The Land of the Hittites, An Account of Recent Explorations and Discoveries in Asia Minor - Tapa blanda

From the introduction: “THE history of ancient Oriental civilisation is slowly revealing itself to the excavator and archæologist. Scientific excavations have been carried on in Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Palestine; it is now the turn of Asia Minor, both north and south of the Taurus; and there are indications that the revelation which Asia Minor and the neighbouring lands of Syria have in store for us will be even more startling than that which has come from Egypt and Babylonia. There we already knew that great empires and wide-reaching cultures had once flourished; the earlier history of Asia Minor, on the other hand, was a blank. But the blank is beginning to be filled up, and we are learning that there too an empire once existed, which contended on equal terms with those of the Nile and the Euphrates, and possessed a culture that formed a link between the east and the west. What I once called the forgotten empire of the Hittites is at last emerging into the light of day, and before long much that is still mysterious in the art and religion of Greece and Europe will be explained. This much has already been ascertained by the excavations made by the German expedition under Professor Winckler at Boghaz-Keui, north of the Halys, the site of the Hittite capital. But there are many other sites in Asia Minor and northern Syria where Hittite culture once flourished, and where, therefore, discoveries similar to those which have startled the scientific world at Boghaz-Keui may be expected to be made. Some of these sites were examined by Professor Garstang in his preliminary journeys of exploration; at another he has begun the work of excavation and brought to light important remains of art and antiquity.”