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Hittites: Anatolian Hittites
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The original Hittites were an Armenian/Anatolian people who founded several city-states in eastern Anatolia, of which one, Hatti, gained supremacy. In around 2000 BC, an Indo-European people invaded, made themselves the ruling class and intermarried with the natives. The Hittites developed advanced political, military and legal systems. The country occupied land North of the Tigris and Euphrates and on the Northern shores of the Mediterranean. The city of Hattusas (now Bogazkoy in central Turkey) became the capital of a strong kingdom which overthrew the Babylonian empire. There was a period of eclipse but the Hittite New Empire became a great power c 1400-1200 BC and fought a succesful war with Egypt.
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Despite marked Anatolian-Hattian, Mesopotamian and Hurrian influences, the Hittites developed their own individual culture in Anatolia. It is astonishing that a people as strongly and continuously influenced by the Mesopotamians as the Hittites could have formed such very different characteristics from their Oriental neighbors in several aspects of their cultural life and have developed a truly Western way of thinking. One of the most important traits of the Hittites was their sense of loyalty to a state governed by law. Although he ruled by right of heredity, the king was merely primus inter pares. The Hittites of the Empire showed no interest in the ideas of Oriental absolutism and the divine right of kings. It was only towards the end of the Empire that they became inclined to tolerate some Oriental ideas.
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The Hittites imposed their political and social organization on their dominions in the Anatolian interior and northern Syria, where the indigenous peasantry supported the Hittite warrior caste with rents, services, and taxes. In time the Hittites won reputations as merchants and statesmen who schooled the ancient Middle East in both commerce and diplomacy. The Hittite Empire achieved the zenith of its political power and cultural accomplishment in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C., rivaling the power of the Egypt, Baylon or Assyria, but the state collapsed after 1200 B.C. when the Phrygians, clients of the Hittites, rebelled and burned Hattusas, the city which served as the center of political and religious power.
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In about 1600 the Hittites reach and destroy Babylon, before retreating again to their Anatolian heartland. In the 14th century they march again to establish an empire which reaches into northern Syria, east of the Euphrates, and extends down the Mediterranean coast to confront the Egyptians. A hard-fought but inconclusive engagement at Kadesh in 1275 stablizes the frontier between the two power blocs.
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Anatolia was not empty when the Hittites arrived. The Anatolian cultures of the time were relatively rich but small communities whose royal tombs have been discovered in such places as Alaca Hüyük and Horoztepe. Gold, silver and bronze objects from these tombs are considered to be of equal or higher quality than the treasures found in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. These people spoke Hattic—a language of different structure than Indo-European or other languages known from the area. Because we have few texts or other clues, this language, and the identity of its speakers, are still a matter of speculation, but we do know that the Hattic people, and the land of Hatti, became part of a new political entity known as the Hittite Old Kingdom in about 1650 BC.
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In 1997, the groundwork began to be laid to put together this special exhibition, “The Hittites: A Nation of 1,000 Gods,” and for its voyage to Bonn. Over 150 pieces were carefully chosen and assembled from museums in Alacahöyük, Corum, Boğazköy, Kayseri, Sivas, Konya, Kastamonu, Karaman, Amasya, Afyon , Adana, Kahramanmaras, Gaziantep and Urfa, as well as the Istanbul Archaeology Museum and Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. Seven historical reconstructions are ... displayed in this exhibit.
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Anatolian Hittites