The 'smiley pot' was discovered by a team led by Nicolo Marchetti, an archeology professor at the University of Bologna, during excavations in Turkey's Gaziantep province alongside the Syria border.
It was the location of an important battle, about 605 BC, between the Babylonians and Egyptians, mentioned in the Bible (Jer. 46:2). Modern neighbouring cities are Karkamış in Turkey and Jarabulus in Syria (also Djerablus, Jerablus, Jarablos, Jarâblos);[2] the original form of the modern toponym seems to have been Djerabis or Jerabis, likely derived from Europos, the ancient name of the Hellenistic-Roman settlement.
2’nci binyıl başlarında Mezopotamya bronz çağında idi.
Hitit tarihi zaman zaman Eski Krallık (İÖ 1700-1500), Orta Krallık (100 yıl kadar süren biraz ‘karanlık’ bir aradönem), ve Yeni Krallık (ya da İmparatorluk; İÖ 1400-1200) olarak evrelere ayrılır.
İmparatorluk Suppiluliuma I (yklş. İÖ 1344-1322) ve oğlu Mursilli II (yklş. İÖ 1321-1295) zamanında doruğuna ulaştı ve sonra Deniz Halklarının ve Kaskianların saldırılarının ardından Asurlulara yenik düştü.
DENİZ HALKLARI
Güneydoğu Avrupa'da ve Akdeniz'de Girit, Yunanistan ve Ege'nin ilk okur-yazar uygarlıklarının yitişi İÖ 1200-9000 yıllarında yer alan ve bütün Orta Doğunun bronz çağı uygarlıklarını da kapsayan yaygın bir yıkım kalıbına uygun düşer. Bu genel yıkımın bir bileşeni "Deniz Halkları"dır. Birçok yazılı belgeden çıkarsanan bu yaygın hipotez bu halkların Sardunya'ya dek Ege adalarından çeşitli etnik grupların bir tür konfederasyonunu oluşturdukları ve Küçük Asya, Suriye ve Mısır kıyıları boyunca baskınlar yaptıklarıdır (LINK). Aynı zamanda Avrupa'dan Anadolu'ya gelen Frigyalıların da bu yıkımda payları olmuş görünür.
(W) The Kaska were a loosely affiliated Bronze Age non-Indo-European tribal people, who spoke the unclassified Kaskian language and lived in mountainous East PonticAnatolia, known from Hittite sources. They lived in the mountainous region between the core Hittite region in eastern Anatolia and the Black Sea, and are cited as the reason that the later Hittite Empire never extended northward to that area.
İÖ 18’inci yüzyılda ortaya çıkan Hititler Mezopotamya ve Mısır’da olduğu gibi bir nehir vadisinde yaşamadıkları için sulama tarımı üzerine bağımlı olmayan daha teknolojik bir kültür geliştirdiler.
Hititler bölgenin önceki kültürü olan Hattiler ile karıştılar ve bir ölçüde yakın ilişkide oldukları Luwianların ve Hurrianların kültürlerini de özümsediler. Ama kültürlerini başlıca Mezopotamya ve Mısır kültürlerinden aldıkları öğeler ile geliştirdiler.
Hititler İÖ 14 ve 13’üncü yüzyıllarda Orta Doğu’nun en güçlü imparatorluğu oldular ve bölgenin Babil, Asur, Mitanni ve Mısır gibi büyük güçleri ile eşit terimlerde yarıştılar.
İmparatorluğun 13’üncü yüzyıl sonlarında dağılmasına karşın, Hitit kültürü güneydoğu Anadolu’da ve kuzey Suriye’de bir dizi Yeni-Hitit devletinde varlığını sürdürdü.
Başlıca militaristik bir güç olmalarına karşın, bir kültürler çoğulluğunu yöneten yasa dizgeleri daha insanca idi ve bir uyruklar türlülüğüne tam inanç özgürlüğü tanıdılar.
Hitit uygarlığı Mezopotamya ve Mısır gibi görkemli değildi. Daha az elverişli koşullar altında Hititler gösterişsiz bir kent yaşamı geliştirdiler.
Hitit yasaları başka çağdaş devletlerin yasalarından daha insanca idi.
Hitit İmparatorluğu göreli olarak daha türdeş nüfusları yöneten Mezopotamya İmparatorlukları ile karşıtlık içinde kültürlerinde birbirinden çok ayrı olan çok sayıda etnik kümeyi yönetiyordu.
French scholar Charles Texier found the first Hittite ruins in 1834, but did not identify them as Hittite.
The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at the karum of Kanesh (now called Kültepe), containing records of trade between Assyrian merchants and a certain “land of Hatti.” Some names in the tablets were neither Hattic nor Assyrian, but clearly Indo-European.
The Hittites played a pivotal role in ancient history, far greater than they are given credit for in modern history books. The Hittites developed the lightest and fastest chariots in the world, and despite belonging to the Bronze Age, were already making and using iron tools.
Kalay 232 C derecede, bakır 1083 C derecede ve demir 1535 C derecede ergir.
Hititler demiri ergitme yöntemini buldular ve İÖ 1500 yıllarında düzenli olarak demir işlemeye başladılar.
Avrupa’da Halstatt Demir Çağı İÖ 850’de, Mısır’da İÖ 700 sıralarında başladı. Hindistan kentleri Demir Çağına İÖ 600’den daha sonra girdi.
K. Aslihan Yener spent years in archaeometallurgy surveys together with the Turkish Geological Survey (MTA) and found cassiterite (tin ore) crystals in a stream in the Taurus foothills. This ore is purple; previous searches had been looking for black ore because most tin ores are black. Near the site was a deserted valley with a hill called Kestel that proved to hold a tin mine. Additionally, fragments of Bronze Age pottery were found in and near the mine. Inside, there were veins of bright purple tin ore.
The Kestel mine has two miles (3 km) of tunnels, many of which are only about two feet wide, just large enough to allow children to do the mining work. In one abandoned shaft, a burial of twelve to fifteen children was found, presumably killed while working in the mine.
In 1989, on a hill opposite the mine, associates found piles of Bronze Age pottery, close to 50,000 ground stone tools and evidence that this site had been continuously occupied from 3290-1840 BC. A great deal of the city was semi subterranean. The pottery at the site (named Göltepe) provided the final proof of the tin industry in the Bronze Age. Many thick crucibles lined with slag were found at the site and tests revealed the slag to have very high concentrations of tin (30% to almost 100%). It is likely that after the ore nuggets were washed, stone tools were used to grind them to a powder, and then the powder was heated to melt out the tin. All of this can be accomplished with Bronze Age tools and methods. This was somewhat surprising because early Assyrian records indicated that they imported tin into Anatolia, suggesting that the area did not have a supply of its own. In turn, the Assyrians imported large quantities of tin from Afghanistan. The Kestel mine stopped producing at the end of the third millennium BC.
Her armies would surprise the Egyptians at Kadesh, deliver Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, from a Syrian army, and overwhelm the defenders of Babylon. The Hittites seemingly appeared out of nowhere, struck decisively, and then, almost as quickly, disappeared. From a distance, success seemed only explainable in mythical terms, unrelated to superior tactics, training or fighting ability. There was the suspicion (or hope) that it was the iron in their weapons that gave them an edge. The primitive bronze weapons of their enemies broke against the iron blades wielded by the Hittite soldiers. The story of a superior race of people, with an advanced technology, reinforced the special status conferred by their mention in the Bible. Perhaps the saviors of the Israelites were human agents of a Divine plan of retribution or salvation. The secret of iron had been revealed to them as part of that plan. The Hittite legend is not entirely false, since they are credited with the "discovery" or development of iron technology, even if their exploits have been somewhat embellished with time.
Iron probably was not the mythical secret weapon which explained Hittite military success. However, they did develop a smelting process capable of producing iron tools, weapons, and ornamental objects. Their process was the result of years of metal-working experience, not simply an accidental byproduct of an iron rock falling into a fire.
Discovering that rocks can melt...
The melting temperature of three metals, iron, copper, and tin, is at the heart of the Hittite discovery. Iron has a melting point of 1535 degrees C (about 2795 degrees F), copper melts at 1083 degrees C (about 1972 degrees F), and tin melts at 231.97 degrees C (about 422 F). In one sense, the history of metals involved two very simple, but separate ideas. The first was the discovery that solid rock would melt. The second was the development of a process capable of producing the temperatures at which ore would turn into liquid.
Tin may have represented the breakthrough metal. With a melting point of 232 degrees C, it probably was one of the earliest metals observed to liquefy. In terms of the smelting process itself, the temperature threshold would be relatively easy to achieve and sustain. Where or when such knowledge was first acquired would be difficult to pinpoint. There is evidence that it was first used in the Zagros Mountains of what is now western Iran after 3500 B.C.. Whether that knowledge moved west or was discovered independently, tin mining and smelting was occurring in southern Anatolia shortly after that. About 60 miles north of Tarsus is an ancient Anatolian village called Göltepe in the Taurus Mountains. While its population was small, at only 500 or 1,000 people, it had been occupied between 3290 B.C. and 1840 B.C.. Economic life revolved around a nearby tin mine. An extensive network of tunnels, some over a mile in length, had been dug into the mountain. (It may have been the scene of some of the earliest mining accidents, since the skeletons of children have been found there.)
The mining process at Göltepe began by heating the mine face. Fires would soften the ore so that it could be chiseled more easily. Once the ore had been hauled to the surface it was smelted. Smelting involved heating in small ceramic crucibles. Charcoal, which was layered between the tin ore, provided the heat source. Temperatures may have reached 2,000 degrees F, possibly achieved through the use of reed pipe "bellows."
The Bronze Age
Tin had a market in its own right. However, the miners of Göltepe found the tin market sustained by the demand for bronze. Bronze was the alloy produced when tin was added to copper. Copper, with a melting temperature of 1083 degrees C, would seemingly have been a much more difficult metal to decipher than tin. Despite that apparent obstacle, copper was in use long before tin. Copper beads from sites in northern Iraq, have been dated to 9000 B.C. Catal Höyük, another Hittite city, may have been smelting copper, as well as lead, as early as 5400 B.C.. The Copper Age (or early Bronze Age) has been assigned various starting dates - 5000 B.C., according to some, 4000 or 3500 B.C. according to others. The Bronze Age, similarly, has a starting date of 4000, 3000, 2500, or even 2000 B.C.. The Shang Civilization (1700 - 1100) is credited with starting the Bronze Age in China.
The Bronze Age ended with the beginning of the Iron Age. Unfortunately there is no agreement on just when the Iron Age began. Some date its beginnings to 1500 B.C., about the time the Hittites may have started working with iron. Others give it a range of between 1500 and 1000 B.C.. Still others have dated it to 1200 B.C., when the Hittite Empire came to an end. Others assign its beginnings to around 1000 B.C., some 200 years after the end of the Hittite Empire. The basis for such a comparatively late date is that iron usage had become commonplace around the Mediterranean by that time. The start of the Iron Age also depended on location. The Halstatt Iron Age in central Europe is dated to 850 B.C. and Egypt's Iron Age began around 700 B.C.. Indian cities entered the Iron Age sometime after 600 B.C.. The Iron Age has continued to the present, even if its beginnings are uncertain.
Uncertainties about the beginning dates of the Copper, Bronze or Iron Ages stem from their broad meanings. They are intended to describe general stages of human development, rather than specific events or accomplishments. They could not have occurred without the discovery of copper or iron, but the date of the discovery or first use did not necessarily mark the beginning of an age. The occasional crafting of trinkets or tools proved that metals were being used, but small-scale or occasional production did not amount to an "Age." The Bronze or Iron Ages required, not only the ability to produce bronze or iron products on a large scale, but also fairly widespread use. An Age, in other words, demanded a large-scale market, i.e., an economy somewhat larger than that of a local village or tribe.
Gold may help to illustrate the problems in defining a metals age. While gold articles and the work of ancient goldsmiths are the most enduring and familiar treasures of the ancient world, the likelihood of an Age of Gold is extremely remote. The experience and skills of early craftsmen demonstrated a thorough knowledge of metalworking. Unfortunately, the scarcity of gold limited the market to ornamental items, since only kings or wealthy individuals could afford it.
The Hittites may have been able to produce and work iron, but production was too limited to support the mass markets demanded for designation as an Iron Age. One Hittite king, in the 13th Century B.C., apologetically sent an iron dagger blade to another king. The amount of iron the foreign monarch had requested, he explained, would not be ready for some time. The Bronze Age thus saw the anomaly of an iron-making capability and limited demand for the metal before the Iron Age began.
The Iron Age
The modern blast furnace produces temperatures hotter than 1600 degrees C (3000 degrees F), well above the melting point of iron (1535 degrees C) (2795 degrees F). An initial question, in analyzing the capabilities of Hittite technology, is whether it could have reached the melting point of iron or, if it could, whether that temperature could have been sustained for any period of time. The immediate response is that it must have achieved those goals, since the evidence suggests that the Hittites were regularly producing iron. That would be a remarkable achievement, given what one would expect from an ancient technology. However, there may be two other factors which might impact any analysis. The first is the fact that while the melting temperature of pure iron is something of an absolute, the addition of carbon, (a process known as carburization), can reduce the melting point to about 1170 degrees C (2138 degrees F). A second factor is the possibility that iron could be produced and worked at a temperature below its melting point.
Modern iron making offers a window into the past. In some ways the basic technology, if more refined and systematized, has changed little in 3500 years. The goal of the modern blast furnace, to produce a pure iron product, is the same as that of the ancient furnace or oven. The modern furnace may generate hotter temperatures and better iron, but the basic idea revolves around heat generation and temperature.
Iron, in its natural state, has a tendency to combine with oxygen, producing iron oxide, commonly observed as rust. Removing impurities, starting with oxygen, has been the universal problem encountered by iron makers. The secret to eliminating oxygen is to use a substance, known as a reducing agent, with a greater affinity for oxygen than iron. Charcoal and coke have been the two most commonly used reducing agents. Both serve dual purposes. As fuels, they generate the temperatures capable of melting iron. As carbon sources (coke is nearly 90 percent carbon), they carburize the iron, reducing its melting point and also serve as reducing agents to remove the oxygen. Oxygen is not the only impurity found in iron ore. Some can be removed with limestone, which, like a reducing agent, will combine with such impurities, lowering their melting point. The slag which forms separates from the iron and floats to the surface.
One of the problems faced by the Hittite iron makers involved the amount of carbon to be added. Additional amounts of carbon may lower the melting point of iron, but also make it extremely difficult to shape. Cast iron, the product, can only be shaped by use of a mold. As the liquid cools it assumes the shape of the mold. Wrought iron, in contrast, contains far less carbon, but requires a temperature close to the melting point of pure iron. The advantage over cast iron is malleability. Normally wrought iron is made with an additional ingredient, silica, found in sand. Steel includes a limited amount of carbon or the addition of other elements, such as manganese or nickel.
The Hittites appear to have produced an iron which could be reheated and worked, suggesting that their product was a form of wrought iron or some version similar to carbon steel. Charcoal was used as the reducing agent, layered with the iron ore in shallow hearths. The temperatures may not have reached the melting point, but they were sufficient to remove the oxygen after several hours, leaving a shiny metal. Limestone may have been used to remove other impurities or iron workers may have reheated the iron and hammered out the impurities which were left.
A Neanderthal dead-end or a continuing tradition?
The study of human origins has often tried to trace a direct line of evolution from ancient species down to modern man. The Neanderthals and Australopithecus are not considered direct ancestors of today's humans. They represent instead, side-branches which died out. The key question, in relation to the Hittites, is not whether they deserve the credit for being the first to discover iron, but whether it was their discoveries which set the stage for the Iron Age. In other words, did they represent the true ancestors of the Iron Age or, like the Neanderthals, did their independence and secrecy turn their technological achievements into dead-end curiosities?
In some ways the question of whether iron technology originated with the Hittites, depends on the nature of the technology. Was it so specialized as to prevent duplication? or would a general knowledge of metalworking provide enough insight to allow for intelligent guesswork about the formulation and process? During the reign of Tudhaliyas IV (1265 - 1240), the Assyrians took the kingdom of Isuwa and its copper mines from the Hittites. Would the miners, engineers, and metallurgists living there only have known about copper technology or would their knowledge extend to iron? Perhaps foreign visitors to Hatussa could obtain sufficient information through observation. Was it possible that even the limited samples of iron which the Hittites sent away could be reverse-engineered to reveal secrets about the processes used to create them? Little is know about the final days of the Hittite Empire. Perhaps, in the confusion and tumult many chose to leave, taking their technological know-how with them. Some may have been lured by offers from rival kingdoms or found refuge in faraway cities. Alternatively, they may have been massacred in the savage fighting which descended on Hatussa or perished in the fire which destroyed it.
Having developed a smelting process for iron, the Hittites would have been reluctant to share their secret. They did take steps to limit access by maintaining a monopoly on production. How successful were those efforts? and, if they were successful, did that mean that the Hittites had effectively severed their ties to the Iron Age they helped create? That would suggest that the iron technology associated with the Iron Age was developed independently of the Hittites. Alternatively, Hittite technology might have been transferred despite official efforts to keep it secret.
Suggestions for further reading.
S. G. F. Brandon, ed., "Milestones of History: Ancient Empires," Newsweek Books, (New York, NY 1973)
Roberta Conlan, Managing ed., "Lost Civilizations: Anatolia: Cauldron of Culture. " Time-Life Books, (Alexandria, VA 1995)
Glenn D. Considine, ed., "Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia, Ninth Edition." Wiley-Interscience, (New York, NY 2002)
Thomas H. Flaherty, Managing ed., "Lost Civilizations: Egypt: Land of the Pharaohs. " Time-Life Books, (Alexandria, VA 1992)
Janet Serlin Garber, ed. "The Concise Encyclopedia of Ancient Civilizations," Franklin Watts (New York, NY 1978)
Jim Hicks, "The Emergence of Man: The Empire Builders." Time, Inc., (New York, NY 1974)
George P. Hunt, Managing ed., "The Epic of Man. " Time, Incorporated, (New York, NY 1961)
Johannes Lehmann, "The Hittites: People of a Thousand Gods." The Viking Press, (New York, NY 1977)
David E. Newton, "Chemical Elements From Carbon to Krypton." UXL, An Imprint of Gale, (Detroit, MI 1999)
V. H. Patterson and M. J. Lalich, "Early Progress in the Melting of Iron, from paper "Fifty years of progress in the inoculation of cast irons," presented at the 44th International Foundry Congress, held in Florence, Italy in 1977.
