Editing Hittites (section)

===Biblical background===
{{see also|Biblical Hittites}}
Before the archeological discoveries that revealed the Hittite civilization, the only source of information about the Hittites had been the Hebrew Bible. [[Francis William Newman]] expressed the critical view, common in the early 19th century, that, "no Hittite king could have compared in power to the [[King of Judah]]...".<ref>{{cite book |author=Francis William Newman |date=1853 |title=A history of the Hebrew monarchy: from the administration of Samuel to the Babylonish Captivity |edition=2nd |publisher=John Chapman |location=London |page=179 note 2}}</ref>

As the discoveries in the second half of the 19th century revealed the scale of the Hittite kingdom, [[Archibald Sayce]] asserted that, rather than being compared to Judah, the Anatolian civilization "[was] worthy of comparison to the divided Kingdom of Egypt", and was "infinitely more powerful than that of Judah".<ref>The Hittites: the story of a forgotten empire By Archibald Henry Sayce Queen's College, Oxford. October 1888. Introduction</ref> Sayce and other scholars also noted that Judah and the Hittites were never enemies in the Hebrew texts; in the [[Books of Kings|Book of Kings]], they supplied the Israelites with cedar, chariots, and horses, and in the [[Book of Genesis]] were friends and allies to [[Abraham]]. [[Uriah the Hittite]] was a captain in King [[David]]'s army and counted as one of his "mighty men" in [[Books of Chronicles|1 Chronicles]] 11.