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Hittites: Middle East
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The Hittites were pioneers of the Iron Age, demonstrating great skills in the manufacture of iron artifacts from as early as the 14th century BC, when letters to foreign rulers reveal the demand for their iron goods. The Hittites were not... the first to work iron, and iron remained a precious metal throughout the history of their empire. The Hittites passed much knowledge and lore from the Ancient Near East to the newly arrived Greeks in Europe.
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Hittites seemed to have spoken a language from the Indo-European language family, which includes English, German, Greek, Latin, Persian, and the languages of India. Hittite tablets were excavated from the ruins of the ancient Hittite capital Hattusa located near the modern Turkish town of Boghazkoy about 210 kilometers east of Ankara. Scientific excavation of these ruins by a German expedition began in 1906. About 10,000 clay tablets script were recovered. Although some were written in the Akkadian language and could be read immediately, most were in an unknown language, correctly assumed to be Hittite.
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In the 16th century BC, and down to the 13th century, the Hittites used the cuneiform characters and the Babylonian language for correspondence abroad. On seals and and mace-heads they used their own hieroglyphics, together with the cuneiform. These emblems, which occur on archaic monuments at Hamath, Carchemish and Aleppo in Syria, as well as very frequently in Cappadocia and Pontus, and less frequently as far West as Ionia, and on the East at Babylon, are now proved to be of Hittite origin, since the discovery of the seal of Arnuanta already noticed. The suggestion that they were Hittite was first made by the late Dr. W. Wright (British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1874). About 100 such monuments are now known, including seals from Nineveh and Cappadocia, and Hittite gold ornaments in the Ashmolean Museum; and there can be little doubt that, in cases where the texts accompany figures of the gods, they are of a votive character.
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Representational art, fostered by the building of the huge palaces and temples of the Hittites, held an eminent position in the Eastern world. The Hittites created the best military architecture of the Near East. Their system of offensive defense works, handed down from the Old Kingdom, grew into a unique type of fortification under the Empire. The impressive cyclopean walls at Hattuşa and Alaca display a high level of craftsmanship. From the point of view of their strategic contouring in a very difficult terrain and of the layout of their offensive defense works, the walls of ancient Hattuşa axe an unrivalled masterpiece.
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In the 14th century BC the Hittites became the supreme political and military power in the Near East. How did they achieve their supremacy? How successful were they in maintaining it? What brought about their collapse and disappearance? This comprehensive history of the Hittite kingdom seeks to answer these questions. It takes account of important recent advances in Hittite scholarship, including some major archaeological discoveries made in the last few years.
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The law codes of the Hittites reveal a strong Babylonian influence, but their administration of justice was far more lenient than that of the Babylonians. The Hittites rarely resorted to the death penalty or to bodily mutilation, both of which were characteristic of other civilizations of the ancient Middle East. Furthermore, Hittite justice rested in the main on the principle of restitution rather than on retribution or vengeance. The penalty for thievery, for example, was restoration of the stolen object and payment of some additional recompense; restitution in kind was gradually replaced by payment of money.
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