The Coming oj the Greeks 53 considerable size in northwestern Asia Minor. About 1500 B.C. this flourishing city had become a powerful rival of Cnossus. We are more familiar with the name of Troy than with that of any other ^Egean city, owing to Homer's account of its later capture by the Greeks. 76. The Hittites. In recent years scholars have become much interested in the empire of the Hittites, which stretched across Asia Minor east of Troy. A great deal is now being learned about this impor- tant people, of which formerly very little was known. It will be recalled that they are fre- quently mentioned in the Bible. Their empire appears to have reached its height about 1450 B.C. Perhaps for us the chief interest of the Hittites is that they discov- ered rich deposits of iron and were AN ANCIENT HITTITE AND HIS MODERN ARMENIAN DESCENDANT At the left is the head of an ancient Hittite as carved by an Egyptian sculptor on the wall of a temple at Thebes, Egypt, over three thousand years ago. It strikingly resembles the profile of the Armenians still living in the Hittite country, as shown in the modern portrait on the right. The strongly aquiline and prominent nose of the Hittites was also characteristic of the neighboring Semites along the eastern end of the Mediter- ranean, including the Canaanites the first important distributors of a metal which was to replace copper and bronze and become one of the main foundations of our modern civiliza- tion, since without iron, and the steel derived from it, we could hardly imagine the steam engine and all the machinery upon which we have come to rely (Ancient Times, 351-360). 77. Summary. As we look at the map (p. 50) we see that Greece and the ygean islands, together with Troy and Asia Minor, had, about 1500 B.C., developed into a civilized world on the north