"Reader's Digest History of Man: The Last Two Million Years." The Reader's Digest Association, (New York, NY 1974)
Bruce Wetterau, "World History: A Dictionary of Important People, Places, and Events, from Ancient Times to the Present." Henry Holt and Company (New York, NY 1994)
"The World Book Encyclopedia, 2003 Edition." World Book, Inc, (Chicago, IL 2003)
The past thousand years have seen Syria come under the domination of powerful neighbours from Mesopotamia and Egypt, and also large-scale movements of peoples – Amorites and Canaanites – into it from the arid lands to the east. Probably in the last few centuries one such set of wandering nomads has been a group from whom the Israelite people will eventually trace their descent.
The north of the region has now come under the rule of an Indo-European people called the Mitanni. The south is increasingly within the cultural orbit of Egypt.
In the next century, northern Syria, along with western Mesopotamia, fell under the control of a people new to the region, the Mitanni. The Mitanni were in fact Hurrians, a tribe long known to the history of these parts, who had come under the control of a warlike Indo-European ruling class. They established a well-organized and militaristic state in northern Mesopotamia and northern Syria, which by c. 1500 BCE was one of the leading powers in the Middle East. It successfully resisted the imperial ambitions of New Kingdom Egypt, subdued Assyria to vassalage, and gained control of such wealthy trading cities as Ugarit and Aleppo.
Further south, at around the same time, the Canaanites and the Hyksos (if they were not one and same people), near-relatives of the Amorites and, like them, pastoral nomads, expanded into the settled areas of Palestine, right to the coast. They took over the small towns and villages of the land which later became known as Canaan, founding small kingdoms where they settled. On the coast their descendants were later known to history as the Phoenicians.
Following the decline of Babylonian power in the area, northern Syria became a battle-ground between other great states of the late Bronze Age Middle East. The first round was between the Hittites, based in Asia Minor, and the Mitanni.
For a long time the Mitanni resisted the encroachments of the Hittites, but in the late fifteenth century BCE the Hittite kingdom entered a new and aggressive phase, posing an increasing threat to the Mitanni. In response, the Mitanni kings patched up their relations with Egypt, but this was not able to save them. In 1380 BCE a strong Hittite army, led by their king, invaded the Mitanni kingdom and successfully wrested huge tracts of Syrian territory from its control.
This disaster destabilized the Mitanni state, and set off a chain of coups, civil wars and secessions. In c. 1360 BCE the king of Assyria, Ashur-uballit I (1365-1330 BCE was able to break free, and then, taking advantage of Mitanni weakness, occupied the eastern half of the kingdom. The Hittites quickly occupied the rest, and northern Syria thus came under the firm control of the Hittites. The Mitanni vanished from history.
The Louvre lion and accompanying stone tablet bearing the earliest known text in Hurrian.
The Hurrians (cuneiform:𒄷𒌨𒊑; transliteration: Ḫu-ur-ri; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze AgeNear East. They spoke a Hurro-Urartian language called Hurrian and lived in Anatolia and Northern Mesopotamia. The largest and most influential Hurrian nation was the kingdom of Mitanni, the Mitanni perhaps being Indo-Iranian speakers who formed a ruling class over the Hurrians. The population of the Indo-European-speaking Hittite Empire in Anatolia included a large population of Hurrians, and there is significant Hurrian influence in Hittite mythology. By the Early Iron Age, the Hurrians had been assimilated with other peoples. Their remnants were subdued by a related people that formed the state of Urartu. According to a hypothesis by I.M. Diakonoff and S. Starostin, the Hurrian and Urartian languages shared a common ancestor and were related to the Northeast Caucasian languages. The present-day Armenians are an amalgam of the Indo-European groups with the Hurrians and Urartians.
The Luwian culture thrived in Bronze Age western Asia Minor. It has thus far been explored mainly by linguists, who learned about Luwian people through numerous documents from Hattuša, the capital of the Hittite civilization in central Asia Minor. Only a few excavations have thus far been conducted in formerly Luwian territories. Therefore, excavating archaeologists have not been taking Luwians into account in their reconstructions of the past. Once Aegean prehistory considers Western Asia Minor and its people, it becomes possible to develop a plausible explanation for the collapse of the Bronze Age cultures around the Eastern Mediterranean.
Luwians
It turns out that the Luwians were a far greater people than the Hittites … It is becoming increasingly apparent that the culture of the Hatti Kingdom had been established in all parts by the Luwians and taken over by the Hittites.
Emil Forrer on 20 August 1920 in a letter to his PhD advisor Eduard Meyer (Oberheid 2007, 93)
Asia Minor in pre-Hittite times was clearly divided into a western and an eastern half each with its characteristic culture. Both halves were ethnically and linguistically different. The western cultural area, with which we are most concerned, was eventually to be occupied by the Luwians.
Leonard R. Palmer 1961, 249
It is generally assumed that western Asia Minor was to a large extent – if not completely – Luwian.
Robert Beekes 2003, 47
Luwians must have been as important for the history of Bronze Age Anatolia as were the Hittites.
Ilya Yakubovich 2010, 3
The Luwians played at least as important a role as the Hittites in the history of the Ancient Near East during the second and first millennia BCE, but for various reasons they have been overshadowed and even confused with their more famous relatives and neighbors.
Harold Craig Melchert 2003 (back cover)
The Luwians [are] one of the most important yet elusive peoples of the ancient Near East.
Itamar Singer 2011, 727
The beginning of the new millennium brought a sharp increase in interest in Luwian Studies.
Alice Mouton et al. 2013, 6
Already in 1986, [Harvard professor of linguistics Calvert] Watkins interpreted the names of leading Trojans (Priam, Paris) in the Iliad to be Luwian.
Michael Reichel 2011, 40
On the tenth day, at the moment of the last watch of the night … in the stable I make a libation and I invoke the gods Pirinkar and Ishtar. In Hurrian I pronounce these words: “For the horses … O Pirinkar and Ishtar.” And in Luwian I pronounce the words, “For the horses! May all go well.”
Inscription on an altar in Kom al-Samak in western Thebes dating to the time of Amenhotep III, after Arielle P. Kozloff 2012, 165
Map of the Near East c. 1400 BC showing the Kingdom of Mitanni at its greatest extent.
Mitanni (Hittite cuneiformKURURUMi-ta-an-ni; MittaniMi-it-ta-ni), also called Hanigalbat (Hanigalbat, Khanigalbat cuneiform Ḫa-ni-gal-bat) in Assyrian or Naharin in Egyptian texts, was a Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and southeast Anatoliafrom c. 1500 to 1300 BC. Mitanni came to be a regional power after the Hittite destruction of AmoriteBabylon and a series of ineffectual Assyrian kings created a power vacuum in Mesopotamia.
At the beginning of its history, Mitanni's major rival was Egypt under the Thutmosids. However, with the ascent of the Hittite Empire, Mitanni and Egypt struck an alliance to protect their mutual interests from the threat of Hittite domination. At the height of its power, during the 14th century BC, Mitanni had outposts centred on its capital, Washukanni, whose location has been determined by archaeologists to be on the headwaters of the Khabur River. The Mitanni dynasty ruled over the northern Euphrates-Tigris region between c. 1475 and c. 1275 BC. Eventually, Mitanni succumbed to Hittite and later Assyrian attacks and was reduced to the status of a province of the Middle Assyrian Empire.
While the Mitanni kings were Indo-Aryan, they used the language of the local people, which was at that time a non-Indo-European language, Hurrian. Their sphere of influence is shown in Hurrian place names, personal names and the spread through Syria and the Levant of a distinct pottery type.
Legacy
Within a few centuries of the fall of Washshukanni to Assyria, Mitanni became fully Assyrianized and linguistically Aramaized, and use of the Hurrian language began to be discouraged throughout the Neo-Assyrian Empire. However, Urartean, a dialect closely related to Hurrian seems to have survived in the new state of Urartu, in the mountainous areas to the north in their Armenian Highlands.[note 2] In the 10th to 9th century BC inscriptions of Adad-nirari II and Shalmaneser III, Hanigalbat is still used as a geographical term.
Amarna letter EA 19, is a tall clay tablet letter of 13 paragraphs, in relatively pristine condition, with some minor flaws on the clay, but a complete enough story, that some included words can complete the story of the letter. Entitled "Love and Gold", the letter is about gold from Egypt (gold mine production), love between father-king ancestors and the current relationship between the King of Mitanni and the Pharaoh of Misri (Egypt), and marriage of women from King Tushratta of Mitanni to the Pharaoh of Egypt.
Besides the Double Line Ruling, for paragraphing (7 paragraphs on obverse), an overwritten Single Line Rule is at clay tablet left margin, as well as cuneiform characters inscribed upon a vertical right margin line of Single Line Rule. (see left margin here: [1])
EA 19. Tushratta to Pharaoh, mid-1300's BC.
Lines, obverse, 1-41 (of 85).
EA 19: “Love and gold”
Letter three of thirteen between Tushratta and the Pharaoh of Egypt (named Misri in the letters). (Obverse only, Paragraphs I-VII):
(Para I, 1-8)–Say to Nimmureya, Great King, the king of Egypt (Misri), [my] brother, my son-in-law, who loves me, and whom I lov[e]: Message of Tushratta, Great King, [your] father-in-law, who loves you, the king of Mitanni, your brother. For me all goes well. For you may all go well. For your household, for my sister, for the rest of your wives, for your sons, for your chariots, for your horses, for yourwarriors,for your country, and for whatever else belongs to you, may all go "very, very well"-("dan-is, dan-is").
(Para II, 9-16)–As far back as the time of your ancestors, they always showed love to my ancestors. You yourself went even further and showed very great love to my father. Now, in keeping with our constant and mutual love, you have made it ten times-(Akkadian: a-na 10šu—"for ten times") greater than the love shown my father. May the gods grant it, and may Tessup, my lord, and Aman and Tessup, my lord, and Aman makeflour[ish]for evermore, just as it is now, this mutual love of ours.
(Para III, 17-24)–When my brother sent Mane, his messenger, saying, ("um-ma")-"Send your daughter here to be my wife and the mistress of Egypt,"I caused my brother no distress andimmediatelyI said, ("um-ma")-"Of course!"The one whom my brother requested I showed to Mane, and he saw her. When he saw her, he praised her greatly. I willl[ea]dher in safety to my brother's country. May Shaushka and Aman make her the image of my brother's desire.
(Para IV, 25-29)–Keliya, my messenger,brou[ght]my brother's words to me, and when I heard (them), they were very pleasing, and I rejoiced very, very much, saying, ("um-ma")-"'Certainly' there is this between us: we love each other.-(?!)"Now, with such words let us love (each other) forevermore.
(Para V, 30-33)–When I wrote to my brother, I said, ("um-ma")-"Let us love (each other) very, very much, and between us let there be friendship."I also said to my brother, ("um-ma")-"May my brother treat me ten times better than he did my father."
(Para VI, 34-38)–I also asked my brother for much gold-(KU3-SIG17.MEŠ), saying: ("um-ma")-"May my brother grant me more than he did by father and send it to me. You sent my father much gold. You sent him large gold jars and gold jugs. You se[nt him] gold bricks as if they 'were (just) the equivalent of' copper."
(Para VII, 39-42)–When I sent Keliya to my brother, I asked for [much] gold saying, ("um-ma")-"May my brother treat me [ten times] better than he did my father, and may he send much gold that has not been worked." –EA 19, Obverse, lines 1-42, mostly complete (minor lacunae, restored)
📹 The Greatest Ancient Empire you have never heard of — The Mitanni (VİDEO)
The Greatest Ancient Empire you have never heard of — The Mitanni (LINK)
Around 1200 BC, the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean went into major cultural decline: The Late Bronze Age came to a sudden end.
Kingdoms that had wielded immense power completely disappeared. For several centuries after this, agriculture was people’s only means of subsistence. These were pivotal changes in history. Explaining them remains one of the big challenges in Mediterranean archaeology.
In this video, the foundation Luwian Studies presents a comprehensive and plausible scenario of what might have happened.
Hittites
📹 The Hittite Empire and the Battle of Kadesh / Early Civilizations / World History / Khan Academy (VİDEO)
The Hittite Empire and the Battle of Kadesh / Khan Academy (LINK)
Capital Hattusa Common languages Hittite, Luwian, Akkadian, Hattic Government
Absolute monarchy (Old Kingdom)
Constitutional monarchy (Middle and New Kingdom)
King Historical era Bronze Age
• Established c. 1600 BC
• Disestablished c. 1178 BC Preceded by Kanesh Succeeded by Syro-Hittite states
Origins
It is generally assumed that the Hittites came into Anatolia some time before 2000 BC. While their earlier location is disputed, it has been speculated by scholars for more than a century that the Yamna culture of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, in present-day Ukraine, around the Sea of Azov spoke an early Indo-European language during the third and fourth millennia BC.
(W) Sometime around 2000 BCE and 1900 BCE a series of events led to a large swath of destruction starting from the what is Eastern Anatolia (now Eastern Turkey) to the Aegean Sea.
(W) Migrations in Anatolia around 1900 BCE based on older research. According to Mellart, the Hittite migration displaced other peoples living in Anatolia, who in turn displaced the Middle Helladic Greek-speaking peoples to the west. This is contradicted by newer research.
The Hittites were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatoliaaround 1600 BC. This empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Anatolia as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC the Empire of Hattusa, conventionally called the Hittite Empire, came into conflict with the Egyptian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire and the empire of the Mitanni for control of the Near East. The Assyrians eventually emerged as the dominant power and annexed much of the Hittite empire, while the remainder was sacked by Phrygian newcomers to the region. After c. 1180 BC, during the Bronze Age collapse, the Hittites splintered into several independent “Neo-Hittite” city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BC before succumbing to the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
The Hittite language was a distinct member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family, and along with the related Luwian language, is the oldest historically attested Indo-European language. Hittites referred to their native language as nešili "in the language of Nesa" but called their native land as Kingdom of Hattusa (Hatti in Akkadian). The conventional name “Hittites” is due to their initial identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology. Despite their use of the name Hattusa for their state, the Hittites should be distinguished from the Hattians, an earlier people who inhabited the region of Hattusa (until the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC) and spoke an unrelated language known as Hattic.
The history of the Hittite civilization is known mostly from cuneiform texts found in the area of their kingdom, and from diplomatic and commercial correspondence found in various archives in Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt and the Middle East, the decipherment of which was also a key event in the history of Indo-European linguistics. The Hittite military made successful use of chariots, and although belonging to the Bronze Age, the Hittites were the forerunners of the Iron Age, developing the manufacture of iron artifacts from as early as the 18th century BC; at this time, gifts from the "man of Burushanda" of an iron throne and an iron sceptre to the Kaneshite king Anitta were recorded in the Anitta text inscription.
The Hittite empire fell victim to the Bronze Age Collapse around the beginning of the 12th century BC. Ethnic Hittite dynasties survived in small kingdoms scattered around modern Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Lacking a unifying continuity, their descendants are scattered and ultimately have merged into the modern populations of the Levant, Turkey and Mesopotamia.
During the 1920s, interest in the Hittites increased with the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey and attracted the attention of Turkish archaeologists such as Halet Çambel and Tahsin Özgüç. During this period, the new field of Hittitology also influenced the naming of institutions, such as the state-owned Etibank ("Hittite bank"), and the foundation of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, located 200 kilometers west of the Hittite capital and housing the most comprehensive exhibition of Hittite art and artifacts in the world.
The states that are called Neo-Hittite or, more recently, Syro-Hittite were Luwian-, Aramaic- and Phoenician-speaking political entities of the Iron Age in northern Syria and southern Anatolia that arose following the collapse of the Hittite Empire in around 1180 BC and lasted until roughly 700 BC. The term "Neo-Hittite" is sometimes reserved specifically for the Luwian-speaking principalities, like Milid and Carchemish. However, in a wider sense the broader cultural term "Syro-Hittite" is now applied to all the entities that arose in south-central Anatolia following the Hittite collapse, such as Tabal and Quwê, as well as those of northern and coastal Syria.
Late Bronze Age — Early Iron Age transition
The collapse of the Hittite Empire is usually associated with the gradual decline of Eastern Mediterranean trade networks and the resulting collapse of major Late Bronze Age cities in the Levant, Anatolia and the Aegean. At the beginning of the 12th century BC, Wilusa (Troy) was destroyed and the Hittite Empire suffered a sudden devastating attack from the Kaskas, who occupied the coasts around the Black Sea, and who joined with the Mysians. They proceeded to destroy almost all Hittite sites but were finally defeated by the Assyrians beyond the southern borders near the Tigris. Hatti, Arzawa (Lydia), Alashiya (Cyprus), Ugarit and Alalakh were destroyed.]
The Ain Dara temple is an Iron Age Syro-Hittite temple, located northwest of Aleppo, Syria, and dating to between the 10th and 8th century BC
Isuwa (transcribed Išuwa and sometimes rendered Ishuwa) was the ancient Hittite name for one of its neighboring Anatolian kingdoms to the east, in an area which later became the LuwianNeo-Hittite state of Kammanu.
he Isuwans left no written record of their own, and it is not clear which of the Anatolian peoples inhabited the land of Isuwa prior to the Luwians. They could have been Indo-Europeans like the Luwians, related to the Hittites to the west, Hattians, Hurrians from the south, or Urartians who lived east of Isuwa in the first millennium BC.
After the fall of the Hittite empire in the early twelfth century BC a new state emerged in Isuwa. The city of Melid became the center of a Luwian state, Kammanu, one of the so-called Neo-Hittite states. With the demise of the Hittites the Phrygians settled to the west, and to the east the kingdom of Urartu was founded. The most powerful neighbour was Assyria to the south. The encounter with the Assyrian king of Tiglath-Pileser I (1115–1077 BC) resulted in Kammanu being forced to pay tribute to Assyria. Kammanu continued to prosper however until the Assyrian king Sargon II (722–705 BC) sacked the city in 712 BC. At the same time the Cimmerians and Scythians invaded Anatolia from the Caucausus to the northeast. The movement of these nomadic people may have weakened Kammanu before the final Assyrian invasion, which probably caused the decline of settlements and culture in this area from the seventh century BC until the Roman period.
Great Empires of the Past: Empires of Ancient Mesopotamia / 2010 Barbara A. Somervill
Great Empires of the Past: Empires of Ancient Mesopotamia / 2010 Barbara A. Somervill
In 1600 BCE, the Babylonians were becoming weaker while a group
called the Hittites was gaining power.
The Hittites were an Indo-European people from outside Mesopotamia. They came from the north, although no one
knows exactly where their culture began.
When they invaded Mesopotamia in about 1600 BCE, they found much in the existing culture that
they liked and kept. They also brought many changes.
The Hittites
The Hittite Empire was at its strongest from about 1600 to 1200 BCE. The Hittites carried on an increasing number of wars to acquire more
land. Over time, they controlled Anatolia and Syria and began moving
into Egypt. The Egyptians, however, thought the Hittites were a savage
people. They fiercely resisted Hittite conquest.
