[Illustration:  135.jpg THREE HEADS OF HITTITE SOLDIERS]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

Their ordinary costume consisted, sometimes of a shirt with short sleeves, sometimes of a sort of loin-cloth, more or less ample according to the rank of the individual wearing it, and bound round the waist by a belt.  To these they added a scanty mantle, red or blue, fringed like that of the Chaldaeans, which they passed over the left shoulder and brought back under the right, so as to leave the latter exposed.  They wore shoes with thick soles, turning up distinctly at the toes,* and they encased their hands in gloves, reaching halfway up the arm.

* This characteristic is found on the majority of the monuments which the peoples of Asia Minor have left to us, and it is one of the most striking indications of the northern origin of the Khati.  The Egyptian artists and modern draughtsmen have often neglected it, and the majority of them have represented the Khati without shoes.

They shaved off both moustache and beard, but gave free growth to their hair, which they divided into two or three locks, and allowed to fall upon their backs and breasts.  The king’s head-dress, which was distinctive of royalty, was a tall pointed hat, resembling to some extent the white crown of the Pharaohs.  The dress of the people, taken all together, was of better and thicker material than that of the Syrians or Egyptians.  The mountains and elevated plateaus which they inhabited were subject to extraordinary vicissitudes of heat and cold.  If the summer burnt up everything, the winter reigned here with an extreme rigour, and dragged on for months:  clothing and footgear had to be seen to, if the snow and the icy winds of December were to be resisted.  The character of their towns, and the domestic life of their nobles and the common people, can only be guessed at.  Some, at least, of the peasants must have sheltered themselves in villages half underground, similar to those which are still to be found in this region.  The town-folk and the nobles had adopted for the most part the Chaldaean or Egyptian manners and customs in use among the Semites of Syria.  As to their religion, they reverenced a number of secondary deities who had their abode in the tempest, in the clouds, the sea, the rivers, the springs, the mountains, and the forests.  Above this crowd there were several sovereign divinities of the thunder or the air, sun-gods and moon-gods, of which the chief was called Khati, and was considered to be the father of the nation.  They ascribed to all their deities a warlike and savage character.  The Egyptians pictured some of them as a kind of Ra,* others as representing Sit, or rather Sutkhu, that patron of the Hyksos which was identified by them with Sit:  every town had its tutelary heroes, of whom they were accustomed to speak as if of its Sutkhu—­Sutkhu of Paliqa, Sutkhu of Khissapa, Sutkhu of Sarsu, Sutkhu of Salpina.  The goddesses in their eyes also became Astartes, and this one fact suggests that these deities were, like their Phoenician and Canaanite sisters, of a double nature—­in one aspect chaste, fierce, and warlike, and in another lascivious and pacific.  One god was called Mauru, another Targu, others Qaui and Khepa.**