and other places. And so, here was the Hittite version of it. 20:56 And so, he was able to learn a lot about the Hittite 20:59 history by reading these translations. 21:03 In 1915, a scholar by the name of Hosni confirmed 21:07 that the Hittite language was indeed an Indo-European 21:12 language and from then on there was no turning back. 21:16 And in 1929, a manual of the Hittite language was published. 21:21 In other, words the scholars could now not only read 21:25 the Hittite history in Assyrian language, 21:29 but also in the Hittite language. 21:32 So, two problems had been solved. 21:35 First of all, the identification of the Hittites, secondly, 21:38 to be able to read their language. 21:40 But now there was a third problem, 21:42 and that was to be able to read 21:45 their strange hieroglyphic characters. 21:49 Actually our friend Archibald William Sayce 21:53 had made an attempt at this in 1890. 21:56 He'd come across what was known as the Tarritktimme seal 22:00 and it was a bilingual. 22:01 That is the same thing in two different languages or scripts. 22:05 And he thought by comparing them he'd get a clue 22:09 to reading the hieroglyphics, but it was not to be. 22:13 It was only a seal, didn't give you much information. 22:16 In 1934, Kurt Bittel found here, no less than 100 bilinguals 22:24 and the scholars thought now we've got it made. 22:27 All these bilinguals that is the same message in two 22:31 different scripts, one readable the other, 22:33 the hieroglyphs we'll be able to do it. 22:35 But they're only seals and they're all said more or less 22:39 the same thing, and so once more they had the problem. 22:43 And so the scholars had to work on this to try and find out 22:48 how to unlock the Hittite hieroglyphs. 22:53 The final breakthrough came from rather an unexpected quarter. 22:57 There was a scholar by the name of Helmet Bossiaea, 23:00 and he was attending a convention, 23:03 at the same convention there was a Turkish scholar. 23:06 And the Turkish scholar said to him, 23:08 say why don't you come and teach at the 23:10 Istanbul University for a while. 23:12 And so Bossiaea said, well, why not. 23:15 And so, he finished up at the Istanbul University. 23:20 Well, during the holiday period, 23:22 Bossiaea decided to do some excavating and he took a team 23:25 down to a place called Karatepe, and there they did a season 23:29 of excavations, found a lot of interesting things. 23:33 On the last day when everyone was packing up their tents, 23:36 and goods and chattels, Bossiaea just did a little 23:39 wandering around on his account. 23:41 And he saw a stone protruding from the ground, 23:44 he did a little scribing and he was very excited 23:47 to discover that it was a slab of stone 23:49 on which there was a Phoenician inscription. 23:52 And he thought wouldn't it be fantastic 23:55 if this was a bilingual. 23:57 That is the stone that tells us the same thing in two 24:00 different languages. 24:01 And so, he excavated another stone over here, 24:05 and sure enough there were some markings on it 24:08 which he thought were Hittite hieroglyphics, 24:11 he thought we've got it, and but you know, 24:13 what he did? 24:15 He just filled it all in, left it there, 24:18 didn't say a word to anybody. 24:20 Just went back packed up, next morning 24:22 they went back to the university. 24:24 Well, I think Bossiaea was one of these people 24:26 who had a sense of the dramatic. 24:29 In the next season of excavations they all came 24:32 to the site and they started out the next morning, 24:38 and Bossiaea said, well now 24:39 where shall we start excavating today? 24:43 Why don't we start over here? 24:45 And so, he put his men to work there and sure enough 24:49 few movements later there were squeals of delight, 24:51 they found this stone with the Phoenician inscriptions on it. 24:55 And Bossiaea said, hey wouldn't it be great 24:57 if this was a bilingual. Look, dig over here. 25:01 And so, they dug over there and sure enough here 25:03 was this stone with these markings on it. 25:07 But as it came to the light of day, 25:09 Bossiaea realized that what he thought had been 25:12 Hittite hieroglyphics were nothing more than the cracks 25:17 and weathering of time. 25:18 Bossiaea's heart just sank right down to his boots. 25:22 However they continued with the excavations 25:24 and sure enough they did find another stone 25:28 and it was a bilingual, it was in the Hittite hieroglyphics. 25:32 And so, as a result of comparing these two stones together 25:35 they were able to unlock the meaning of the hieroglyphics. 25:40 And so, in 1954, a manual of dictionary 25:45 of Hittite hieroglyphics was published, 25:48 and this opened a vast world of knowledge about 25:51 the Hittites to the scholars and about the Hittite history. 25:57 In their hay day, the Hittites were powerful, 26:01 well organized and cultured people. 26:03 And they had some very fine buildings. 26:06 Over there in the distance, you can see their temple area. 26:10 It had well paved roads, and those this huge area 26:14 that was for the temple purposes. 26:18 And then there is a very strange stone, 26:21 it's a green stone and it doesn't come from this area, 26:24 it came from a total, totally different area. 26:27 And that also was a rather puzzle, 26:31 because nobody knew just where it came from, 26:34 and nobody can figure out just what it was used for? 26:38 They had these huge storage jars, 26:41 and they had a very smart way of doing their buildings. 26:45 You'll notice these drilled holes here. 26:48 Well, this is an earthquake prone area and so naturally 26:53 stone buildings would tumble down. 26:55 So, what they had was stone foundations and then 26:58 they used a wooden superstructure with tenets 27:02 into these holes. 27:03 So that if was a bit of rumble the building would stay intact. 27:08 But the end finally came, it is usually considered to be 27:13 in about 1200 BC when they were annihilated 27:17 by the peoples of the sea. 27:18 Personally, my own opinion is that it was later than that, 27:22 in fact centuries later because. 27:24 For instance, we have the records 27:27 of Shalmaneser the third, in which he records his wars 27:30 against the Hittites. 27:32 We have even Sennacherib in the eighth century BC, 27:35 who talks about fighting against the Hittites. 27:37 So, I think that they finally and actually 27:39 came at the hands of the Assyrians. 27:42 However, it certainly came, 27:44 and then they were lost and forgotten. 27:48 And the critics even denied that they existed, they scoffed 27:52 at the Bible record and said just another Bible blunder. 27:55 But remember the Bible retained a record of them. 27:59 And today, of course everyone knows the Hittites, 28:02 you've got the Hittite hotel, 28:04 you've got the Hittite restaurant, 28:06 you've got the Hittite antique shop and the Hittite 28:09 taxi company, it's a very well known people today. 28:13 But it was only the Bible that preserved the knowledge of them. 28:16 Remember in 1861, just eight and a half lines 28:21 in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 28:24 but the Bible retained the record. 28:27 And let me tell you, the Bible is a fascinating book 28:32 and I can assure you, it is historically reliable. 28:39 Well, I agree the Bible is a great book, 28:41 but I do suggest that you get a translation in 28:44 Modern English. I find it much easier to read. 28:47 In our next program, we'll be taking you 28:49 to the cradle of civilization where history began. 28:53 And David will be telling the exciting story of Henry Layard, 28:57 unearthing the wind bulls of Assyria. 28:59 And Henry Rawlinson scaling that the heisted rock 29:02 to find the key to cuneiform writing. |
Revised 2014-12-17