HITCHIN, a market town in the Hitchin parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England, on the small river Hiz, 32 m. N. from London by the Great Northern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 10,072. It is the junction of the main line with the Cambridge branch, and with a branch of the Midland railway to Bedford. The church of St Mary is Perpendicular, with a fine porch, a painting of the Adoration of the Magi, attributed to Rubens, a small crypt said to have been used by Cromwell as a prison for the Royalists, and many interesting monuments. Hitchin Priory is a mansion on the site of a Carmelite foundation of the early 14th century. A Gilbertine nunnery, founded later in the same century, stood adjacent to the church, and portions of the buildings appear in an existing block of almshouses. The grammar school (1632) was reconstituted in 1889 for boys and girls. Straw-plaiting, malting, brewing, and the cultivation and distillation of lavender and peppermint are carried on.
HITTITES, an ancient people, alluded to frequently in the earlier records of Israel, and also, under slightly variant names, in Egyptian records of the XVIIIth, XIXth and XXth Dynasties, and in Assyrian from about 1100 to 700 B.C. They appear also in the Vannic cuneiform texts, and are believed to be the authors of a class of monuments bearing inscriptions in a peculiar pictographic character, and widely distributed over Asia Minor and N. Syria, around which much controversy has raged during the past thirty years.
1. The Bible.—In the Old Testament the name of the race is written Heth (with initial aspirate), members of it being Hitti, Hittim, which the Septuagint renders χέτ, χετταῖος, χεττείν or χεττείμ, keeping, it will be noted, ε in the stem throughout. The race appears in two connexions, (a) In pre-Israelite Palestine, it is resident about Hebron (Gen. xxiii. 3), and in the central uplands (Num. xiii. 29). To Joshua (i. 4) is promised “from the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites.” The term “wilderness” here is of geographical ambiguity; but the promise is usually taken to mean that Palestine itself was part of the Hittite land before the coming of Israel; and an apostrophe of Ezekiel (xvi. 3) to Jerusalem, “thy mother (was) an Hittite,” is quoted in confirmation. Under the monarchy we hear frequently of Hittites within the borders of Israel, but either as a small subject people, coupled with other petty tribes, or as individuals in the Jewish service (e.g. Uriah, in the time of David). It appears, therefore, that there survived in Palestine to late times a detached Hittite population, with which Hebrews sometimes intermarried (Judges iii. 5-6; Gen. xxvi. 34) and lived in relations now amicable, now tyrannical (e.g. Hittites were made tributary bondsmen by Solomon, 1 Kings ix. 20, 21; 2 Chron. viii. 7, 8). (b) An independent and powerful Hittite people was domiciled N. of Palestine proper, organized rather as a confederacy of tribes than a single monarchy (1 Kings x. 28; 2 Kings vii. 6). Presumably it was a daughter of these Hittites that Solomon took to wife. If the emendation of 2 Sam. xxiv. 64, “Tahtim-hodshi,” based on the Septuagint version γὴν χεττεὶμ καδής be accepted, we hear of them at Kadesh on Orontes; and some minor Hittite cities are mentioned, e.g. Luz; but no one capital city of the race is clearly indicated. Carchemish, on the Euphrates, though mentioned three times (2 Chron. xxxv. 20; Isa. x. 9; Jer. xlvi. 2), is not connected explicitly with Hittites, a fact which is not surprising, since that city was no longer under a Hatti dynasty at the epoch of the Old Testament references. So far as the Old Testament goes, therefore, we gather that the Hittites were a considerable people, widely spread in Syria, in part subdued and to some extent assimilated by Israel, but in part out of reach. The latter portion was not much known to the Hebrews, but was vaguely feared as a power in the early days of the monarchy, though not in the later pre-Captivity period. The identification of the northern and southern Hittites, however, presents certain difficulties not yet fully explained; and it seems that we must assume Heth to have been the name both of a country in the north and of a tribal population not confined to that country.
