Note 740 — VI THE STORY OF THE HITTITES
Reading edition
On this point Professor Sayce kindly supplies the following note:—‘In the fourteenth chapter of Genesis we are told that one of the vassal allies of Chedor-laomer in his campaign against his revolted subjects in the naphtha-bearing district of southern Canaan was Tidᶜal, king of the Goyyim or “Nations.” In the fragments of the Babylonian story of Chedor-laomer published by Dr. Pinches, the name of Tidᶜal is written Tudkhul, and he is described as king of the Umman Manda or Nations of the North, of which the Hebrew Goyyim is a literal translation. Now the name is Hittite. In the account of the campaign of Ramses II. against the Hittites it appears as Tidᶜal, and one of the Hittite kings of Boghaz-Keui bears the same name, which is written Dud-khaliya in cuneiform. The name is evidently a compound of Dud or Tud—with which we may compare Tadu-Khipa—and the territorial divinity Khaliya (Greek Halys; cp. the Lydian Alyattes).
‘In the Bogche inscription [p. 155] the king who erected the monument is called Khaleis “the Khalian,” and we probably have the same name in Khulli, the father of the Cilician Amris.
‘The important fact which results from this is that the Hittite king was already serving as an ally or vassal under the king of the Babylonian empire in the age of Abraham and Khammu-rabi, the Amraphel of the Old Testament.’—A. H. S., December 1, 1909.