* The religious cities and the festivals of the Greek epoch are described by Strabo; these festivals were very ancient, and their institution, if not the method of celebrating them, may go back to the time of the Hittite empire.

** The description of the battle of Qodshu in the time of Ramses II. shows us the King of the Khati surrounded by his vassals.  The evidence of the existence of a similar feudal organisation from the time of the XVIIIth dynasty is furnished by a letter of Dushratta, King of Mitanni, where he relates to Amenothes IV. the revolt of his brother Artassumara, and speaks of the help which one of the neighbouring chiefs, Pirkhi, and all the Khati had given to the rebel.

The various contingents which the sovereign could collect together and lead would, if he were an incapable general, be of little avail against the well-officered and veteran troops of Egypt.  Still they were not to be despised, and contained the elements of an excellent army, superior both in quality and quantity to any which Syria had ever been able to put into the field.  The infantry consisted of a limited number of archers or slingers.  They had usually neither shield nor cuirass, but merely, in the way of protective armour, a padded head-dress, ornamented with a tuft.  The bulk of the army carried short lances and broad-bladed choppers, or more generally, short thin-handled swords with flat two-edged blades, very broad at the base and terminating in a point.

[Illustration:  140.jpg A HITTITE CHARIOT WITH ITS THREE OCCUPANTS]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Champollion.

Their mode of attack was in close phalanxes, whose shock must have been hard to bear, for the soldiers forming them were in part at least recruited from among the strong and hardy mountaineers of the Taurus.  The chariotry comprised the nobles and the elite of the army, but it was differently constituted from that of the Egyptians, and employed other tactics.

The Hittite chariots were heavier, and the framework, instead of being a mere skeleton, was pannelled on the sides, the contour at the top being sometimes quite square, at other times rudely curved.  It was bound together in the front by two disks of metal, and strengthened by strips of copper or bronze, which were sometimes plated with silver or gold.  There were no quiver-cases as in Egyptian chariots, for the Hittite charioteers rarely resorted to the bow and arrow.  The occupants of a chariot were three in number—­the driver; the shield-bearer, whose office it was to protect his companions by means of a shield, sometimes of a round form, with a segment taken out on each side, and sometimes square; and finally, the warrior, with his sword and lance.  The Hittite princes whom fortune had brought into relations with Thutmosis III. and Amenothes II. were not able to avail themselves properly of the latent forces around them.  It was owing probably to the