2. Egyptian Records.—The decipherment of the inscriptions of the XVIIIth Theban Dynasty led, before the middle of the 19th century, to the discovery of the important part played in the Syrian campaigns of Tethmosis (Thothmes) III. by the H-t8 (vulgarly transliterated Kheta, though the vocalization is uncertain). The coincidence of this name, beginning with an aspirate, led H. K. Brugsch to identify the Kheta with Heth. That identification stands, and no earlier Egyptian mention of the race has been found. Tethmosis III. found the Kheta (“Great” and “Little”) in N. Syria, not apparently at Kadesh, but at Carchemish, though they had not been in possession of the latter place long (not in the epoch of Tethmosis I.’s Syrian campaign). They were a power strong enough to give the Pharaoh cause to vaunt his success (see also Egypt: Ancient History, § “The New Empire”). Though he says he levied tribute upon them, his successors in the dynasty nearly all record fresh wars with the Kheta who appear as the northernmost of Pharaoh’s enemies, and Amenophis or Amenhotep III. saw fit to take to wife Gilukhipa, a Syrian princess, who may or may not have been a Hittite. This queen is by some supposed to have introduced into Egypt certain exotic ideas which blossomed in the reign of Amenophis IV. The first Pharaoh of the succeeding dynasty, Rameses I., came to terms with a Kheta king called Saplel or Saparura; but Seti I. again attacked the Kheta (1366 B.C.), who had apparently pushed southwards. Forced back by Seti, the Kheta returned and were found holding Kadesh by Rameses II., who, in his fifth year, there fought against them and a large body of allies, drawn probably in part from beyond Taurus, the battle which occasioned the monumental poem of Pentaur. After long struggles, a treaty was concluded in Rameses’s twenty-first year, between Pharaoh and “Khetasar” (i.e. Kheta-king), of which we possess an Egyptian copy. The discovery of a cuneiform tablet containing a copy of this same treaty, in the Babylonian language, was reported from Boghaz Keui in Cappadocia by H. Winckler in 1907. It argues the Kheta a people of considerable civilization. The Kheta king subsequently visited Pharaoh and gave him his daughter to wife. Rameses’ successor, Mineptah, remained on terms with the Kheta folk; but in the reign of Rameses III. (Dyn. XX.) the latter seem to have joined in the great raid of northern tribes on Egypt which was checked by the battle of Pelusium. From this point (c. 1150 B.C.)—the point at which (roughly) the monarchic history of Israel in Palestine opens—Egyptian records cease to mention Kheta; and as we know from other sources that the latter continued powerful in Carchemish for some centuries to come, we must presume that the rise of the Israelite state interposed an effective political barrier.
3. Assyrian Records.—In an inscription of Tiglath Pileser I. (about 1100 B.C.), first deciphered in 1857, a people called Khatti is mentioned as powerful in Girgamish on Euphrates (i.e. Carchemish); and in other records of the same monarch, subsequently read, much mention is made of this and of other N. Syrian names. These Khatti appear again in the inscriptions of Assur-nazir-pal (early 9th century B.C.), in whose time Carchemish was very wealthy, and the Khatti power extended far over N. Syria and even into Mesopotamia. Shalmaneser II. (d. 825 B.C.) raided the Khatti and their allies year after year; and at last Sargon III., in 717 B.C., relates that he captured Carchemish and its king, Pisiris, and put an end to its independence. We hear no more of it thenceforward. These Khatti, there is no reasonable doubt, are identical with Kheta. (For the chronology see further under Babylonia and Assyria.)
4. Other Cuneiform Records.—The name of the race appears in certain of the Tel-el-Amarna letters, tablets written in Babylonian script to Amenophis (Amenhotep) IV. and found in 1892 on the site of his capital. Some of his governors in Syrian districts (e.g. one Aziru of Phoenicia) report movements of the Hittites, who were then pursuing an aggressive policy (about 1400 B.C.). There are also other letters from rulers of principalities in N. Syria (Mitanni) and E. Asia Minor (Arzawa), who write in non-Semitic tongues and are supposed to have been Hittites.
Certain Khatē or Khati are mentioned in the Vannic inscriptions (deciphered partially by A. H. Sayce and others) as attacked by