The Hittite king served as the political head, military leader, and
supreme judge. He also represented the Hittite storm god. When the
king died, he himself became a god. The Hittite economy was based
on farming. Nobles — mainly the king — owned the land, and the common people were freemen, skilled craftsmen, or slaves. The heart of the Hittite empire was in present-day Anatolia, Turkey. The area was rich in metals, especially silver and iron. During
the empire period, the Hittites developed iron-working technology.
Smelting iron was the most important skill the Hittites brought to Mesopotamia. Smelting iron means extracting
the metal from crude ore (a mixture of
metal and rock). The Hittites knew how
to work iron, melt it, pound the metal
into tools, and temper the iron (make it
stronger) by heating it and then plunging it into cold water. The Hittites made
tools and weapons that were stronger
and longer lasting than the copper and bronze tools used in Mesopotamia at the time. Their knives stayed sharper longer.
The Hittites used their iron-working skills to produce weapons of
war that helped them defeat other empires. Working iron was a skill
that the Hittites did not want to share, because it helped them maintain
their power. However, as the empire began to lose power after 1200
BCE, the secret of Hittite iron-making became common knowledge.
One positive effect the Hittites had on Mesopotamia was increasing trade. The Hittite Empire traded far beyond the boundaries of the
Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. The empire ruled over most of presentday Turkey, parts of Syria, and south along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Trade routes stretched south onto the Arabian Peninsula and
east into modern Iran.
The Hittites brought new products and ideas into Mesopotamia. They also carried Mesopotamian culture, such as foods, customs, and
language, beyond the region. Many of the inventions and advances developed by the Sumerians reached into Hittite lands and were traded
along Hittite trading routes.
In Mesopotamia, the Hittites thought that Hammurabi’s code
and the other laws that had been added to it were somewhat brutal. While they agreed that many specific actions should be declared
illegal, they did not agree with the punishments. Under the Old
Babylonian legal system, criminals could expect to lose a body part
or their lives for most crimes. Under the new Hittite laws, criminals paid fines. Murder carried a huge fine, but there were few crimes that
carried the death penalty
KINGS, or — EMPERORS
İlk kez Telipinus (yklş. İÖ 1525-1500) bir kararname ile ardışıklık kurallarını belirleyinceye dek Hitit hanedanın sürekliliği sağlam değildi. Aristokratlar bir tür meclis yapısına benzer bir kuruma egemen idiler ve bunu krallara karşı bir güç odağı olarak kullanıyorlardı. Öte yandan, kraliyet ailesindeki her prens kendini kral adayı olarak görüyordu. Telipinus'un kurallarının kabul edilmesinden sonra meclisten bir daha söz edilmez oldu ve kral adayları arasındaki çekişmeler sona erdi. Telipinus krallık kurumunu Mısır ve Babil monarşilerinde olduğu gibi tanrısallaştırdı ve krala başkomutan, yasamacı, yargıç ve rahip sanlarını kazandırdı. Hitit kralları sağlıklarında tanrılaştırılmasalar da, öldükten sonra tanrı olduklarına inanılmaya başladı. Hitit kraliçeleri devlet dininde yüksek rahibeler olarak etkin idiler ve aralarından bir bölümü devlet işlerinde önemli rol oynadı.
Krallık bir imparatorluğa genişler ve krallar imparator karakterini kazanırken, Hitit egemenliği altına alınan daha küçük krallıklar Hattusa'daki Büyük Krala bağlı vasallıklara indirgendi. Bir kent direndiği zaman zorla alınıyor, yağma ediliyor, nüfusu Hitit başkentine taşınarak serfleştiriliyor ve soyluluk arasında paylaştırılıyordu. Vasallar krala haraç verdikleri ve asker sağladıkları sürece büyük ölçüde özerk idiler ve özverilerinin karşılığı konumlarının korunması ve topraklarının düşmanlara karşı savunulması idi. Mitanni, Asur ve Mısır ile sınırlarda sorunlar ciddi idi ve vasalların her zaman Hititlerin düşmanları ile bağlaşma yapma olanakları vardı.
He used the title of Labarna at the beginning of his reign. It is uncertain whether he is the second king so identified, making him Labarna II, or whether he is identical to Labarna I, who is treated as his predecessor in Hittite chronologies.
During his reign, he moved the capital from Neša (Kaneš, near modern Kültepe) to Hattusa (near modern Boğazkale), taking the throne name of Hattusili to mark the occasion.
He is the earliest Hittite ruler for whom contemporary records have been found. In addition to "King of Hattusa", he took the title "Man of Kuššara", a reference to the prehistoric capital and home of the Hittites, before they had occupied Neša.
A cuneiform tablet found in 1957 written in both the Hittite and the Akkadian language provides details of six years of his reign. In it, he claims to have extended the Hittite domain to the sea, and in the second year, to have subdued Alalakh and other cities in Syria. In the third year, he campaigned against Arzawa in western Anatolia, then returned to Syria to spend the next three years retaking his former conquests from the Hurrians, who had occupied them in his absence.
Mursili I (sometimes transcribed as Murshili) was a king of the Hittitesc. 1556–1526 BC (short chronology), and was likely a grandson of his predecessor, Hattusili I. His sister was Ḫarapšili and his wife was queen Kali.
Mursili came to the throne as a minor. Having reached adulthood, he renewed Hattusili I's warfare in northern Syria. He conquered the kingdom of Yamhad and its capital, Aleppo, which had eluded Hattusili. He then led an unprecedented march of 2,000 km south into the heart of Mesopotamia, where in 1531 BC he sacked the city of Babylon. Mursili's motivation for attacking Babylon remain unclear, though William Broad has proposed that the reason were obtaining grain because the clouds from the Thera eruption decreased the Hittites' harvests.
The raid on Babylon could not have been intended to exercise sovereignty over the region; it was simply too far from Anatolia and the Hittites' center of power. It is thought, however, that the raid on Babylon brought an end to the Amorite dynasty of Hammurabi and allowed the Kassites to take power, and so might have arisen from an alliance with the Kassites or an attempt to curry favor with them. It might also be that Mursili undertook the long-distance attack for personal motives, namely as a way to outdo the military exploits of his predecessor, Hattusili I.
When Mursili returned to his kingdom, he was assassinated in a conspiracy led by his brother-in-law, Hantili I (who took the throne), and Hantili's son-in-law, Zidanta I. His death inaugurated a period of social unrest and decay of central rule, followed by the loss of the conquests made in Syria.
The empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Anatolia as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
Maximum extant of empire under Šuppiluliuma I. Arzawa would certainly be lost by the end of his reign. The inclusion of the Lukka Lands as part of Arzawa is speculative. Alašiya is included because Šuppiluliuma is known to have banished political dissidents there at the beginning of his reign. (LINK)
Suppiluliuma I or Suppiluliumas I was king of the Hittites (r. c. 1344–1322 BC (short chronology)). He achieved fame as a great warrior and statesman, successfully challenging the then-dominant Egyptian empire for control of the lands between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates.
Suppiluliuma was the son of Tudhaliya II and Queen Daduhepa. He began his career as the chief advisor and general to Tudhaliya II, then based at Samuha. In this capacity, he defeated the Hittites' enemies among the Azzi-Hayasa and the Kaskas. Both enemies then united around charismatic leaders to counter him; of these Karanni founded a semblance of a royal court in Hayasa, and Piyapili failed to do likewise for the Kaska. Suppiluliuma and Tudhaliya defeated these threats in turn, to the extent that the Hittite court could settle in Hattusa again.
When Tudhaliya II died, Tudhaliya III succeeded to the throne. Soon after his accession, however, he was overthrown and succeeded by his younger brother Suppiluliuma. Some of the Hittite priests later reported this to Suppiluliumas's son, successor, and biographer Mursili II, holding it out as an outstanding crime of the whole dynasty.
Suppiluliuma married a sister to the Hayasan king Hukkana, and his daughter Muwatti to Maskhuiluwa of the Arzawan state Mira. He also married a Babylonian princess and retook Arzawan territory as far as Hapalla. His most permanent victory was against the Mitanni kingdom, which he reduced to a client state under his son-in-law Shattiwazza. He was also a master builder of large stone structures decorated with stone reliefs. It was during his reign that concepts of the sacred nature of royal leaders developed.
Suppiluliuma then took advantage of the tumultuous reign of the PharaohAkhenaten, and seized control of Egyptian territory in Syria, inciting many Egyptian vassals to revolt.
His success encouraged the widow (who is called Dakhamunzu in the annals) of the Egyptian king Nibhururiya (usually identified with Tutankhamun) to write to him, asking him to send one of his sons to be her husband and rule Egypt, since she had no heir and was on the verge of being forced to marry "a servant", usually thought to be the Egyptian general Horemheb or her late husband's vizier Ay. Suppiluliuma dispatched an ambassador to Egypt to investigate; he reported that the situation was accurately described, and the king decided to take advantage of this windfall; unfortunately, Prince Zannanza died on the way, and the marriage alliance never was consummated. Angry letters were exchanged between Suppiluliuma and the Pharaoh Ay, who had assumed the Egyptian throne, over the circumstances of Zannanza's death.
Suppililiuma was furious at this turn of events and unleashed his armies against Egypt’s vassal states in Canaan and Northern Syria, capturing much territory.
Unfortunately, many of the Egyptian prisoners carried a plague which would eventually ravage the Hittite heartland and lead to the deaths of both Suppiluliuma I and his successor, Arnuwanda II.
The Deeds of Suppiluliuma, compiled after his death by his son Mursili, is an important primary source for the king's reign. One of Suppiluliuma's letters, addressed to Akhenaten, was preserved in the Amarna letters (EA 41) archive at Akhetaten. It expresses his hope that the good relations which existed between Egypt and Hatti under Akhenaten's father (Amenhotep III) would continue into Akhenaten's new reign.
Deeds of Suppiluliuma Reads:
The letter to Suppiluliuma from Dakhamunzu.
"In relating the wars of his father Suppiluliuma I and his victories the Hittite king Mursili II mentions that after the death of the king of Egypt Tutankamon, Queen Dahamunzu (Ankhesenamun) asked his father to send a prince to become her husband and king from the country. When the inhabitants of Egypt heard about Amqa's attack, they were afraid because to make matters worse their king Tutankhamun had just died, the widowed Queen of Egypt sent a message to my father saying the following: "My husband is dead and I do not have a son. It is said that you have many sons, if you sent one, he could be my husband. "When my father learned that he summoned the Great Council. He decided to send Hattu-Zili, the chamberlain, to him saying I am sure of information "During the absence of Hattu-Zili in Egypt, my father conquered the city of Kargamis. The Egyptian envoy, the Honorable Hani, came to see him. The Queen sent her a letter saying, "Why do you say do not deceive me that way? If I had a son would I write to a foreign country in such a humiliating way for me and my country? Give me one of your sons and he will be my husband and the king of Egypt. " because my father had a good heart, he accepted the lady's wish and decided to send his son"
Suppiluliuma in fiction
(W) To the non-specialist general public, Suppiluliuma I is mainly known from the best-selling historical novelThe Egyptian by Mika Waltari, in which the Hittite king is presented as the ultimate villain, a ruthless conqueror and utterly tyrannical ruler. Popular culture researcher Abe Brown notes that "As Waltari's book was written during the Second World War, Suppiluliuma's depiction is likely to be at least in part inspired by Hitler, rather than by historical facts. Unlike quite a few other historical figures of many times and places who got cast in the role of Hitler, Suppiluliuma has not yet attracted the attention of any historical novelist to write a bit more nuanced popular account—though his life certainly offers rich untapped material".
Janet Morris wrote a detailed biographical novel, I, the Sun, whose subject was Suppiluliuma I, in which all characters are from the historical record, about which O.M. Gurney, Hittite scholar and author of The Hittites, commented that "the author is familiar with every aspect of Hittite culture".
Suppiluliuma appears in a minor role in the novel 'The Shadow Prince' by Philip Armstrong, as the grandfather of the hero, Tupiluliuma, in which he is Tudhaliyas 's nephew and adopted son. It is explained that he was reluctantly forced to take the throne and exclude his adoptive brother, the younger Tudhaliyas, as a result of his predecessor's descent into madness. He is regarded as one of the greatest of the Great Kings of Hatti, but is not a man to be crossed lightly.
Much of what is known about the childhood of Hattusili III is gathered from a biographical account, written on a stone tablet during his reign, referred to as the Apology. Hattusili III was born the youngest of four children to the Hittite king Mursili II and queen Gassulawiya. According to Hattusili III himself, he was an ill and sickly child who was initially expected not to survive to adulthood. Hattusili III credited the Goddess Ishtar with saving his life during this period, and would remain an ardent patron of Ishtar indefinitely. Due to his place as the youngest son, Hattusili III did not become king after the death of his father. Instead his older brother Muwattalli II ascended the throne.
Before becoming king, Hattusili III married Puduhepa, a priestess of Ishtar, who later became an important Hittite queen in her own right. With Puduhepa, Hattusili III had three children, including his successor Tudhaliya IV.
When his brother Muwattalli II became king, Hattusili III was appointed to govern over the northern lands of the Hittite empire. While this initially caused minor controversy among the locals and the ousted governor, Hattusili III was quick to quash dissidence with military force and turned his eyes towards conquering new territories surrounding the northern Hittite lands. When the King made the decision to move the capital from Hattusa to Tarhuntassa, Hattusili III was left to quash the rebellions that arose due to this decision. Subsequently, Hattusili III was made King of the northern territories by his brother Muwattalli II.
During the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC), Hattusili III commanded Hittite forces in the battle against Egypt and Ramesses II. It was after this battle that he married the future queen Puduhepa while on his way back to his kingdom in the North. Hattusili III was also responsible for reclaiming the holy city of Nerik for the Hittite empire, an act that he named his eldest son, Nerikkaili, in commemoration of.
Upon the death of Muwattalli II, Hattusili III's nephew Urhi-Teshub became king. There was controversy with this appointment, because Urhi-Teshub was the son of Muwattalli's concubine, not his wife. Despite his origins as a "second-rank son", Hattusili III initially supported Urhi-Teshub's kingship as it was the wish of Muwatalli II that Urhi-Teshub should rule. Urhi-Teshub ruled under the name Mursili III. Shortly after his accession to the throne, Mursili III had the capital moved from Tarhuntassa back to its original home of Hattussa. This effectively reduced much of Hattusili's power in the region and nullified his role as king of the northern territories. Hattusili III was also stripped of all of his territories aside from Hapkis and Nerik. This strained the relationship greatly, and upon having Nerik stripped of him as well, Hattusili III sought to usurp the throne.
After deposing Mursili III as king, Hattusili II exiled him to Syria. Hattusili III appointed Muwattalli II's other son Kurunta, whom he himself had raised, to govern Tarhuntassa in a similar capacity that Hattusili III himself had once held.
As king, Hattussili III sought to keep a correspondence with many different kingships in the surrounding areas. After his ascension to the throne, Hattusili III began a correspondence with Egyptian Pharoah Ramesses II that culminated in the first ever recorded peace treaty, the Eternal Treaty (also known as the Treaty of Kadesh). This correspondence took place roughly fifteen years after the Battle of Kadesh.
Hattusili's reign as king is notable for the large collection of letters and written accounts unearthed from this period. Over two-hundred letters were unearthed at the site of the royal palace in Hattusa. These primary sources, including The Apology, the Talagalawa letter, and the Arzawa letters, are considered among the very few primary sources available from the Hittite empire of the time.
Mursili II (also spelled Mursilis II) was a king of the Hittite Empire (New kingdom) c. 1321-1295 BC (short chronology).
Mursili assumed the Hittite throne after the premature death of Arnuwanda II who, like their father, fell victim to the plague which ravaged the Hatti in the 1320s BC. He was greeted with contempt by Hatti's enemies and faced numerous rebellions early in his reign, the most serious of which were those initiated by the Kaskas in the mountains of Anatolia, but also by the Arzawa kingdom in southwest Asia Minor because he was perceived to be an inexperienced ruler who only became king due to the early death of Arnuwanda. Mursili records the scorn of his foes in his Annals:
“You are a child; you know nothing and instill no fear in me. Your land is now in ruins, and your infantry and chariotry are few. Against your infantry, I have many infantry; against your chariotry I have many chariotry. Your father had many infantry and chariotry. But you who are a child, how can you match him?” (Comprehensive Annals, AM 18-21) (Bryce, p. 208.)
”
While Mursili was a young and inexperienced king, he was almost certainly not a child when he took the Hittite throne and must have reached an age to be capable of ruling in his own right. Had he been a child, other arrangements would have been made to secure the stability of the Empire; Mursili after all had two surviving elder brothers who served as the viceroys of Carchemish (i.e.: Sarri-Kush) and Aleppo respectively.
Mursili II would prove to be more than a match for his successful father, in his military deeds and diplomacy. The Annals for the first ten years of his reign have survived and record that he carried out punitive campaigns against the Kaska tribes in the first two years of his reign in order to secure his kingdom's northern borders. The king then turned to the West to resist the aggression of Uhhaziti, king of Arzawa, who was attempting to lure away Hittite allies into his camp. The Annals also reveal that an "omen of the sun," or solar eclipse, occurred in his tenth year as king, just as he was about to launch his campaign against the Kaska peoples.
While Mursili II's highest confirmed date was his twenty-second year, he is believed to have lived beyond this date for a few more years and died after a reign of around 25 to 27 years. He was succeeded by his son Muwatalli II.
Unlike the speakers of the other Indo-European languages, the Hittites have many prayers among their literary products.
The plague prayers of Mursilis II, circa 1321-1295, are highly specific, as the sections from one included here illustrate. The other selection details the effects of the plague without indicating a possible reason for it. As here, the prayer is read to the god by a scribe sent by the king.
This prayer is highly structured. In the first section included here, the purpose of the prayer is stated, that being to remove the plague that has affected the kingdom since the days of Mursilis's father, Suppiluliumas I. Mursilis then absolves himself of the blame, and seeks the reason for it. An oracle tells him of two tablets, the second of which is summarized in the second section included here. While the source of the plague might seem to us to be the prisoners brought back after the war with the Egyptians, Mursilis finds from a further oracle as the source that the Hattians broke their word, which they had given in a treaty made under oath to the Hattian Storm-god. Mursilis then indicates the steps he has taken to appease the Storm-god. He has presented him and also other gods with offerings, while confessing that humans are sinful, as was his father, though he himself has committed no sin. Becoming poetic he points out that a bird takes refuge in its nest, and the nest then saves its life. Similarly, if a servant repents and appeals to his lord, the lord will not punish him. Mursilis has now confessed the sin of his father. But if that is not the reason for people dying, he makes a final request to the Storm-god that he inform him in a dream, or an oracle, or through a prophet, ending with the request that the Storm-god save his life and let the plague abate.
