come from the colder north just as certainly as we may conclude, from
the use of similar shoes among the Turks, that they also have come from
a northern home. In the Hittite system of hieroglyphic writing, the boot
with upturned end occupies a prominent place.

When the Tel el-Amarna tablets were written (B.C. 1400), the Hittites
were advancing on the Egyptian province of Syria. Tunip, or Tennib, near
Aleppo, had fallen, and both Amorites and Canaanites were intriguing
with the invader. The highlands of Cappadocia and the ranges of the
Taurus seem to have been the cradle of the Hittite race. Here they first
came into contact with Babylonian culture, which they adopted and
modified, and from hence they poured down upon the Aramæan cities of the
south. Carche-mish, now Jerablûs, which commanded the chief ford across
the Euphrates, fell into their hands, and for many centuries remained
one of their capitals. But it was not until the stormy period which
signalised the overthrow of the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, that the
Hittites succeeded in establishing themselves as far south as Kadesh on
the Orontes. The long war, however, waged with them by Ramses II.
prevented them from advancing farther; when peace was made at last
between them and the Egyptians, both sides had been exhausted by the
struggle, and the southern limit of Hittite power had been fixed.

The kings of Kadesh had, however, been at the head of a veritable
empire; they were able to summon allies and vassals from Asia Minor, and
it is probable that their rule extended to the banks of the Halys in
Cappadocia, where Hittite remains have been found. Military roads
connected the Hittite cities of Cappadocia with the rest of Asia Minor,
and monuments of Hittite conquest or invasion have been met with as far
west as the neighbourhood of Smyrna. These monuments are all alike
distinguished by the same peculiar style of art, and by the same system