is made out from an Assyrian tablet published by Bezold: it
was reserved for Say ce and Jensen to determine the nature
of the god. Shausbe has been identified with Ishtar or Shala
by Jensen.

We know as little about their political organisation as about their
religion.* We may believe, however, that it was feudal in character, and
that every clan had its hereditary chief and its proper gods: the
clans collectively rendered obedience to a common king, whose effective
authority depended upon his character and age.**

* 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 th