Text
DIM URUHa-at-ti BE-LÍ-YAÙ DINGIRMEŠ URUHa-at-ti BE-LUMEŠ-YA u-i-ya-at-mu MMu-ur-si-li-is su-um-me-e-el ARAD-KU-NU
i-it-wa A-NA DIM URUHa-at-ti BE-LÍ-YAÙA-NA DINGIRMEŠ BE-LUMEŠ-YA ki-is-sa-an me-mi
ki-i-ma ku-it i-ya-at-ten
nu-wa-kan I-NA ŠÀBI KUR URUHa-at-ti hi-in-kan tar-na-at-ten
nu-wa KUR URUHa-at-ti hi-in-ga-na-az a-ru-um-ma me-ek-ki ta-ma-as-ta-at
nu-wa PA-ANA-BI-YAPA-AN SEŠ-YA ak-ki-is-ki-ta-at
ku-it-ta-ya-wa-az am-mu-uk A-NA DINGIRMEŠ ki-is-ha-at nu-wa ki-nu-un-ma am-mu-uk pe-ra-an ak-ki-is-ki-it-ta-ri
ka-a-as MU.20.KAM ku-it-kan I-NA ŠÀ KUR URUHa-at-ti ak-ki-is-ki-it-ta-ri
nu-kan IŠ-TU KUR URUHa-at-ti hi-in-kan ar-ha Ú-UL-pat ta-ru-up-ta-ri
am-mu-uk-ma-az SÀ-az-ma la-ah-la-ah-hi-ma-an Ú-UL tar-ah-mi NÍ.TE-az-ma-za pit-tu-li-ya-an nam-ma Ú-UL tar-ah-mi ŠA-NU-ÚTUP-PU-ma ŠA URUKu-ru-us-ta-am-ma LÚMEŠ URUKu-ru-us-ta-am-ma ma-ah-ha-an DU URUHa-at-ti I-NAKUR URUMi-iz-ri pe-e-da-as
nu-us-ma-as DIM URUHa-at-ti ma-ah-ha-an is-hi-ú-ul A-NA LÚMEŠ URUHa-at-ti me-na-ah-ha-an-da i-ya-at
nam-ma-at IŠ-TU DU URUHa-at-ti li-in-ga-nu-wa-an-te-es
nu LÚMEŠ URUHa-at-ti ku-it LÚMEŠ URUMi-iz-ri IŠ-TU DIM URUHa-at-ti li-in-ga-nu-wa-an-te-es e-se-er
nu ú-e-er LÚMEŠ URUHa-at-ti pe-ra-an wa-ah-nu-e-er nu-kan NI-IŠ DINGIRLIM LÚMEŠ URUHa-at-ti hu-u-da-a-ak sar-ri-i-e-er
nu A-BU-YA ERINMEŠ ANŠE.KUR.RAMEŠ u-i-ya-at nu ZAG KUR Mi-iz-ri KUR Am-ga wa-al-ah-hi-ir
nam-ma-ya u-i-ya-at nu nam-ma wa-al-ah-hi-ir
LÚMEŠ URUMi-iz-ri ma-ah-ha-an na-ah-sa-ri-ya-an-ta-at
na-at ú-e-er nu A-NAA-BI-YA DUMU-ŠU LUGAL-u-iz-na-an-ni an-ku ú-e-ke-er
nu-us-ma-as ma-ah-ha-an A-BU-YA a-pe-e-el DUMU-ŠU pe-e-es-ta na-an ma-ah-ha-an pe-e-hu-te-er
na-an-kan ku-e-en-ni-ir A-BU-YA-ma `ka-pi-la-az-at-ta na-as I-NA KUR Mi-iz-ri pa-it nu KUR URUMi-iz-ri wa-al-ah-ta
ERINMEŠ-ya-kan ANŠE.KUR.RAMEŠ ŠA KUR Mi-iz-ri ku-en-ta
Translation
O, Stormgod of Hatti, my Lord, and gods of Hatti, my Lords, Mursilis your servant has sent me, (saying) go and speak to the Stormgod of Hatti and to the gods, My Lords, as follows: "What is this that you have done? You have let loose the plague in the interior of the land of Hatti. And the land of Hatti has been sorely, greatly oppressed by the plague. Under my father (and) under my brother there was constant dying. And since I became priest of the gods, there is now constant dying under me. Behold, it is twenty years since people have been continually dying in the interior of Hatti. Will the plague never be eliminated from the land of Hatti? I cannot overcome the worry from my heart; I cannot overcome the anguish from my soul."
Muwatalli II (also Muwatallis, or Muwatallish) was a king of the New Kingdom of the Hittite empire (c. 1295–1272 BC (short chronology)).
He was the eldest son of Mursili II and Queen Gassulawiya, and he had several siblings.
He is best known as the Hittite ruler who fought Ramesses II to a standstill at the Battle of Kadesh around 1274 BC. Aside from the battle with Egypt, he is best known for relocating the Hittite capital to Tarhuntassa and appointing his brother Hattusili as governor in Hattusa.
A copy of a treaty has been recovered between him and Alaksandu, ruler of Wilusa (Troy), one of the Arzawa lands.
Egyptologists suspect that some time prior to Ramesses II's accession to the Egyptian throne, Muwattalli had reached an informal peace treaty or understanding with Seti I over Kadesh to avoid a clash between the two powers over control of Syria. In it, Seti effectively ceded Kadesh to the Hittite king in order to focus on domestic issues in Egypt.
Muwatalli had a wife named Tanu-Ḫepa and at least two children. One was Urhi-Teshup, who became king as Mursili III until his uncle Hattusili III deposed him. Another was Kurunta who became the vassal ruler of Tarhuntassa during the reign of Hattusili III. Another person named Ulmi-Teshup is suggested to be a third son of Muwatalli II but it is quite likely that Ulmi-Teshup and Kurunta are the same person.
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’re probably aware that I love Muršili II and his texts. I’ve been wanting to record one of his prayers ever since I expanded my recordings project to Hittite, and now the day has finally come.
The passage I chose comes from a prayer about his stepmother. Muršili’s mother was likely banished from the palace when he was a young child, so his father could conclude an alliance by marriage with the Babylonian king. Based on Muršili’s account, the new queen was a conniving woman who abused her power and bribed people to keep quiet. (However much I love Muršili, I still can’t help but wonder what her side of the story was.) She outlived her husband but kept her office as queen — as was the Hittite tradition — and she developed a tense relationship with her new consort, the young Muršili. In the ninth year of his rule, Muršili’s wife Gaššulawiya died of a mysterious illness. The Gods were consulted, and it was determined that his stepmother had killed her. This is where the passage I recorded comes in.
I’ve got to admit that this is one of two recordings to have brought me to tears while working on them (the other being Ancient Greek children’s epitaphs). What gets me the most is the repetitions in the prayer. Even after 3300 years, you can truly sense Muršili’s grief and anger, and his despair at the injustice of the Gods. I hope I’ve conveyed them well. (LINK)
Muršili II’s Prayer about his Stepmother in Hittite
Muršili II’s Prayer about his Stepmother in Hittite (LINK)
našmu kunanna ḫandāit katta ašannayašmu ḫandāit nankan apiyaya natta kuenun nankan šiwanzanna arḫa tittanunun naš katta ašanna kuit ḫandāit nan katta ašašḫun nušši per peḫḫun nuššikan ištanzani natta kuitki wakkāri NINDA-ašši wātar nu ḫūman šarā artari nattaššiššan kuitki wakkāri ḫuišwanzaš nu nepišaš Ištanun šakuit uškezzi ḫuišwannašaza NINDA-an azzikkezzi ammēl kāšpat šiaš damešḫaš kīyan šian damešḫanun šallayaz parnazapatkan kuit katta wiyanun šiunašyan šiwanzanna arḫa tittanunun nu ammēl kāšpat šiaš damešḫaš nuza šiwanneš kī ḫanneššar peran katta dāišten nat punušten kinuna apēl ḫuišwatar idalawešta ḫuišwanza kuit nu nepišaš Ištanun šakuit uškezzi ḫuišwannašaza NINDA-an azzikkezzi nu ammēl damešḫaš DAM-maš ḫinkan lazziyattat kuentankan kuit nuzakan ḫuišwannaš šiwattuš ištanzanaš dankui daganzipi kattanda paiškezzi ammukma ḫuwatallait apāšmamu kuripaḫta nu šiwanneš natta šektēni kuēlaš damešḫaš.
Translation
It was ruled by oracle for me to kill her, and it was ruled by oracle for me to set her down. But even then I didn’t kill her. I discharged her from the office of priestess. Since it was ruled by oracle for me to set her down, I set her down. I gave her a house. For her person, nothing is lacking. There is bread and water for her, and everything stands at her disposal. For her nothing is lacking. She is alive. She sees the Sungod of Heaven with her eyes. She is still eating the bread of life. This was my only punishment for her. I only punished her in this one way, that I banished her from the palace and discharged her from the office of priestess for the Gods. This was my only punishment for her. Gods, put this case down in front of you and investigate it. Has her life become bad now? Because she is alive, she sees the Sungod of Heaven with her eyes. She is still eating the bread of life. My punishment is the death of my wife. Has that become better? Because she killed her, throughout the days of life my soul goes down into the dark earth. Did she spare me? She bereaved me. Gods, don’t you recognise whose is the punishment?
NOTES
šiaš is a recent reading for the Hittite word ‘one’, which is always written 1-aš
šallayaz parnaza, the palace, literally means ‘the big house’
šiwanzannaz, which I translated as ‘priestess’ for the sake of brevity, means literally ‘the mother of the Gods’. This was a religious title held by the Hittite queen.
ištanzanaš and paiškezzi are reconstructions, since the passage is damaged. In the case of paiškezzi, the first sign is likely not pa, but for the sake of reading it out, I chose to use this verb anyway. The original words were probably close in meaning anyway.
For a long time it was rumoured that there were four great civilisations in ancient times: Egypt, Assyria, Mesopotamia and another which remained unidentified until relatively recently. Each of these civilisations had its own 'Great King', a title bestowed only upon the greatest of great. The re-discovery of the city of Hattusa and a script referring to the 'Great King' of the Hittites has led to confirmation that they were the fourth, great civilisation of ancient times.
However, it was the 'Hatti' not the Hittites that first built Hattusa, existing in their own right as a superpower until the Hittite invasion in the mid eighteenth century BC. Hattusa was used as the Hittite capital for another 500 years during which time they conquered vast swathes of the middle east and Anatolia before they effectively disappeared from the history books in an extremely short period of time, a few short decades towards the latter part of the second millennium BC, as evidenced in the burnt and empty ruins of their capital Hattusa and other prominent Hittite cities lying in the arid centre of Anatolia.
When the first European travelers of the early 19th century found the strange and monumental ruins near Bogazkőy, in central Turkey, they were puzzled as to the identity of their mysterious builders, which also appeared to possess a hieroglyphic writing unlike any other known from antiquity. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that the ruins of Bogazkőy were finally identified with those of Hattusa, the ancient capital of the Hittites
Lion Gate, Hattusa
Chronology of Hattusa
Chronology of Hattusa
The earliest traces of settlement on the site are from the sixth millennium BC. (1)
The Hatti were an aboriginal people in central Anatolia who first appear in the area around the River Kizil Irmak. They spoke a language called Hattic and did not seem to have a written language of their own, using Cuneiform Script for Trade dealings. Controlling a significant number of city states and small kingdoms, they had established trade with Sumer by the year 2,700 BC. (2)
In 2,500 BC the Hatti established their capital at the city of Hattusa on land that had been occupied much earlier, and referred to the site as Hattush. They held lands securely in the surrounding areas, administering laws and regulating trade in a number of neighbouring states.
Between circa 2,334-2,279 BC the Great Sargon of Akkad invaded the region and, in 2,330 sacked the city of Ur. He then turned his attention to Hattusa but failed.
Hattic Art flourished around 2,200 BC and, by 2,000 BC, their civilization was at its height with trading colonies established by the Assyrians at Hattusa and the city of Kanesh.
A carbonized layer apparent in excavations attests to the burning and ruin of the city of Hattusa around 1,700 BC. The responsible party appears to have been King Anitta from Kussara, who took credit for the act and erected an inscribed curse for good measure:
At night I took the city by force; I have sown weeds in its place. Should any king after me attempt to resettle Hattush, may the Weathergod of Heaven strike him down.
Hattusas was not the only city to be destroyed by fire at this time, as other cities of Central Anatolia appeared to have met the same fate: Alaça Hoyuk, some 25 Km to the North, also perished in a fiery catastrophe; Hittite palaces at Masat and Fraktin, as well as the fortified citadel of Karaogan, near present day Ankara, were also burnt to the ground in catastrophic fires. (3)
The mid-eighteenth century BC invasion of the Hittites, and the destruction of the great city of Hattusa was followed by systematic assimilated into the culture of their conquerors. In 1,650 BC the Hittites, under their warrior-king Hattusili, defeated the last of the Hatti resistance and rose to complete dominance of the area. The Hatti region of Anatolia, however, was still known as the 'Land of the Hatti' until 630 BC, such references found in the writings of both the Egyptians and the Assyrians. The artistic renderings of the time depict the common people with longer noses and markedly different facial features than those of their leaders, clearly demonstrating the Hittite lords and their Hattic vassals. (2)
In 1,279 BC, Ramses II reigned over Egypt, his empire met with that of the Hittites near the ancient city of Kadesh close to the borders of present day Syria and the Lebanon. It was here the 'greatest battle the world had ever known' until that time, the Battle of Kadesh occurred. History recorded the victory of Ramses II, but the library in the ruins of Hattusa uncovered the peace treaty signed between the two great kings, which showed that the Hittites had imposed their forces over the Egyptians pushing the frontier of their empire hundreds of kilometres south into today's Israel, thus becoming the greatest empire of the ancient world. Later a permanent peace treaty was concluded between Ramses II and the Hittite King Hattusilis III.
The first peace treaty in History (of which we possess both copies) was signed between the Hittite King Muwattali II and Ramses II of Egypt after the battle of Kadesh in Syria.
A few short decades later the Hittites disappeared for unexplained reasons, until a discovery was made by modern archaeologists in their excavations at Hattusa. A series of indecipherable hieroglyphs were discovered in an underground area, after much research they were finally translated as telling how the winner of the Battle of Kadesh and the great king launched themselves into a fratricidal war. Hattusa was destroyed. The archaeologist discovered the palace and temples had been burnt down, but not in war, they concluded the city had been abandoned, the population taking with them everything that could be carried. The city had been evacuated. Where they went is a mystery, but in any case the Hittites disappeared forever from history during the 'Bronze Age Collapse' c. 1,200 -1,150 BC.
The City Wall
Based on the discovery (right) in the city of Hattusa itself, a small section of the great wall was rebuilt using ancient techniques.
Part of the City Wall.
The original wall at over 6km long, would have surrounded the city entirely giving it an impressive view on approach and raising the status of the city to its rightful place as capital of the Hittite empire. The enormity of the task faced by the Hittite master builders becomes obvious when one considers that the reconstruction represents only one percent of the ancient 6.6 km long outer fortifications. (The sum of all elements in the city walls of Hattusa totals more than nine km's.) Some 2,700 tons of loam, 100 tons of straw, and 1,500 tons of water were needed for the mud-brick mixture alone. Around 1, 750 tons of earth then had to be moved to provide access ramps for construction, and a great number of logs brought in for the construction of the upper rooms in the towers. All the more remarkable when it is taken into account that mud-brick construction is limited from June to September. A total of 64,000 bricks (Size: 45 x 45 x 10 cm, weight: 34 kg each) were produced for this section alone. (5)
The reconstructed section of wall at Hattusa.
The Gateway of Sphinx's
Original Sphinx from Hattusa.
One of the images most commonly associated with Hittites is the sphinx, combining a lion's body with an eagle's wings and a human head and chest. At Hattusa, as at several other prominent Hittite Cities, they were placed on either side of the main entrance. At the top of the Yerkapi platform is the 'Gateway of Sphinxes'. Unfortunately (or fortunately), two of the sphinxes were taken for restoration to Germany in 1917. The better preserved sphinx was returned to Istanbul in 1924, and was placed on display in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, whereas the other remained in Germany, and had been on display at the Pergamon Museum since 1934 (see left). Previously, Turkey had made numerous requests for its return. In 2011, threats by Turkish Ministry of Culture to impose restrictions on German archaeologists working in Turkey finally persuaded Germany to return the sphinx. The Istanbul sphinx was also brought back to its place of origin and the pair was reunited in Boğazköy Museum outside the Hattusa ruin.
They say built by the Hittites, sometimes not even called a pyramid...i question history. The "Yerkapi Pyramid", Hattusa, and the mysterious fiery end of the Hittites.
Before 2000 BC, the apparently indigenous Hattian people established a settlement on sites that had been occupied even earlier and referred to the site as Hattush. The Hattians built their initial settlement on the high ridge of Büyükkale. The earliest traces of settlement on the site are from the sixth millennium BC. In the 19th and 18th centuries BC, merchants from Assur in Assyria established a trading post there, setting up in their own separate quarter of the city. The center of their trade network was located in Kanesh (Neša) (modern Kültepe). Business dealings required record-keeping: the trade network from Assur introduced writing to Hattusa, in the form of cuneiform.
A carbonized layer apparent in excavations attests to the burning and ruin of the city of Hattusa around 1700 BC. The responsible party appears to have been King Anitta from Kussaa, who took credit for the act and erected an inscribed curse for good measure:
Whoever after me becomes king resettles Hattusas, let the Stormgod of the Sky strike him!
Twelve Hittite gods of the Underworld in the nearby Yazılıkaya, a sanctuary of Hattusa.
Only a generation later, a Hittite-speaking king chose the site as his residence and capital. The Hittite language had been gaining speakers at the expense of Hattic for some time. The Hattic Hattush now became the Hittite Hattusa, and the king took the name of Hattusili, the “one from Hattusa.” Hattusili marked the beginning of a non-Hattic-speaking "Hittite" state and of a royal line of Hittite Great Kings, 27 of whom are now known by name.
After the Kaskas arrived to the kingdom's north, they twice attacked the city to the point where the kings had to move the royal seat to another city. Under Tudhaliya I, the Hittites moved north to Sapinuwa, returning later. Under Muwatalli II, they moved south to Tarhuntassa but assigned Hattusili III as governor over Hattusa. Mursili III returned the seat to Hattusa, where the kings remained until the end of the Hittite kingdom in the 12th century BC.
At its peak, the city covered 1.8 km² and comprised an inner and outer portion, both surrounded by a massive and still visible course of walls erected during the reign of Suppiluliuma I (circa 1344–1322 BC (short chronology)). The inner city covered an area of some 0.8 km² and was occupied by a citadel with large administrative buildings and temples. The royal residence, or acropolis, was built on a high ridge now known as Büyükkale (Great Fortress).
The ruins of Hattusha.
To the south lay an outer city of about 1 km2, with elaborate gateways decorated with reliefs showing warriors, lions, and sphinxes. Four temples were located here, each set around a porticoed courtyard, together with secular buildings and residential structures. Outside the walls are cemeteries, most of which contain cremation burials. Modern estimates put the population of the city between 40,000 and 50,000 at the peak; in the early period, the inner city housed a third of that number. The dwelling houses that were built with timber and mud bricks have vanished from the site, leaving only the stone-built walls of temples and palaces.
The city was destroyed, together with the Hittite state itself, around 1200 BC, as part of the Bronze Age collapse. Excavations suggest that Hattusa was gradually abandoned over a period of several decades as the Hittite empire disintegrated. The site was subsequently abandoned until 800 BC, when a modest Phrygian settlement appeared in the area.
One of the most important discoveries at the site has been the cuneiform royal archives of clay tablets, known as the Bogazköy Archive, consisting of official correspondence and contracts, as well as legal codes, procedures for cult ceremony, oracular prophecies and literature of the ancient Near East.One particularly important tablet, currently on display at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, details the terms of a peace settlement reached years after the Battle of Kadesh between the Hittites and the Egyptians under Ramesses II, in 1259 or 1258 BC. A copy is on display in the United Nations in New York City as an example of the earliest known international peace treaties.
Although the 30,000 or so clay tablets recovered from Hattusa form the main corpus of Hittite literature, archives have since appeared at other centers in Anatolia, such as Tabigga (Maşat Höyük) and Sapinuwa (Ortaköy). They are now divided between the archaeological museums of Ankara and Istanbul.
Sapinuwa (sometimes Shapinuwa; Hittite: Šapinuwa) was a Bronze AgeHittite city at the location of modern Ortaköy in the province Çorum in Turkey. It was one of the major Hittite religious and administrative centres, a military base and an occasional residence of several Hittite kings. The palace at Sapinuwa is discussed in several texts from Hattusa.
Sapinuwa
Ortaköy was identified as the site of ancient Sapinuwa during a survey in 1989, and Ankara University quickly obtained permission from the Ministry of Culture to begin excavation. This commenced in the following year. Building A was excavated first, and then Building B in 1995. The building with the Yazılıkaya-style orthostate and 14th century BC charcoal was excavated after 2000. Aygül Süel has been the head of excavations at this site from 1996 onwards.
In the first excavated region was a Cyclopean-walled building dubbed "Building A". Building A has yielded 3000 tablets and fragments. They were stored in three separate archives on an upper floor, which collapsed when the building was burnt.
At Kadilar Hoyuk, 150 metres southeast of Building A, "Building B" has proven to be a depot filled with earthenware jars. Another building features an "orthostat that looks like the relief of Tudhaliyas at Yazilikaya".
Archäologisches Museum Çorum, Zentraltürkei, goldene Brosche aus Šapinuwa
Archäologisches Museum Çorum, Zentraltürkei, Vase aus Šapinuwa
Yazılıkaya (Turkish; inscribed rock) was a sanctuary of Hattusa, the capital city of the Hittite Empire, today in the Çorum Province, Turkey. Rock reliefs are a prominent aspect of Hittite art, and these are generally regarded as the most important group.
Yazilikaya, hethitisches Heiligtum bei Hattusa, Kammer A
This was a holy site for the Hittites, located within walking distance of the gates of the city of Hattusa. It had two main chambers formed inside a group of rock outcrops. Access to the roofless chambers were controlled by gateway and building structures built right in front of them, however only the foundations of those structures survived today. Most impressive today are the rock reliefs of Chambers A and B portraying the gods of the Hittite pantheon. One of the uses of the sanctuary may have involved the New Year's celebrations ceremonies. It was in use at least since late 16th century BCE, but most of the rock carvings date to the reign of the Hittite kings Tudhaliya IV and Suppiluliuma II in the late 13th century BCE, when the site underwent a significant restoration.
Chamber B relief with the twelve gods of the underworld.
The most impressive is Chamber A, which contains rock-cut relief of 64 deities in procession. The left wall shows a procession of male deities, wearing the traditional kilts, pointed shoes and horned hats. Mountain gods are also shown with scaled skirts to symbolise the rocky mountains. The right wall shows a procession of female deities wearing crowns and long skirts. The only exception to this divide is the goddess of love and war, Shaushka (Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar/Inanna) who is shown on the male procession with two female attendants. This is likely to be because of her male attributes as the goddess of war. The processions lead to a central scene of the supreme couple of the pantheon: the storm-god Teshub and the sun-goddess Hebat. Teshub stands on two mountain gods whilst Hebat stands on a panther. Behind Hebat are shown their son Sharruma, daughter Alanzu and a granddaughter.
Rock carving in Chamber B depicting god Sharruma and King Tudhaliya dated to around 1250 - 1220 BC
The smaller and narrower Chamber B has fewer but larger and better preserved reliefs. It may have served as a mortuary mausoleum or memorial for the Hittite king Tudhaliya IV.
It is intriguing to note how the Hittite practise of assimilating other cultures' gods into their own pantheon is in evidence at Yazilikaya. The Mesopotamian god of wisdom, Ea (Enki) is shown in the male procession and the god Teshub was a Hurrian god who was syncretized with the Hittite storm-god. Hebat's original consort was changed into her and Teshub's son (Sharruma) and she was later syncretized with the Hattic sun-goddess of Arinna. It is believed that the wife of the Hittite king Hattusili III, Puduhepa, who was the daughter of a Hurrian priestess, also played a role in the increasing Hurrian influence on Hittite cult.
📹 Hattusas & The Fiery(-Impact) End Of The Hittites (VİDEO)
Hattusas & The Fiery(-Impact) End Of The Hittites (LINK)
A look at the impressive and strange ruins of Hattusas, capital of the Hittites. And did a celestial impact end that city and civilization? Hattusas is located near present day Bogazkőy.
Kaneš, inhabited continuously from the Chalcolithic to Roman times, flourished as an important Hattian, Hittite and Hurrian city, containing a large kārum (merchant colony) of the Old Assyrian Empire from c. the 21st to 18th centuries BC. This kārum appears to have served as "the administrative and distribution centre of the entire Assyrian colony network in Anatolia." A late (c. 1400 BC) witness to an old tradition includes a king of Kaneš called Zipani among seventeen local city-kings who rose up against Naram-Sin of Akkad (ruled c. 2254-2218 BC).
The king of Zalpuwa, Uhna, raided Kanes, after which the Zalpuwans carried off the city's Šiuš idol. Pithana, the king of Kussara, conquered Neša "in the night, by force", but "did no evil to anyone in it." Neša revolted against the rule of Pithana's son, Anitta, but Anitta quashed the revolt and made Neša his capital. Anitta further invaded Zalpuwa, captured its king Huzziya, and recovered the Šiuš idol for Neša.
In the 17th century BC, Anitta's descendants moved their capital to Hattusa, which Anitta had cursed, thus founding the line of Hittite kings. The inhabitants thus referred to the Hittite language as Nešili, "the language of Neša".
The Alaca Höyük bronze standards are a series of bronze objects found among the grave goods in the princely tombs of Alaca Höyük. They are generally understood as cult instruments, probably to be attached to carts.
Discovery
From 1935–39, the Turkish archaeologists, Hamit Zübeyir Koşay and Remzi Oğuz Arık [de] investigated the site of Alaca Höyük, near Alaca, Çorum Province. In the process they uncovered 14 tombs of the early Bronze age, which were named the "Princely tombs" or "Kingly tombs". Numerous grave offerings were found next to the burials — individually or in pairs — including more than twenty bronze standards.
Descriptions
The archaeologist Winfried Orthmann divides the standards into two main groups, one group consists of individual animals and the other of discs or rings (with or without images of animals). He subdivides these two groups based on the shape and contents of the discs or rings, and based on the type of creatures depicted.
The individual animals are all deer or bulls. The feet stand on four supports which converge at a point where it probably attached to a perishable wooden pole. The deer have expansive antlers, the cows have long curved horns. The highly stylised bodies are partially decorated with silver inlay and silver or gold leaf highlights the antlers and noses.
The disc or ring-shaped standards are round, half-circular or lozenge shaped. Several have a grill in the centre, surrounded by bands decorated with projections in the shape of birds, flowers or rays of the Sun. Most feature animals, which are very similar to the individual animals. Deer and bulls are particularly common on these, also, but unlike the individual animal standards, they sometimes appear in groups. Thus for example, a deer appears flanked by two bulls in one; in another, two lions or panthers stand to the left and right of a deer, which faces in the opposite direction. Another example depicts an animal which might be a roe deer or an onager. At the bottom of the disc or ring are a pair of horns, projecting outward and upward. At the bottom there is a cross bar with two pegs, which probably connected the standard to its pole.
Bronze Hittite figures of animals in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. (Standarte aus Alaca Höyük mit Darstellung eines Hirsches und zweier Stiere im Museum für anatolische Zivilisationen in Ankara)
(LINK)
This basalt wall relief depicts four people playing on musical instruments. From Sam'al (modern-day Sinjerli, Gaziantep, Turkey). Late Hittite period, 8th century BCE. (Istanbul Archeological Museums/Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul, Turkey).
(LINK) Sauska (also known as Shaushka, Sausga, and Anzili) was the Hurrian-Hittite goddess of fertility, war, and healing. She was worshipped throughout the region known as Hanigalbat (present day Iraq, Syria, and Turkey) from the time of the Hurrians (c. 3300 BCE), through the Kingdom of Mitanni (1500-1240 BCE), throughout the Hittite Empire (c.1344-1245 BCE), and beyond. She is identified with similar powerful female deities of other cultures, such as Innana/Ishtar of the Akkadians and Assyrians, Isis of Egypt, Astarte of the Phoenicians, Usha (Ushas) of the Rig Veda of India, Aphrodite of the Greeks (who became the Venus of the Romans), and Amaterasu of Japan. Through her link with Astarte, she is also identified with the divine Semiramis of Mesopotamia, who was made famous through the legends recorded by Greek historians.
The Hittite Language — “Nu Ninda-An Ezzateni, Vatar-Ma Ekuteni.”
Hittite (natively 𒉈𒅆𒇷nešili "[in the language] of Neša"), also known as Nesite and Neshite, is an Indo-European-language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatolia who created an empire, centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. The language, long extinct now, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 16th (Anitta text) to the 13th centuries BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC.
By the Late Bronze Age, Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian. It appears that in the 13th century BC, Luwian was the most-widely spoken language in the Hittite capital, Hattusa.[3] After the collapse of the Hittite Empire during the more general Late Bronze Age collapse, Luwian emerged in the Early Iron Age as the main language of the so-called Syro-Hittite states, in southwestern Anatolia and northern Syria.
Hittite is the earliest-attested of the Indo-European languages and is the best-known of the Anatolian languages.
The first substantive claim as to the affiliation of Hittite was made by Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon in 1902 in a book devoted to two letters found at El-Amarna, Egypt, between the king of Egypt and a Hittite ruler. Knudtzon argued that Hittite was Indo-European, largely because of its morphology. Although he had no bilingual texts, he was able to give a partial interpretation to the two letters because of the formulaic nature of the diplomatic correspondence of the period. His argument was not generally accepted, partly because the morphological similarities he observed between Hittite and Indo-European can be found outside of Indo-European and also because the interpretation of the letters was justifiably regarded as uncertain.
Knudtzon was definitively shown to have been correct when many tablets written in the familiar Akkadiancuneiform script but in an unknown language were discovered by Hugo Winckler in what is now the village of Boğazköy, which was the former site of Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite Empire. Based on a study of this extensive material, Bedřich Hrozný succeeded in analyzing the language. He presented his argument that the language is Indo-European in a paper published in 1915 (Hrozný 1915), which was soon followed by a grammar of the language (Hrozný 1917). Hrozný's argument for the Indo-European affiliation of Hittite was thoroughly modern although poorly substantiated. He focused on the striking similarities in idiosyncratic aspects of the morphology that are unlikely to occur independently by chance or to be borrowed. They included the r/nalternation in some noun stems (the heteroclitics) and vocalic ablaut, which are both seen in the alternation in the word for water between the nominative singular, wadar, and the genitive singular, wedenas. He also presented a set of regular sound correspondences. After a brief initial delay because of disruption during the First World War, Hrozný's decipherment, tentative grammatical analysis and demonstration of the Indo-European affiliation of Hittite were rapidly accepted and more broadly substantiated by contemporary scholars such as Edgar H. Sturtevant, who authored the first scientifically-acceptable Hittite grammar with a chrestomathy and a glossary. The most up-to-date grammar of the Hittite language is currently Hoffner and Melchert (2008).
Unlike other Indo-European languages, Hittite does not distinguish between masculine and feminine grammatical gender, and it lacks subjunctive and optative moods as well as aspect.
Hittite syntax shows one noteworthy feature that is typical of Anatolian languages: commonly, the beginning of a sentence or clause is composed of either a sentence-connecting particle or otherwise a fronted or topicalized form, and a "chain" of fixed-order clitics is then appended.
📹 The Sound of the Hittite Language (Prayer of Kantuzili) (VİDEO)
The Sound of the Hittite Language (Prayer of Kantuzili) (LINK)
The prayer of Kantuzili is preserved on a single column tablet written in a Middle Hittite ductus (KUB 30.10). ... Since all known Hittite prayers were composed for members of the royal family, Kantuzili, to whom the present prayer is ascribed, was certainly a Hittite prince (or king).
§10 Numu pirmet inani peran pittuliyaš pir kišat numu pittuliyai peran ištanzašmiš tamatta pēdi zappiškizzi. Nu wētti mieniyaš armalaš maḫḫan nuza ūka apeniššan kišḫat kinunamušan inan pittuliyaša makkēšta. Nat šīunimi tuk memiškimi.
Translation
§2 My God, since my mother gave birth to me, you, my God, have raised me. Only you are my name and my reputation, my God. Only you have joined me together with good people, my God, and to a position of strength, my God, only you have directed my deeds. My God, you have called me, Kantuzili, the servant of your body and your soul. Since childhood, my God’s mercy, I recognise and acknowledge it.
§5 Life is tied to death. Death is tied to life. A child of humankind does not live forever. The days of his life are counted. If a child of humankind could live forever, even if human ills and sickness arose, they would not be a grievance to him.
§10 But my house, because of the sickness, has become a house of anxiety, and because of the anxiety, my soul is dripping away to another place. Such as someone who is sick throughout the year, so have I become, and now the sickness and the anxiety have grown too great. My God, I keep saying it to you.
NOTES
ḫašta, “to give birth”, literally means “to open”
ÌR is the Sumerogram (a sign that stands for an entire word, taken from Sumerian) for “servant”. A Hittite would’ve read it out loud as the Hittite word. In this text, I have replaced several Sumerograms and Akkadograms with their Hittite equivalents (šīunimi for DINGIR-YA, annašmiš for AMA-YA) but unfortunately the Hittite word for “servant” is unknown, so I had to read out the Sumerogram instead.
the same goes for DUMU, “child”
manatwa natta kattawatar: until recently, researchers were unsure whether this was a rhetorical question (would they not be a grievance to him?) or an assertion (they would not be a grievance to him). The publication of a Sumerian hymn to the Sun-god Utu has shown that the sentence is directly adapted into Hittite from the Sumerian text, and that it is an assertion: if human beings could live forever, sickness wouldn’t matter anymore.
The Hittite prayers CTH 372-74, conveniently labelled 'Prayer of a Mortal', 'Prayer of Kantuzili' and 'Prayer of a King' in Singer's recent translation of Hittite prayers (2002a: 30-40), have long been recognised as a group of prayers which share not only a common basic structure, but also many parallel passages without being mere duplicate manuscripts. All three prayers begin with an extensive hymn to the male Sun-god who is asked to intercede with the supplicant's angry personal god. This is followed by a plea that in the main addresses the angry god directly — thus spelling out the message the Sun-god is asked to transmit. The two addressees of the prayer can occasionally be confused: CTH 374 once gives "Sun-god" where the parallel texts have the expected "my god" (l. 71'' // CTH 373: 46' // CTH 372: 160).
The hymn to the Sun-god is clearly influenced by Babylonian Šamaš hymns; probably whole chunks of text were taken over from a Hittite translation of an Akkadian Šamaš hymn, rephrased and combined with motifs and phraseology of the Hittite tradition. Also the plea to the personal god is heavily influenced by Akkadian prayer language; a few passages are more or less literal translations from Babylonian prayers for appeasing an angry god (Lambert 1974, Güterbock 1974, 1978: 132-33, Wilhelm 1994, Görke 2000: 101-17). However, many individual passages and, more importantly, the composition as a whole have no parallels in the Babylonian tradition and must be attributed to the Hittite scribes who developed the literary genre of Hittite prayers making free use of adaptable Babylonian texts and traditions.
The text group CTH 372-74 is of special importance for our understanding of the development of the genre of Hittite prayers as a whole. Two versions, CTH 373 and 374, date to the Early Empire period and are preserved in contemporary Middle Script sources. It seems that at this time the prayer to the Sun-god for appeasing an angry god was a well-established type of text, though it is impossible to give a precise date for the archetype on which both texts ultimately depend.
The prayer probably became part of the advanced scribal curriculum (see the introductory remarks on CTH 372 and on CTH 374 ms. D) and was used as a model text by the scribes who composed Mursili's hymns and prayers to the Sun-goddess of Arinna (CTH 376, see Güterbock 1980, Singer 2002a no. 8 and 16). The exact relationship between the three prayers and its implications for the function of the individual texts and their sources as well as for the composition techniques used in the production of Hittite prayers generally deserve further study, but must be investigated within the framework of a general study of phenomena of inter- textuality in Hittite prayers.
The scope of the present contribution is merely to provide a critical synoptic edition of the sources of CTH 372-74 which have so far been identi- fied. 1 Like all previous studies on this group of texts the present edition relies heavily on H.-G. Güterbock's groundbreaking contributions to CTH 372-74 and 376 (1958, 1 Note the following conventions used in the synopis: → = line continues in this ms., / = line breaks in this ms., | = ruling in this manuscript. Abbreviations follow the conventions of the Chicago Hittite Dictionary.
