A.H. Sayce > Quotes

“The same double-headed eagle, supporting the figure of a man or a god, is met with at Boghaz Keui, and must be regarded as one of the peculiarities of Hittite symbolism and art. The symbol was adopted in later days by the Turkoman princes, who had perhaps first seen it on the Hittite monuments of Kappodokia; and the Crusaders brought it to Europe with them in the 14th century. Here it became the emblem of the German Emperors, who have passed it on to the modern kingdoms of Russia and Austria. It is not the only heirloom of Hittite art which has descended to us of to-day.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“The Hittites and Amorites were therefore mingled together in the mountains of Palestine like the two races which ethnologists tell us go to form the modern Kelt.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“The Hittites were intruders in Syria as well as in Western Asia Minor.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“As Membij took the place of Carchemish, so Emesa or Homs took the place of Kadesh.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Even the buckle, with the help of which the prehistoric Greek fastened his cloak, has been shown by a German scholar to imply an arrangement of the dress such as we see represented on the Hittite monument of Ibreez.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Kadesh was a Hittite stronghold; nevertheless it is described as being 'in the land of the Amaur' or Amorites, and its king is depicted with the physical characteristics of the Amorite, and not of the Hittite.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Hettites appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. Our culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were derived from the Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor ... The Hittites carried the time-worn civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the grey dawn of European history.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“It is clear, then, that the Amorites of Canaan belonged to the same white race as the Libyans of Northern Africa, and like them preferred the mountains to the hot plains and valleys below. The Libyans themselves belonged to a race which can be traced through the peninsula of Spain and the western side of France into the British Isles.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Prominent among the Hettite priests were the Galli or eunuchs, who on the days of festival cut their arms and scourged themselves in honour of their deities. Such actions remind us of those priests of Baal who 'cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“It is not probable that the Hittite system of writing passed away without leaving its influence behind it ... There is reason to think that the curious syllabary which continued to be used in Cyprus as late as the age of Alexander the Great was derived from the Hittite hieroglyphs ... It is also possible that the names assigned to the letters even of the Phœnician alphabet were influenced by the hieroglyphs of the Hittites.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“How the resurrection of Hittites has been accomplished, by putting together the fragmentary evidence of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions, of strange-looking monuments in Asia Minor, and of still undeciphered hieroglyphics”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Sea. Nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either bank. On the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3000 feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions: behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and intersected in all”
― Archibald Henry Sayce, The First Chaldean Empire and the Hyksos in Egypt

“We must regard the Amorites as the earlier population, among a part of whom the Hittites in later days settled and intermarried.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Like the Egyptians, the Hittites sat when eating.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“There are no traces of the Hittites at Shechem or on the eastern side of the Jordan”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“The age of Hittite supremacy belongs to an earlier date than the rise of the monarchy in Israel; earlier, we may even say, than the Israelitish conquest of Canaan.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Elephants' tusks were among the tribute paid by the Hittites to the Assyrian kings. It may be that the extinction of the elephant in this part of Asia was due to Hittite huntsmen.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“even Herodotos suspected that he was being made fun of.”
― A.H. Sayce, The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

“The Jebusites ... belonged to one or other of these two great races; perhaps, indeed, to both (i.e., Amorites and Hittites).”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Bath-sheba was not only the mother of Solomon, but also the distant ancestress of Christ. For us, therefore, these Hittites of Judæa have a very special and peculiar interest.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“So, too, we may imagine that the sight of the hieroglyphs of Egypt, and the knowledge that thoughts could be conveyed by them, suggested to some Hittite genius the idea of inventing a similar means of intercommunication for his own people.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“The Semite had avenged himself for the conquest of his country by the northern mountaineers centuries before. They no longer formed a barrier which cut off the east from the west, and prevented the Semites of Assyria and Babylon from meeting the Semites of Phœnicia and Palestine.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“The great Hittite stronghold on the Euphrates, which had been for so many centuries the visible sign of their power and southern conquests, became once more the possession of a Semitic people. The long struggle that had been carried on between the Hittites and the Semites was at an end; the Semite had triumphed, and the Hittite was driven back into the mountains from whence he had come.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“The direction in which the characters look determines the direction in which they should be read. This alternate or boustrophedon mode of writing also characterises early Greek inscriptions, and since it was not adopted by either Phœnicians, Egyptians, or Assyrians, the question arises whether the Greeks did not learn to write in such a fashion from neighbours who made use of the Hittite script.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“There was thus a Hittite population which clustered round Hebron, and to whom the origin of Jerusalem was partly due.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“The Hittites, in fact, must be regarded as the first teachers of the rude populations of the West. They brought to them a culture the first elements of which had been inspired by Babylonia;”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

“Amorites must have been in possession of Palestine long before the Hittites arrived there.”
― A. H. SAYCE., The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire