The hypothesis which conceives the wanderings of the Phœnicians to begin at some point east of Egypt and south of Mesopotamia, implies an antiquity for that people going back beyond the earliest mention of the Hittites in history. But in Northern Syria the relative precedence of Hittites and Phœnicians must have been reversed, and, though Sidon eclipsed Hamath and Carchemish in the eyes of the West, the East continued, down to the age of Sargon, to use the name Hittite in as wide a sense almost as that borne subsequently by the term Syrian.

This fact helps to pave the way for the suggestion, based on recent archæological discoveries, that most of the ancient kingdoms of Asia Minor were founded by offshoots from a white Syrian stock of the Hittite type, and that the direction of the famous Persian “royal road” from Susa to Sardis was determined by the situation of their capital cities.

Long before the re-discovery of the place occupied by the Hittites in the ancient history of Asia, the historians of art in Asia Minor were struck by the resemblances of scattered monuments for which no common name or origin could be suggested then. And MM. Perrot and Chipiez are now disposed to attribute all these monuments to Syro-Cappadocian kings, ruling over some branch or offshoots of the Hittite people.