By the year 1912 CE, Winckler “had recovered 10,000 clay tablets from the Hittite royal archives” (Scarre & Fagan, 206). These tablets, on which they had recorded their history and transactions, were deciphered relatively quickly. The historian Erdal Yavuz describes the process of decipherment in one instance (though there were other scholars who contributed to an understanding of the Hittite script, notably Archibald Sayce, to name only one):
“Bedrich Hrozny, 1879-1952, a Czech professor at the University of Vienna, in 1916 deciphered the Hittite language. The starting point was a phrase on an inscription in cuneiform: “Nu Ninda-An Ezzateni, Vatar-Ma Ekuteni.” Since many Babylonian words were included in Hittite texts, the clue was provided by the Babylonian word‘ninda,’ which means ’food’ or ’bread.’ Hrozny asked himself a simple question: What does one do with food or bread? The answer, of course, was one eats it. So the word ‘ezzateni’ must be related to eating. Then the ‘-an’ suffix on ‘ninda’ must be a marker for a direct object. With these two propositions in hand, Hrozny looked at both the vocabulary and the grammar of Indo-European languages. He noted that the verb to eat is similar to the Hittite ‘ezza’ — not only in English, but also in Greek (edein), Latin (edere) and German (essen), and especially in medieval German (ezzan). If that was true, the second line of the inscription was not much of a problem, since it began with the word ‘vatar,’ which could easily be translated as English ‘water’ or German ‘wasser.’ Hrozny proposed the reading of the whole sentence as “Now Bread You Eat, Water You Drink” and this turned out to be right for the whole Hittite language. It was of Indo-European origin.”
Hittite (natively 𒉈𒅆𒇷nešili "[in the language] of Neša"), also known as Nesite and Neshite, is an Indo-European-language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatoliawho created an empire, centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. The language, long extinct now, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 16th (Anitta text) to the 13th century BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC.
By the Late Bronze Age, Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian. It appears that in the 13th century BC, Luwian was the most-widely spoken language in the Hittite capital, Hattusa. After the collapse of the Hittite Empire during the more general Late Bronze Age collapse, Luwian emerged in the Early Iron Age as the main language of the so-called Syro-Hittite states, in southwestern Anatolia and northern Syria.
Hittite is the earliest-attested of the Indo-European languages and is the best-known of the Anatolian languages.
The ethnonym Luwian comes from Luwiya (also spelled Luwia or Luvia) – the name of the region in which the Luwians lived. Luwiya is attested, for example, in the Hittite laws.
The two varieties of Proto-Luwian or Luwian (in the narrow sense of these names), are known after the scripts in which they were written: Cuneiform Luwian (CLuwian) and Hieroglyphic Luwian (HLuwian). There is no consensus as to whether these were a single language, or two closely related languages.
The corpus of texts written in the Hittite language is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites (CTH, since 1971). The catalogue is only a classification of texts; it does not give the texts. One traditionally cites texts by their numbers in CTH. Major sources for studies of selected texts themselves are the books of the StBoT series and the online Textzeugnisse der Hethiter.
Archaeologists found the ancient library of Hattusa with thirty thousand cuneiform tablets, archived and classified in perfect order, the greatest ancient library ever discovered. The language however, was totally unknown to the world of archaeology, even though cuneiform was of common use in those times by the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians in writing their languages.
In the Hattusa archives, native Hurrian was used frequently for a wide range of non-official texts such as those on rituals and even the Epic of Gilgamesh — more so than native Hattian. The Hurrians were migrants to the Upper Euphrates and Habur basin from the Elburz Mountains east across the Taurus Mountains from about 2,300 BCE onwards. For a script, the Hittites used a combination of cuneiform system and hieroglyphs. The cuneiform Hittites texts were written on clay tablets that were discovered during excavations at the end of the 19th century CE. Identification of the language had to wait until 1915 when Czech linguist Bedřich Hrozný, after examining tablets that had been brought to Vienna from the Istanbul Museum, identified the language of the Hittite tablets as Indo-European. He published his findings in a 1917 book titled Die Sprache der Hethiter. In 1951 a comprehensive Hittite grammar was presented in a book titled A Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language by Edgar H. Sturtevant.
As evidenced by the records discovered, the Hittites had a highly developed literature consisting of stories, religious texts, historical records, legal system and legal documents.
Bronzedolch des hethitischen Königs Anitta aus Kaniš-Neša (heute Kültepe) bei Kayseri, Zentraltürkei. 18. Jahrhundert v. Chr., Länge 29 cm, oben Vergrößerung der Keilschrift, Museum für anatolische Zivilisationen, Ankara.
Anitta, son of Pithana, was a king of Kussara, a city that has yet to be identified. He is the earliest known ruler to compose a text in the Hittite language.
His high official, or rabi simmiltim, was named Peruwa.
Anitta reigned in the 17th century BC (short chronology) and is the author of the Anitta text (CTH 1.A, edited in StBoT 18, 1974), the oldest known text in the Hittite language (and the oldest known Indo-European text altogether). This text seems to represent a cuneiform record of Anitta's inscriptions at Kanesh, perhaps compiled by Hattusili I, one of the earliest Hittite kings of Hattusa.
The Anitta text indicates that Anitta's father conquered Neša (Kanesh, Kültepe), which became an important city within the kingdom of Kussara. During his own reign, Anitta defeated Huzziya, the last recorded king of Zalpuwa, and the Hattic king Piyusti and then conquered his capital at the site of the future Hittite capital of Hattusa. He then destroyed the city, sowed the ground with weeds, and laid a curse on the site.
Anitta's name appears on an inscription on a dagger found in Kültepe and also, together with the name of his father, on various Kültepe texts, as well as in later Hittite tradition.
Mist seized the windows. Smoke seized the house. In the hearth the logs were stifled. At the altars the gods were stifled. In the sheepfold the sheep were stifled. In the cow barn the cows were stifled. The ewe rejected her lamb. The cow rejected her calf. But Telepenus had stomped away. He took away barley, fertility(?), growth, luxuriance(?), and abundance. To the steppe, to the meadow, to the swamps he went. Telepenus went to the swamp and hid himself in the swamp. Over him the halenzu-plant grew. Therefore barley and wheat do not ripen. Cows, sheep, and humans do not get pregnant. And those who are already pregnant cannot give birth. The mountains and the trees dried up; and the foliage does not come out. The meadows and springs dried up; and, in the land, famine came to pass. Humans and gods are perishing from hunger. The Great Sun God prepared a feast and invited the Thousand Gods. They ate but were not satiated; they drank but did not quench their thirst.
Hittite Online
Lesson 2
Sara E. Kimball and Jonathan Slocum
A number of the Hittite texts concern mythological topics from Sumerian or Hurrian sources. The Telepenus Myth provided in extract form here, however, is one of a group of myths known to modern scholars as "Old Anatolian Myths." These are stories, learned and adapted by the Hittites during the early years of their spread throughout Anatolia, that played various roles in Hittite religious cult. The Telepenus Myth is one of a group of Old Anatolian myths, which modern scholars term "Vanishing God" myths. In these, a deity is offended and stomps off angrily, or is otherwise removed from the world of gods and humans with dire consequences for that world. Telepenus, son of the Hattic Stormgod, was a god of agriculture. His angry departure leaves the divine, human, and, animal world suffering hunger, thirst, and, sterility as described in the extract. The theme of these "Vanishing God" myths is, of course, reminiscent of the Greek myth of Persephone.
Reading and Textual Analysis
The text exists in several copies, the earliest of which follows the writing conventions of the Middle Hittite period, but is probably a copy of an even earlier version. For an English translation, see H. Hoffner, Hittite Myths 2nd. ed. Atlanta, GA, 1998, pp. 14-20. The very beginning of the Telepenus Myth is broken, so the exact cause of the deity's rage is not known. From what can be made out from the surviving fragments, however, the god was angry enough to have put his right shoe on his left foot and vice versa. After the failed feast described in the extract, the gods try various ways of finding Telepenus. The Sungod sends a swift eagle to fly over high mountains and deep valleys to look for him, but the eagle returns without success. Then the Stormgod searches for his son himself, again without luck. Finally, the Mother Goddess, Hannahanna, sends a bee. The little bee, although small and weak finds Telepenus asleep in a meadow and stings him awake. Needless to say, Telepenus is still very angry, but the gods appease him with various offerings in a ceremony that is a model of Hittite ritual practice. At the end of the story Telepenus releases the world from the consequences of his rage and departure, restoring the world to its normal order.
The Anitta text / The University of Texas at Austin
The Anitta text / The University of Texas at Austin (LINK)
Sara E. Kimball and Jonathan Slocum
The so-called Proclamation of Anittas deals with events leading up to the founding of the Hittite state and is the earliest genuinely historical text found at Boğazköy. A distinctive characteristic of Hittite culture is their writing of history that attempts to draw conclusions from events. Historical texts center around the king as hero. Generally wiser and braver than his subordinates, he is the person who carries the day when the actions of the enemy or those of the king's subordinates threaten the Hittite military with defeat. In later texts, especially those of the Empire period, the king's success is usually attributed to divine protection and sometimes divine intervention in the course of events. One possible interpretation of a problematic line in this text is that the deified throne dais, Halmasuiz, led Anittas to victory over Hattusas. If this is correct, it foreshadows the latter theme of divine aid. Anittas himself was a real person who was active during the time of the Assyrian merchant colonies, the petty king, or strong man, ruling the city of Kussara. The city-states that Anittas conquers, Nesa, the city which the Hittites considered their city of origin, Zalpuwa, a city in northern Anatolia near the Black sea, and, of course, Hattusas, which was later the Hittite capital, were all important places during the Hittite empire.
Reading and Textual Analysis
The Anittas document is preserved in a copy written in the Old Kingdom period and in later copies, and it exhibits a number of archaic features of grammar and writing. The beginning of the document, with its Akkadian imperative QIBIMA "speak!" follows the pattern of early Akkadian letters in which the document itself is commanded to reveal its contents, something not found in later Hittite historical texts.
One of the culturally intriguing aspects of this text is the god DSiu-summin "our god," or "Our Sius," a god who appears nowhere else in Hittite texts. The word sius, which is otherwise the generic word meaning "god," is derived from Indo-European *dyeus, the father god of the sky. Anatolian speakers seem to have brought the worship of this god into Anatolia, since cognates exist in the other Anatolian languages and refer to a solar deity. It is not entirely clear whether the expression is to be translated as "our god" or "Our Sius", though the age of the text and the fact that the noun sius is twice found with an enclitic possessive pronoun in a combination that has undergone an archaic sound change, suggest that the latter interpretation is possible. Although neither Anittas nor his father Pithanas bore an Indo-European name, the struggle over possession of the god's statue might indicate that they venerated a god of Indo-European origin. This may suggest that the people later known to us as Hittites were an ethnically mixed group of speakers of an Indo-European language and indigenous Hattic inhabitants of Anatolia. The extracts given below record the deeds of Anittas' father Pithana, the beginning of Anittas' career, the rescue of DSiu-summin from the king of Zalpuwa, and Anittas' destruction of the city of Hattusas. Since Anittas places a curse on anyone who tries to settle Hattusas after he has devastated it, and sows weeds over the site as a way of rendering the land unfit for cultivation, it is puzzling that roughly 100 years later the first Hittite king from whose reign we have documents, Hattusilis I, founded the Hittite capital there.
Anitta, Son of Pithana, King of Kussara, speak! He was dear to the Stormgod of Heaven, and when he was dear to the Stormgod of Heaven, the king of Nesa [verb broken off] to the king of Kussara. The king of Kussara, Pithana, came down out of the city in force, and he took the city of Nesa in the night by force. He took the King of Nesa captive, but he did not do any evil to the inhabitants of Nesa; instead, he made them mothers and fathers. After my father, Pithana, I suppresed a revolt in the same year. Whatever lands rose up in the direction of the sunrise, I defeated each of the aforementioned.
Previously, Uhna, the king of Zalpuwas, had removed our Sius from the city of Nesa to the city of Zalpuwas. But subsequently, I, Anittas, the Great King, brought our Sius back from Zalpuwas to Nesa. But Huzziyas, the king of Zalpuwas, I brought back alive to Nesa. The city of Hattusas [tablet broken] contrived. And I abandoned it. But afterwards, when it suffered famine, my goddess, Halmasuwiz, handed it over to me. And in the night I took it by force; and in its place, I sowed weeds. Whoever becomes king after me and settles Hattusas again, may the Stormgod of Heaven smite him!
📹 The Sound of the Old Hittite Language (The Proclamation of Anittas & Telepenus) (VİDEO)
The Sound of the Old Hittite Language (The Proclamation of Anittas & Telepenus) (LINK)
Hethitisches Textbeispiel / Hittite Sample Text: Der Anitta-Text
Translation
Anitta, Son of Pithana, King of Kussara, speak! He was dear to the Stormgod of Heaven, and when he was dear to the Stormgod of Heaven, the king of Nesa [verb broken off] to the king of Kussara. The king of Kussara, Pithana, came down out of the city in force, and he took the city of Nesa in the night by force. He took the King of Nesa captive, but he did not do any evil to the inhabitants of Nesa; instead, he made them mothers and fathers. After my father, Pithana, I suppresed a revolt in the same year. Whatever lands rose up in the direction of the sunrise, I defeated each of the aforementioned.
Previously, Uhna, the king of Zalpuwas, had removed our Sius from the city of Nesa to the city of Zalpuwas. But subsequently, I, Anittas, the Great King, brought our Sius back from Zalpuwas to Nesa. But Huzziyas, the king of Zalpuwas, I brought back alive to Nesa. The city of Hattusas [tablet broken] contrived. And I abandoned it. But afterwards, when it suffered famine, my goddess, Halmasuwiz, handed it over to me. And in the night I took it by force; and in its place, I sowed weeds. Whoever becomes king after me and settles Hattusas again, may the Stormgod of Heaven smite him!
Sobald er aber ins (Thron)gemach (B: nach Zalpa) geht, wird jener aber
pẹ́-ẹ-ra-am-mi-it ku-un-na-az e-ša-ri
79
sich vor mich zur Rechten setzen.
b) Interpretative Transkription 1
(nach A. Kammenhuber, Hethitisch, Palaisch, Luwisch und Hieroglyphenluwisch, in: Altkleinasiatische Sprachen. Handbuch der Orientalistik, I. Abtlg., 2. Band, 1. und 2. Abschnitt, Lief. 2, S. 351):
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Attention: This text is encoded using Unicode / UTF8. The special characters as contained in it can only be displayed and printed by installing a font that covers Unicode such as the TITUS font Titus Cyberbit Unicode.
Copyright Jost Gippert, Frankfurt 1994-2001. No parts of this document may be republished in any form without prior permission by the copyright holder. 20.1.2001.
Hittite Online
Sara E. Kimball and Jonathan Slocum
The so-called Proclamation of Anittas deals with events leading up to the founding of the Hittite state and is the earliest genuinely historical text found at Boğazköy. A distinctive characteristic of Hittite culture is their writing of history that attempts to draw conclusions from events. Historical texts center around the king as hero. Generally wiser and braver than his subordinates, he is the person who carries the day when the actions of the enemy or those of the king's subordinates threaten the Hittite military with defeat. In later texts, especially those of the Empire period, the king's success is usually attributed to divine protection and sometimes divine intervention in the course of events. One possible interpretation of a problematic line in this text is that the deified throne dais, Halmasuiz, led Anittas to victory over Hattusas. If this is correct, it foreshadows the latter theme of divine aid. Anittas himself was a real person who was active during the time of the Assyrian merchant colonies, the petty king, or strong man, ruling the city of Kussara. The city-states that Anittas conquers, Nesa, the city which the Hittites considered their city of origin, Zalpuwa, a city in northern Anatolia near the Black sea, and, of course, Hattusas, which was later the Hittite capital, were all important places during the Hittite empire.
Reading and Textual Analysis
The Anittas document is preserved in a copy written in the Old Kingdom period and in later copies, and it exhibits a number of archaic features of grammar and writing. The beginning of the document, with its Akkadian imperative QIBIMA "speak!" follows the pattern of early Akkadian letters in which the document itself is commanded to reveal its contents, something not found in later Hittite historical texts.
One of the culturally intriguing aspects of this text is the god DSiu-summin "our god," or "Our Sius," a god who appears nowhere else in Hittite texts. The word sius, which is otherwise the generic word meaning "god," is derived from Indo-European *dyeus, the father god of the sky. Anatolian speakers seem to have brought the worship of this god into Anatolia, since cognates exist in the other Anatolian languages and refer to a solar deity. It is not entirely clear whether the expression is to be translated as "our god" or "Our Sius", though the age of the text and the fact that the noun sius is twice found with an enclitic possessive pronoun in a combination that has undergone an archaic sound change, suggest that the latter interpretation is possible. Although neither Anittas nor his father Pithanas bore an Indo-European name, the struggle over possession of the god's statue might indicate that they venerated a god of Indo-European origin. This may suggest that the people later known to us as Hittites were an ethnically mixed group of speakers of an Indo-European language and indigenous Hattic inhabitants of Anatolia. The extracts given below record the deeds of Anittas' father Pithana, the beginning of Anittas' career, the rescue of DSiu-summin from the king of Zalpuwa, and Anittas' destruction of the city of Hattusas. Since Anittas places a curse on anyone who tries to settle Hattusas after he has devastated it, and sows weeds over the site as a way of rendering the land unfit for cultivation, it is puzzling that roughly 100 years later the first Hittite king from whose reign we have documents, Hattusilis I, founded the Hittite capital there.
A Hittite tablet found at Hattusa, believed to be a legal deposition.
The Hittite laws have been preserved on a number of Hittitecuneiform tablets found at Hattusa (CTH 291-292, listing 200 laws). Copies have been found written in Old Hittite as well as in Middle and Late Hittite, indicating that they had validity throughout the duration of the Hittite Empire (ca. 1650–1100 BCE).
The laws are formulated as case laws; they start with a condition, and a ruling follows, e.g. "If anyone tears off the ear of a male or female slave, he shall pay 3 shekels of silver". The laws show an aversion to the death penalty, the usual penalty for serious offenses being enslavement to forced labour. They are preserved on two separate tablets, each with approximately 200 clauses, the first categorised as being ‘of a man’; the second ‘of a vine’; a third set may have existed.
The laws may be categorised into eight groups of similar clauses. These are separated for the most part by two types of seemingly orphaned clauses: Sacral or incantatory clauses, and afterthoughts.
Including the criminalisation of bestiality (except with horses and mules). The death penalty was a common punishment among sexual crimes.
The Hittite laws were kept in use for some 500 years, and many copies show that, other than changes in grammar, what might be called the 'original edition' with its apparent disorder, was copied slavishly; no attempt was made to 'tidy up' by placing even obvious afterthoughts in a more appropriate position.
