Hittites: A History from Beginning to End (Mesopotamia History)

by Hourly History

Introduction

The Hittites, who were said to have lived among gods and kings, were mysterious enough to captivate even Lawrence of Arabia.

These Indo-European Hittites settled in what would become modern day Turkey and Syria and developed a civilization that was a power to be reckoned with—one that profoundly impacted the superpowers of their time and those that immediately followed.

Thanks to their tradition of preservation and meticulous record-keeping, the Hittites left us with an immense amount of documentation that provides us a window into our shared past that might have remained shaky if left only to speculation, or worse remained obscured.

Their penchant for storing knowledge revealed their role in preserving customs and traditions of sophisticated Eastern cultures to the West for our shared human interest in preservation.

While they are often known for their extremely disciplined tactics in times of war, they are similarly understood through further research to have shown an immensely unprecedented understanding for developing sensitivity as well as moral and ethical insights, as indicated in their reformation of laws, skilled international relations, and their written records.

They asserted their ambition to be an international power and in the process have left our human story a rich treasure trove of their complex civilization as it related to the three superpowers of the time. For 3000 years, while the Hittites were the unknown fourth empire that held power between 1800 and 1200 BCE, their influence and their complex system of collective governance—seen as an early example of early Middle Eastern democracy that did not give a king absolute power in decision-making—guides us in gaining informed insight into their strengths, weaknesses, achievements, and what destabilized them and eventually led to their ruin.

Chapter One Sources

There they found a flood of documentary evidence that revolutionized our comprehension of who the Hittites were and the role they played in the world of the second millennium BCE.

They found two major archives filled with thousands of tablets and fragments.

As opposed to other archaeological digs focused on ancient civilizations, these weren't commonplace commercial documents either. These were characterized as intellectual tools required for the political and ideological maintenance of their empire. The 1906 expedition yielded 30,000-...

They include treaties, royal correspondences, prayers, rituals, festival descriptions, my...

Historians study the royal annals and other texts that help them establish the Hittite presence in the world history books. Anthropologists look at the aspects of their society that would interest us. Geologists and other earth science experts consider their natural resources and environment.

Plenty of evidence compels art historians, given the number of seal impressions and rock-cut reliefs found, and there's a lot to debate about for ancient technology students and archaeologists.

Many of the historical works written by the Hittites were primarily works of royal propaganda, according to Professor Henry Hoffner, a notable Assyriologist and Hittotologist and the Executive Editor of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary.

However, this is obviously not the full picture. A majority of the texts have nothing to do with the military side of Hittite life and provide a more balanced view of life and society. The archived tablets are in no fewer than eight languages. There are testaments that record kings' speeches and provide rare glimpses into the actual personalities and emotions of Hittite kings, appeals from Egyptian wives to Hittite kings in times of great tragedy, descriptions of strict conditions of hygiene that kept subjects far from kings and their nearest relations, duties and regulations for reporting officials on day-to-day operations in the service of the king, as well as proclamations and various reports.

Piecing all of these together, we start to see a fuller picture. In collecting this information from the leading experts and authors on Hittites, we present to you the following chapters in an attempt to broaden your understanding of the place-marker that almost left a gaping hole in our understanding of our ancient past.

Chapter Two Sir Lawrence of Arabia, Helen of Troy, Origins and Remarkable Missing Links

While Hittite (or as they called it, Nesite) is considered among the oldest recorded Indo-European languages, expert Gary Beckman reported that eight different languages were found in documents from Hattusa. While most of them were in Hittite, they were also in Semitic Akkadian, Hattic, Palaic, Luwian, Hurrian, Sumerian, and Indic.

Did the Hittites possibly inspire the story of Helen of Troy and what brought them in contact with the people of Troy, given that the Hittite empire was around during the supposed Trojan Wars?

In 2014, it emerged that a tablet referred to as tablet CTH 183 written in the Hittite language utilizing the cuneiform script was a letter commissioned by a Mycenaean Greek king and sent to a Hittite king (most likely Muwatalli II who reigned ca 1295-1272 BCE) over the rightful ownership of a group of islands off of the Anatolian coast that had formed a part of a dowry in a previous generation.

Archaeologists and historians find it plausible that this unknown Assuwan princess is the prototype for Homer's Helen, the heart of countless legends and the basis for extensive research on the links between Homer's Trojan Wars and the Hittite empire.

Several key scholars now believe that Wilusa and Troy are one and the same, bringing the almost one-hundred-year search for references to Troy in the Hittite tablets closer to an answer.

More research seems to suggest that the Trojans spoke a language close to Hittite, Luwian, and that correspondences reveal that they corresponded with the Hittite king at the time.

Ongoing studies reveal that there were Hittite goods found in Troy and that the first likely mention of Troy comes from the record of a military expedition conducted by the Hittite king Tudhaliya against the Confederacy of Assuwa in the late 15th century BCE, when he restored a deposed king of Wilusa.

There is much discussion on the Iliad, within the context of the Hittite empire, and the contact between the Trojans and the Hittites that is worth exploring that you can find in the Further Reading section at the end of this primer.

Chapter Three The Bronze and Iron Age – Hittites and their Contemporaries

At the dawn of the Late Bronze Age, during the second millennium BCE, the Hittites were bent on world domination.

Theirs was a life based on duty, discipline and sacrifice.

They built their city out of the granite mountains of the North-Central Anatolian Mountain Range, using the natural landscape to build a thick wall along sheer cliffs to secure their city, home to more than 50,000.

Their brutal army and their ambitions helped them build an empire that riv...

During their formative years in the 18th and 17th centuries BCE, the Hittites bent the natural landscape to their will in order to fit their needs.

Archaeologists commonly divide Hittite history into Old Kingdom (up until 1400 BCE) and New Kingdom (circa 1400-early 12th century BCE).

Their fortress city was enclosed in a wall over five miles long and is considered among the thickes...

They devised a groundwater management system that was ahead of their time, where they piped in natural springs from the hills above their city and ran the water into seven storage pools within the city walls.

The Hittite Kingdom accomplished a great deal during the middle Bronze Age and subsequent Iron Age. They made full use of Anatolia's mineral wealth and nearby territories. The silver-rich Hittites made animal figurines that date back to the 3rd millennium BCE.