which was well known to the Egyptian scribes. The "Greater" implies the
Less, and the only Lesser Hittite land with which we are acquainted is
that of which the Book of Genesis speaks.

So far as we can judge from the evidence of proper names, the Hittites
belonged to a race which was spread from the Halys in Asia Minor to the
shores of Lake Urumiyeh. The early inhabitants of Armenia, who have left
us inscriptions in the cuneiform character, also belonged to it. So also
did the people of Comagênê, and it seems probable that the ruling class
in northern Mesopotamia did the same. Here there existed a kingdom which
at one time exercised a considerable amount of power, and whose
princesses were married to the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth dynasty. This
was the kingdom of Aram Naharaim, called Naharina in the Egyptian texts,
Mitanni by its own inhabitants. The language of Mitanni was of a very
peculiar type, as we learn from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, one or two
of which are written in it. Like the Hittites in Syria, the Mitannians
appear to have descended from the north upon the cities of the Semites,
and to have established themselves in them. Mitanni was at the height of
its influence in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries before our era;
its armies made their way even into Canaan, and the Canaanite princes
intrigued from time to time against their Egyptian masters, not only
with the Babylonians and Hittites, but also with the kings of Mitanni.

Before the time of David the power and almost the name of Mitanni had
passed away. The Hittite empire also had been broken up, and henceforth
we hear only of "the kings of the Hittites" who ruled over a number of
small states. The Semites of Syria had succeeded in rolling back the
wave of Hittite conquest, and in absorbing their Hittite conquerors. The
capture of Carchemish by Sargon of Assyria in B.C. 717 marks the end of
Hittite dominion south of the Taurus.