This corpus and the classification scheme is based on findings arising out of a Master of Arts degree taken at the University of Queensland by N H Dewhirst, supervised by Dr Trevor Bryce in 2004.
Changes were apparently made to penalties at least twice: firstly, the kara – kinuna changes, which generally reduced the penalties found in a former, but apparently unpreserved, 'proto-edition'; and secondly, the ‘Late Period’ changes to penalties in the already-modified Old Hittite version.
The Hittites paid a great deal of attention to legal matters. This was perhaps because their kingdom united under one rule a disparate group of local societies, each with their own customs, and the Hittite rulers therefore had to provide a code of laws by which to adjudicate issues which arose between people from different localities.
(Anatolia, 1500 BC)
Several collections of Hittite laws have been uncovered, each slightly different form one another. They probably reflect different stages of the development, and they often contain the phrase, ‘formerly a certain penalty was in force but now the king has ordained another (usually less severe) penalty”. This indicates that Hittite law was developing over time, and not set in stone (as other law codes seem to have been).
Like other early bodies of law, there was no distinction between civil and criminal law. It was concerned primarily with preserving law and order by seeking to set out rules of revenge and compensation to avoid individuals and families from taking matters into their own hands. Again like other law codes, the one crime not included in this was the most serious of all, murder. This was due to the fact that murder was still thought of as being beyond the power of the courts. The law did however specify how such a matter was to be resolved, by means of a “Lord of Blood”, a relative of the victim who was charged with exacting a suitable penalty.
Laws were mostly framed in the form of hypothetical cases followed by an appropriate ruling, worded in such a way that strongly suggests that they were derived from real cases. They were thus seeking to base the law on legal precedents.
The Hittites seem to have placed more emphasis than other legal systems of the time on ascertaining the facts in a case. Some court records have survived, and show considerable efforts to make detailed enquiries, which have a quite a modern ring to them.
Hittite law was humane by the standards of the time.The only capital offences were for rape, intercourse with animals and defiance of the state.Slaves, as ever, were in a worse position, being liable to the death penalty for disobedience to masters, and sorcery, and mutilation for lesser crimes. However, the fact that slaves’ crimes and misdemeanours were a matter for the courts, rather than simply being left to the whim of their masters, was itself an advance on many ancient law codes.
For free men and women, the penalty for most crimes was restitution of damaged or stolen property, or compensation for injury — though offenders were often required to pay several times the value of the damage caused. In most cases the reparation expressed in silver value. Offenders’ families and, in some cases, their whole communities, were held responsible for discharging the debt thus incurred.
Careful distinction was made between violations committed in anger or on purpose, and those committed by accident — a distinction not made in some other law codes.
In the first instance, cases came before the local elders. In more serious cases a local royal officer such as a local garrison commander would be required to be involved, in conjunction with the elders. Appeals went to the king (or in practice more likely his judicial advisors), and also, it seems, to the Assembly. The king’s decisions seems always to have been required in cases of sorcery, in serious cases of theft, and in all cases involving the death penalty.
Telipinu (or Telepinu) Proclamation is a Hittite edict, written during the reign of King Telipinu, circa 1550 BCE.
(W) The edict is significant because it made possible to reconstruct a succession of Hittite Kings. It also recounts some important events like Mursili I's conquest of Babylon of which no other Hittite document exists. Little more than the names of the successors of Telipinu is known for a period of about 80 years.
Telipinu was a son-in-law of Ammuna and brother-in-law of Huzziya I as a husband of Ammuna's daughter Ištapariya. His name was taken from the agricultural god Telipinu. During Telipinu’s reign, Huzziya and his five brothers were killed. His son and wife were killed by Telepinu's rivals to the throne. The assassins were caught and sentenced to death, but Telepinu showed his desire to stop the bloodshed (many of his predecessors were assassinated or die mysteriously) and banish these assassins instead.
Telepinu is perhaps most famous for drawing up the Edict of Telepinu which dictated the laws of succession for the Hittite throne. It was designed to stop all the royal murders which had taken place in the previous decades, which had destabilised the empire and reduced the empire to only its heartland.
(LINK) The Telepenus of this text was a real Hittite king, unlike the Hattic god of the Telepenus myth from whom the king took his name. King Telepenus ruled toward the end of the Old Kingdom period (1525-1500 B.C.E.) and apparently composed this document as a way of providing a solution to the bloody chaos that prevailed in the royal family around the question of succession to the throne. The Hittite royal family (salli hassātar, literally 'great family') was composed not only of the king and his immediate family but also of numerous relatives who made up the kingdom’s nobility. The nobility made up the king's advisory council, or pankus, the body Telepenus enjoins to warn off those who would harm members of the nobility. It would be comforting to think that they always acted nobly, but like modern people they often acted in their own, short-sighted interest, and they were keenly interested in the kingship. The Hittite king might have several wives, a primary wife, wives of the "second rank" (or tān pēdas), and, in addition, a number of recognized mistresses. Such a family structure had the potential to create a volatile situation, since the king's wives and mistresses would inevitably bear him sons who, as they grew to manhood, might harbor royal ambitions, and as the history of the Hittite monarchy attests might act ruthlessly in their pursuit of power.
The Proclamation of Telipinu
The Proclamation of Telipinu
(ca, 1525-1500 BCE)
§ 1 [Thusly] Tabarna, Telipinu, Great King: Formerly Labarna was Great King. His [son]s, his [brother]s, as well as his in-laws, his relatives, and his troops were united.
§ 2 The land was small, but on whatever campaign he went, he held the enemy land in subjugation by (his) might.
§ 3 He destroyed the lands, one after another — he overwhelmed the lands and made them borders of the sea. When he came back from campaign each (of) his sons went to some land.
§ 4 (Namely) the city Ḫupišna, the city Tuwanuwa, the city Nenašša, the city Landa, the city Zallara, the city Paršuḫanta, (and) the city Lušna—they governed each of the lands and the great cities were prosperous.
§ 5 Afterwards Ḫattušili became king. And his sons, his brothers, his in-laws, his relatives, and his troops were united, too. On whatever campaign he went, he too held the enemy land in subjugation by (his) might.
§ 6 He destroyed the lands, one after another — he overwhelmed the lands and made them borders of the sea. When he came back from campaign each of his sons went to some land, and in his hand, too, the great cities were prosperous.
§ 7 But when subsequently the servants of the princes became corrupt and began to devour their houses, they began to continually whisper against their lords and began to shed their blood.
§ 8 When Muršili became king in Ḫattuša, his sons, his brothers, his in-laws, his relatives, and his troops were united, too. He held the enemy lands in subjugation by (his) might. He overwhelmed the lands and he made them borders of the sea.
§ 9 He went to Ḫalpa, he destroyed Ḫalpa, and he brought civilian captives of Ḫalpa and its goods to Ḫattuša. Later he went to Babylon, he destroyed Babylon, he repulsed the Hurrians, and he kept the civilian captives of Babylon and its goods in Ḫattuša.
§ 10 Ḫantili was a cup-bearer and he had Ḫarapšili, [sister] of Muršili, as (his) wife.
§ 11 Zidanta, [the … had …], the daughter of Ḫantili, for (his) wife, and he joined up with Ḫantili and they did an evil deed—they killed Muršili, they shed blood!
§ 12 And Ḫantili was afraid. ”Will I be protected? The gods protected him. […] wherever he went, the population […] the cities of Aštata, [Šukzi]ya, Ḫurpana, Kargamiš, [… troops] they began to give and troops […]
§ 13 And [when] Ḫantili reached the city of Tegarama he began to say, “What is this (that) I have done? [Why] did I listen to [the words of] Zidanta, my? [son-in-law? As soon as] he reigned [as king], the gods sought (justice for) the blood of Muršili.
§ 14 […] the Hurrian troops, chased (like) foxes in the bushes, they called. [When the Hurrian enemy?] came to Ḫatti, he […]-ed [and …] in? the land he roamed?. […] they called and them […]
§ 15 (Almost completely lost)
§ 16 […] and the Queen of the city [Šukziy]a […] the queen was dying. […] Ilaliuma secretly sent out palace [attendent]s and […]-ed, “May the Queen of Šukziya die!” So [they seized] her and killed (her) [together with her children.]
§ 17 When Ḫantili inquired into (the case of) the queen of Šukziya [and her children, saying, “Who [has] killed them?”, the Chief of the Palace Attendents brought word. They rounded up her family and [drove] them to Tegarama. They chased them in the bushes and [they] d[ied?.]
§ 18 When Ḫantili [becam]e an old man and was about to become a god, Zidanta killed [Pišeni], son of Ḫantili, along with his children, [and] he killed his foremost servents.
§ 19 And Zidanta became king. The gods sought (justice for) the blood of Pišeni. The gods made [Ammuna, his] begotten (son), into his enemy, and he killed Zidanta, his father.
§ 20 And Ammuna became king. The gods sought (justice for) the blood of Zidanta, his father, and in his hand [they did] not [make] him, or the grain, or […], or the wine, or the cattle or sheep [prosper].
§ 21 And the land became hostile to him. Wherever the troops went on campaign, (namely) the city […]agga, [the city Mat]ila, the city Galmiya, the land Adaniya, the land Arzawiya, the city Šallapa, the city Parduwata, the city Aḫḫulašša, they kept returning unsuccessful. When Ammuna, too, became a god, Zuru, Chief of the Royal Bodyguard, in those same days secretly sent one of his own family, his son Taḫurwaili, the Man of the Gold Spear, and he killed the family of Tittiya along with his sons.
§ 22 And he sent Taruḫšu, a courier, and he killed Ḫantili along with his sons. And Ḫuzziya became king. Telipinu had Ištapariya, his foremost sister, (as his wife). Ḫuzziya would have killed them, but the matter was exposed, and Telipinu chased them away.
§ 23 Five were his brothers, and he built houses for them, (saying), “Let them go (and) live! Let them eat (and) drink!” May no one take part in evil against them! I repeatedly declare, “They did evil to me. [I will not do] evil to them!”
§ 24 When I, Telipinu, sat upon the throne of my father, I went on campaign to the city Ḫaššuwa, and I destroyed the city Ḫaššuwa. My troops were in the city Zizzilippa, too, and a reversal occurred in the city Zizzilippa.
§ 25 When I, the king, came to the city Lawazantiya, Mr. Laḫḫa was [hostile to me] and incited the city Lawazantiya to rebel. [The gods] put him in my hand. Of the foremost ones (there) were many: Commander of a Thousand, […], Mr. Karruwa, Commander of the Chamberlains, Mr. Inara, Commander of the Cupbearers, Mr. Killa [Commander of the …], Mr. Tarḫumimma, Commander of the Staffbearers, Mr. Zinwašeli, and Mr. Lelli. They sent secretly to Mr. Tanuwa, the Staffbearer.
§ 26 I, the king, did not know! [He killed?] Ḫuzziya and his brothers. When I, the king, heard, they brought Tanuwa, Tarḫurwaili, [and] Taruḫšu, and the Council held them forth for death. But I, the king, said, “Why do they die? They will hide (their) eyes about them!” I, the king, made them into true farmers. I took the weapons from the shoulder and gave them a y[oke?.]
§ 27 Blood(shed) of the whole royal family has become common! Ištapariya, the queen, died. Later it came to be that Ammuna, the prince, died. The Men of the Gods keep saying, “Blood(shed) has now become common in Ḫattuša!” I, Telipinu, called an assembly in Ḫattuša. From this moment on let no one in Ḫattuša do evil to a son of the (royal) family and draw a dagger against him!
§ 28 Let a prince—a son—of the first rank only be installed as king! If a prince of the first rank does not exist, (then) let he who is a son of second rank become king. But if there is no prince, no male issue, (then) let them take an antiyant-husband for she who is a first rank daughter, and let him become king.
Source: Sturtevant, Edgar, and George Bechtel, A Hittite Chrestomathy. Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America, 1935. Reprinted with permission.
Hittite Legal Texts (The Laws) / The University of Texas at Austin
Hittite Legal Texts (The Laws) / The University of Texas at Austin (LINK)
Sara E. Kimball, Winfred P. Lehmann, and Jonathan Slocum
The collection of Hittite legal texts is generally referred to as The Laws, suggesting that it does not make up a document produced by a central authority but rather it is a compilation of civil and criminal law traditionally observed by society, as illustrated by the excerpts given here from among somewhat over two hundred clauses. The earliest record of it dates to the Old Kingdom, about 1650 B.C., but that refers to still earlier versions. Many copies have survived, four from the Old Kingdom alone; these maintain the collection with little or no change. As a general characteristic, the provisions require cooperation rather than vengeance or imprisonment for offenses. Like the initial clauses given here, some deal with criminal offenses such as abduction, theft, homicide and so on. Others deal with civil offenses related to marriage, management of livestock, and various services. Further knowledge of the practice of law in Hittite society is provided by texts on court proceedings and statements by the king or other administrators, but the basic information on legal practice of the Hittites is given in The Laws.
All 10 clauses given here are included in the collection catalogued as "KBo VI," mostly KBo VI 3. The first three clauses (1, 2, 5) deal with criminal offenses; they illustrate nicely the identification of specific offenses and the resultant punishment. The third is especially notable in specifying different punishments according to the type and place of offense. In all three, the sentence translated "he shall look to his house for it" has been the subject of great attention and a variety of interpretations. By what is probably the best interpretation, it indicates that the estate of the person performing a criminal action will be involved in any penalty.
The fourth and fifth clauses (9, 10) deal with less serious offenses; among other things, they illustrate that legal practice has undergone change from former times.
The sixth and seventh clauses (28, 37) deal with civil offenses and are self-explanatory. But if, as in the seventh (37, from KBo VI 2 with a near-duplicate in KBo VI 3), a criminal offense occurs in the attempt at solution, the perpetrator is outlawed as a wolf and subject to the usual punishments for such a criminal offense.
The last three clauses (66, 86, 55) also deal with civil offenses, and illustrate the extent to which the laws deal with minor infractions. Yet the last, 55 (from KBo VI 13 and 26), seems to lead to a remarkably serious punishment. It is explained in accordance with a widespread belief associating a snake with a specific person, and making it clear when killing the snake that a similar action is to strike its surrogate.
1 If someone kills a man or a woman in a quarrel, he (the killer) produces the body (lit. 'that one') and gives (in recompense) four people (lit. 'heads') -- whether (he kills) a man or a woman -- he shall look to his house for it.
2 If someone kills a male slave or a female slave in a quarrel, he (the killer) produces the body (lit. 'that one') and gives (in recompense) four people (lit. 'heads') -- whether (he kills) a man or a woman -- he shall look to his house for it.
5 If someone kills a Hittite merchant, he shall give one hundred mina of silver. He shall look to his house for it. If (the killing occurs) in the land of Luwiya or in the land of Pala, the shall pay one hundred mina of silver and restore his goods. If (the killing occurs) in the land of Hatti, he shall also produce the merchant himself (for burial).
9 If someone injures a person's head, they used to give 6 shekels of silver: the injured person took three shekels of silver, and they used to take three shekels of silver for the palace. But now, the king has waived the palace share, so that the injured person alone takes three shekels of silver.
10 If someone injures a person and makes him ill, he performs sick maintenance for him. In his place, he provides a person to work his estate while he recovers. When he recovers, (the assailant) will give him six shekels of silver, and he will also pay the doctor's fee himself.
28 If a daughter (is) promised to a man, and another (man) abducts her and steals the bride price, the one who abducts her, gives the first man whatever he paid (as bride-price) and he makes restitution to him. The (woman's) father and mother do not make restitution (to the original prospective son-in-law). If the father and mother give her to another man, then the father and mother do make restitution (to the original prospective son-in-law). If the mother and father refuse (to make restitution), they shall separate her from him (the second man).
37 If someone abducts a woman and a (group of) helper(s) goes after them, if two or three men are killed, there is no restitution: 'You (sg.) have become a wolf.'
66 If a plow ox, a draft horse, if a heifer, (or) a mare wanders into (another owner's) corral; if a tame? he-goat, if a ewe, if a ram strays into (another owner's) fold, and its owner finds it, he shall take it back by right. He (the animal's owner) shall not seize him (the corral or fold's owner) (as) a thief.
86 If a pig goes into a grain-heap, a field, (or) a garden, and the owner of the grain-heap, field, (or) garden strikes it and it dies, he shall give it back to its owner. But if he does not give it (back), he shall become a thief.
55 If a free man kills a snake and speaks another's name (while killing it), he shall pay forty shekels of silver. If he (the offender) is a slave, however, he himself shall die (i.e. 'be executed').
Battle of Kadesh
📹 Battle of Kadesh, 1274 BC (Egyptian-Hittite War) (VİDEO)
Battle of Kadesh, 1274 BC (Egyptian-Hittite War) (LINK)
Battle of Kadesh, 1274 BC (Egyptian-Hittite War)
Fertile Crescent was one of the first regions human civilization started. Cultures of the Bronze Age fought over it for centuries and conflicts in this region now called the Middle East are still continuing. The war between Egypt and Hittites was one of the first recorded in history, and the battle of Kadesh of 1274 BC is probably the first we have a detailed account of. Both empires were vying for the dominance over this ancient city, and the engagement was bloody. Neither Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II or Hittite king Muwatalli II are considered great generals, but both them implemented some very interesting tactical maneuvers during this battle.
The Hittite military oath (CTH 427) is a Hittite text on two cuneiform tablets.
Hittite chariot, from an Egyptian relief.
The first tablet is only preserved in fragments (KBo XXI 10, KUB XL 13, and minor fragments), the second tablet survives in three copies, and can be restituted almost completely. The oldest copy (KUB XL 13) is fragmentary, but two younger copies (KUB XL 16, KBo VI 34) are well preserved. The text is in Old Hittite, with some scribal errors of the later copyists, and prescribes the oath to be taken by military commanders. More precisely, it describes a series of symbolic actions intended to represent the afflictions that should befall the oath-takers should they break their word. On one occasion, for example, women's clothing, a spindle and an arrow is brought before those swearing their allegiance. The arrow is broken, and they are told that should they break their oath, their weapons should likewise be broken, and they should be made women and given women's tasks. Then, a blind and deaf woman is brought before them, and they are told that if they break their word, they will be made blind and deaf women like this one. Then, a figurine of a person suffering from ascites is brought before them, and they are told that should they break their word, their bellies should swell with water, and the deities of the oath should eat their offspring (seed) within their bellies.
The deities of the oath repeatedly invoked with the Akkado-Sumerian spelling NIŠ DINGIR (representing Hittite lengai-) are identified with the goddess of treaties Ishara and the moon god Kaskuh.
To these similes, those swearing agree, saying "so be it." Oath-taking as conditional self-cursing in the event of oath-breaking is typical for other early Proto-Indo-Europeans cultures.
There is another, younger text (CTH 428) with similar content, termed the 'second military oath'. It is more fragmentary, and its main difference is that the oath-takers are promised well-being in case they keep their word, as well as being threatened by extinction should they break it. In comparison to the older oath, the younger text shows that the Hittite pantheon was increasingly influenced by Hurrian gods.
The Egyptian–Hittite peace treaty, also known as the Eternal Treaty or the Silver Treaty, is the only ancient Near Eastern treaty for which both sides' versions have survived. It is sometimes called the Treaty of Kadesh after the well-documentedBattle of Kadesh fought some sixteen years earlier, although Kadesh is not mentioned in the text. Both sides of the treaty have been the subject of intensive scholarly study. The treaty itself did not bring about a peace; in fact "an atmosphere of enmity between Hatti and Egypt lasted many years," until the eventual treaty of alliance was signed.
Translation of the texts revealed that this engraving was originally translated from silver tablets given to each side, which have since been lost to contemporary historians.
The Egyptian version of the peace treaty was engraved in hieroglyphics on the walls of two temples belonging to Pharaoh Ramesses II in Thebes: the Ramesseum and the Precinct of Amun-Re at the Temple of Karnak. The scribes who engraved the Egyptian version of the treaty included descriptions of the figures and seals that were on the tablet that the Hittites delivered.
The Hittite version was found in the Hittite capital of Hattusa (in present day Turkey), preserved on baked clay tablets uncovered among the Hittite royal palace's sizable archives. Two of the Hittite tablets are today displayed at the Museum of the Ancient Orient, part of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. The third is on display in the Berlin State Museums in Germany. A copy of this treaty is prominently displayed on a wall in the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
The Egyptian treaty was found in two originals: one with 30 lines at the Temple of Karnak on the wall extending south of the Great Hypostyle Hall, and the second showing 10 lines, at the Ramesseum.Jean-François Champollion copied a portion of the accords in 1828 and his findings were published posthumously in 1844. The Egyptian account described a great battle against the "Great King of Khatti", then an unknown figure, later confirmed by other archaeological evidence to be the Hittite monarch Muwatalli II.
Hittite
In 1906-1908, the German archaeologist Hugo Winckler excavated the site of the Hittite capital, Hattusa (now Boğazkale in Turkey) in conjunction with Theodore Makridi, the second director of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The joint Turkish-German team found the remains of the royal archives, where they discovered 10,000 clay tablets written with cuneiform documenting many of the Hittites' diplomatic activities. The haul included three tablets on which the text of the treaty was inscribed in the Akkadian language, a lingua franca of the time. Winckler immediately grasped the significance of the discovery:
“... a marvellously preserved tablet which immediately promised to be significant.One glance at it and all the achievement of my life faded into insignificance. Here it was – something I might have jokingly called a gift from the fairies. Here it was: Ramses writing to Hattusilis about their joint treaty ... confirmation that the famous treaty which we knew from the version carved on the temple walls at Karnak might also be illuminated from the other wise. Ramses is identified by his royal titles and pedigree exactly as in the Karnak text of the treaty; Hattusilis is described in the same way — the content is identical, word for word with parts of the Egyptian version [and] written in beautiful cuneiform and excellent Babylonian ... As with the history of the people of Hatti, the name of this place was completely forgotten. But the people of Hatti evidently played an important role in the evolution of the ancient Western world, and though the name of this city, and the name of the people were totally lost for so long, their rediscovery now opens up possibilities we cannot yet begin to think of.”
The Hittite treaty was discovered by Hugo Winckler in 1906 at Boğazkale in Turkey.In 1921, Daniel David Luckenbill, crediting Bruno Meissner for the original observation, noted that "this badly broken text is evidently the Hittite version of the famous battle of Kadesh, described in prose and verse by the scribes of Ramses II".
The peace treaty between Ramses II and Hattusili III
The peace treaty between Ramses II and Hattusili III (LINK)
The peace treaty between Ramses II and Hattusili III
Created c.1259 BC
Discovered 1828 (Egyptian) and 1906 (Hittite)
Present location Istanbul Archaeology Museums and Precinct of Amun-Re in Karnak
The Hittite version
The Egyptian version
Year 21, first month of the second season, twenty-first day, under the majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Usermare-Setepnere, Son of Re: Ramses-Meriamon, given life, forever and ever, beloved of Amon-Re-Harakhte, Ptah-South-of-His-Wall, lord of "Life-of-the-Two-Lands," Mut, mistress of Ishru, and Khonsu-Neferhotep; shining upon the Horus-throne of the living, like his father, Harakhte, forever and ever.
On this day, lo, his majesty was at the city (called): "House-of-Ramses-Meriamon," performing the pleasing ceremonies of his father, Amon-Re-Harakhte-Atum, lord of the Two Lands of Heliopolis; Amon of Ramses-Meriamon, Ptah of Ramses-Meriamon, "/// great in strength, son of Mut," according as they gave to him eternity in jubilees, everlastingness in peaceful years, all lands, and all countries being prostrate beneath his sandals forever. There came the king's messenger, the deputy and butler ///, together with the king's messenger /// [bringing (?) to the king] Ramses II [the messenger (?)] of [Kheta, Ter]teseb and the [second messenger (?)] of Kheta [bearing (?) a silver tablet] which the great chief of the Kheta, Khetasar (xtAsrA) [caused] to be brought to Pharaoh, L. P. H., to crave peace [fro]m [the majesty] of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ramses II, given life, forever and ever, like his father, Re, every day.
Copy of the silver tablet, which the great chief of Kheta, Khetasar (xtAsArA) caused to be brought to Pharaoh, L. P. H., by the hand of his messenger, Terteseb (tArAtysbw), and his messenger, Ramose, to crave peace from the majesty of Ramses II, the Bull of rulers, making his boundary as far as he desires in every land.
It is concluded that Reamasesa-Mai-amana , the Great King, the king (of the land of Egypt) with Hattusili, the Great King, the king of the land of Hatti, his brother, for the land of Egypt and the land of Hatti, in order to establish a good peace and a good fraternity forever among them.
Thus speaks Reamasesa, the Great King, the king of the land of Egypt, the hero of the whole country, son of Minmuaria, the great king, the king of the land of Egypt, the hero, son of the son of Minpahiritaria, the Great King, the king of the land of Egypt, the hero, to Hattusili, son of Mursili , the Great King, the king of the land of Hatti, the hero, son of the son of Suppiluliuma, the Great King, the king of the land of Hatti, the hero.
Look, I have established a good fraternity and a good peace now forever among us, in order to establish this way forever a good peace and a good fraternity between the land of Egypt and the land of Hatti.
The treaty which the great chief of Kheta, Khetasar, the valiant, the son of Merasar (mrAsArA), the great chief of Kheta, the valiant, the grandson, of Seplel (sApA[rwrw]), [the great chief of Kheta, the val]iant, made, upon a silver tablet for Usermare-Setepnere (Ramses II), the great ruler of Egypt, the valiant, the son of Menmare (Seti II, the great ruler of Egypt, The valiant, the grandson of Menpehtire (Ramses I), the great ruler of Egypt, the valiant; the good treaty of peace and of brotherhood, setting peace [between them (?)], forever.
Look, in what refers to the great king's relationship, the king of the country of Egypt, and of the great king, the king of the Hittite country, since eternity the gods don't allow, by reason of an eternal treaty, that the enmity exist among them.
Look, Reamasesa-Mai-amana, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, will establish the bond that the Sun God [Ra] has wanted and that the god of the Tempest [the great Hittite god] has wanted for the country of Egypt and the country of Hatti according to the eternal bond, for not letting enmity settle between them.
1. Now, at the beginning, since eternity, the relations of the great ruler of Egypt with the great chief of Kheta were (such) that the god prevented hostilities between them, by treaty. Whereas, in the time of Metella (mwTnrA), the great chief of Kheta, my brother, he fought w[ith Ramses II], the great ruler of Egypt, yet afterward, beginning with this day, behold, Khetasar, the great chief of Kheta, is [in] a treaty- relation for establishing the relations which the Re made, and which Sutekh made, for the land of Egypt, with the land of Kheta, in order not to permit hostilities to arise between them, forever.
But now Reamasesa-Mai-amana, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, has established this bond by treaty on a silver tablet with Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, his brother, starting from this day, to settle forever among them a good peace and a good fraternity. He is a brother to me and he is at peace with me; and I am a brother to him and I am forever at peace with him.
Look, we are united and a bond of fraternity already exists among us and of peace, and it is better than the bond of fraternity and of peace that existed between the country of Egypt and the country of Hatti.
2. Behold then, Khetasar, the great chief of Kheta, is in treaty relation with Usermare-Setepnere (Ramses II), the great ruler of Egypt, beginning with this day, in order to bring about good peace and good brotherhood between us forever, while he is in brotherhood with me, he is in peace with me; and I am in brotherhood with him, and I am in peace with him, forever. Since Metella (mwTnrA), the great chief of Kheta, my brother, succumbed to his fate, and Khetasar sat as great chief of Kheta upon the throne of his father, behold, I am together with Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, and he is [with me in (?)] our peace and our brotherhood. It is better than the former peace and brotherhood which were in the land.
Look, Reamasesa-Mai-amana, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, is at peace and fraternity with Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti.
Behold, I, even the great chief of Kheta, am with [Ramses II], the great ruler of Egypt, in good peace and in good brotherhood.
Look, the children of Reamasesa, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, they will be forever in state of peace and of fraternity with the children of Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti. They will remain in the line of our bond of fraternity and of peace; the country of Egypt and the country of Hatti will be forever be in a state of peace and of fraternity as it is with us.
The children of the children of the great chief of Kheta shall be in brotherhood and peace with the children of the children of Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, being in our relations of brotherhood and our relations [of peace], that the [land of Egypt] may be with the land of Kheta in peace and brotherhood like ourselves, forever.
Reamasesa-Mai-amana, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, shall never attack the country of Hatti to take possession of a part (of this country). And Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, shall never attack the country of Egypt to take possession of a part (of that country).
3. There shall be no hostilities between them, forever. The great chief of Kheta shall not pass over into the land of Egypt, forever, to take anything therefrom. Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, shall not pass over into the land of Kheta, to take anything] therefrom, forever.
Look, the order fixed for eternity which the Sun God and the God of the Tempest have created for the country of Egypt and the country of Hatti, (that is) peace and fraternity without leaving place among them to any enmity. Look, Reamasesa-Mai-amana, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, has established peace starting from this day.
Look, the country of Egypt and the country of Hatti live forever in peace and fraternity.
4. As for the former treaty which was in the time of Seplel (sApArwrw), the great chief of Kheta, likewise the former treaty which was in the time of Metella (mwTnrA) the great chief of Kheta, my father, I will hold to it. Behold, Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, will hold [to it] with us [together (?)] beginning with this day. We will hold to it, and we will deal in this former manner.
If a foreign enemy marches against the country of Hatti and if Hattusili, the king of the country of Hatti, sends me this message: "Come to my help against him", Reamasesa-mai_Amana, the great king, the king of the Egyptian country, has to send his troops and his chariots to kill this enemy and to give satisfaction to the country of Hatti.
5. If another enemy come against the lands of Usermare-Setepnere (Ramses II), the great ruler of Egypt, and he shall send to the great chief of Kheta, saying; "Come with me as reinforcement against him," the great chief of Kheta shall [come], and the great chief of Kheta shall slay his enemy. But if it be not the desire of the great chief of Kheta to come, be shall send his infantry and his chariotry, and shall slay his enemy.
If Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, rises in anger against his citizens after they have committed a crime against him and if, for this reason, you send to Reamasesa the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, then Reamasesa-Mai-amana has to send his troops and his chariots and these should exterminate all those that he has risen in anger against.
6. Or if Ramses-Meriamon, [the great ruler of Egypt], be provoked against [delinquent (?)] subjects, when they have committed some other fault against him, and he come to slay them, then the great chief of Kheta shall act with the lord of Egypt [/// ///].
If a foreigner marches against the country of Egypt and if Reamasesa-Mai-amana, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, your brother, sends to Hattusili, the king of the country of Hatti, his brother, the following message: "Come to my help against him", then Hattusili, king of the country of Hatti, shall send his troops and his chariots and kill my enemy.
7. If another en[emy come] against the great chief of Kheta, [and he shall send] to the great chief (sic!) [of Egypt], Usermare-Setepnere [for reinforcements (?) then he] shall come to him as reinforcement, to slay his enemy. But if it be [not] the desire of Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, to come, he shall [send his infantry and his chariotry [and shall slay his enemy (?)]. [Or] ////// /// seeing them, besides returning answer to the land of Kheta.
If Reamasesa, king of the country of Egypt, rises in anger against his citizens after they have committed a wrong against him and by reason of this he sends (a message) to Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, my brother, has to send his troops and his chariots and they have to exterminate all those against, and I shall ....
Look, the son of Hattusili, king of the country of Hatti, has to assure his sovereignty of the country of Hatti instead of Hattusili, his father, after the numerous years of Hattusili, king of the country of Hatti. If the children of the country of Hatti transgress against him, then Reamasesa has to send to his help troops and chariots and to give him support.
8. Now if subjects of the great chief of Kheta transgress against him, and Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, shall /////// the land of Kheta and the land of Egypt ///////, that is to say; "I will come after [their punishment (?)] to Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, living forever, /// /// /// the land of Kheta. ...... ......... their appointing him for them, to be lord, to cause that Usermare-Setepnere, the great ruler of Egypt, shall be silent from his speech forever. If he /// his /// /// the land of Kheta, and he shall turn back [again to (?)] the great chief of Kheta ////////.
If a great person flees from the country of Hatti and if he comes to Reamasesa, the great king, king of the country of Egypt, then Reamasesa, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, has to take hold of him and deliver him into hands of Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti.
9. [If any great man of the land of Egypt shall flee and shall come to] the great chief of Kheta, from either a town [or] /// of the lands of Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, and they shall come to the great chief of Kheta, then the great chief of Kheta shall not receive them, (but) the great chief of Kheta shall cause them to be brought to Usermare-Setepnere, the great ruler of Egypt, [their] lord therefor.
If a man or two men who are unknown flee, and if they come to Reamasesa, to serve him, then Reamasesa has to take hold of them and deliver them into the hands of Hattusili, king of the country of Hatti.
10. Or if there flee a man, or two men who are unknown ///, and they shall come to the land of Kheta, to become foreign subjects, then they shall not be settled in the land of Kheta, but they shall be brought to Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt,
If a great person flees from the country of Egypt and he escapes to the country of Amurru or a city and he comes to the king of Amurru, then Benteshina, king of the country of Amurru, has to take hold of him and take him to the king of the country of Hatti ; and Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, shall have him to be taken to Reamasesa, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt.
11. Or if any great man shall flee from the land of Kheta, [and he shall come to] Usermare-Setepnere, the great ruler of Egypt, (from) either a town or a district, or [any region of] those belonging to the land of Kheta, and they shall come to Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, then Usermare-Setepnere, the great ruler of Egypt, shall not receive them, (but) Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, shall cause them to be brought to the great chief of Kheta. They shall not be settled.
If a man or two men who are unknown flee, and if they escape from the country of Egypt and if they don't want to serve him, then Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, has to deliver them into his brother's hands and he shall not allow them to inhabit the country of Hatti.
12. Likewise, if there flee a man, or two, or three, [who are not] known, and they shall come to the land of Egypt, to become foreign subjects, then Usermare-Setepnere, the great ruler of Egypt, shall not settle them, (but) he shall cause them to be brought to the great chief of Kheta.
13. As for the words of this [contract (?)] of the great chief of Kheta, with Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler [of Egypt], written. upon this silver tablet; as for these words, a thousand gods of the male gods and of the female gods, of those of the land of Kheta, together with a thousand gods, of the male gods and of the female gods of those of the land of Egypt, they are with me as witnesses [to (?)] these words: the Sun-god, lord of the heavens, the Sun-god, of the city of Ernen (ArnnA), Sutekh, the lord of the heavens, Sutekh of Kheta, Sutekh of the city of Ernen, Sutekh of the city Zepyerened (DApwyArAndA), Sutekh of the city of Perek (pAyrAkA), Sutekh of the city of Khesesep (xjsAsApA), Sutekh of the city Seres (sArjsw), Sutekh of the city of Aleppo (xjrApA), Sutekh of the city of Rekhsen (rAxAsjnA) , Sutekh [of the city of ///], ////////, Sutekh of the city of Sekhpen (sAjxjpAjnA), Antheret (anTrAtj) of the land of Kheta, the god of Zeyethekhrer (DAjjATxjrrj), the god of Kerzet /// (kArDAjtA), the god of Kherpenteres (xrpAntjrjsA), the goddess of the city of Kerekhen /// n /// (kArxn///n/// ///), the goddess of [Khewek] (xwAk), the goddess of Zen/// (DAjn///), the god of Zen///wet (DAn///nwtj), the god of Serep (sArApA)~ the god of Khenbet (xnbAtA), the queen of the heavens, gods, lords of swearing, the goddess, the mistress of the soil, the mistress of swearing, Teskher (tAsAxrA), the mistress of the mountains, and the rivers of the land of Kheta, the gods of the land of Kezweden (kjDAwAdAnA), Amon, the Sun-god, Sutekh, the male gods and the female gods of the mountains and the rivers of the land of Egypt, of the heavens, the soil, the great sea, the wind, and the storms.
If a nobleman flees from the country of Hatti, or two men, and if they don't want to serve the king of Hatti, and if they flee from the Great King's country, the king of the land of Hatti, in order not to serve him, then Reamasesa has to take hold of them and order them be taken to Hattusili, the Great King, king of the land of Hatti, his brother, and he shall not allow them to reside in the country of Egypt.
If a nobleman or two flee from the country of Egypt and if they leave for the Land of Hatti, then Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, has to take hold of them and make them be taken to Reamasesa, the Great King, the king of the country of Egypt, his brother.
If a man flees from the country of Hatti, or two men, or three men, and if they come to Reamasesa, the Great King, the king of the country of Egypt, his brother, then Reamasesa, the Great King, the king of the country of Egypt, has to take hold of them and to order them to be taken to Hattusili, his brother, since they are brothers. As for their crime, it should not be imputed; their tongue and their eyes are not to be pulled out; their ears and their feet are not to be cut off; their houses with their wives and their children are not to be destroyed.
16. If a man flee from the land of Egypt, or two or three, and come to the great chief of Kheta, the great chief of Kheta shall seize upon them, and shall cause them to be brought back to Usermare-Setepnere, the great ruler of Egypt. Now, as for the man who shall be brought (back) to Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, let not his crime be set up against him; let not his house be injured, nor his wives, nor his children, [let] him [not be killed], and let no injury be done to his eyes, to his ears, to his mouth, nor to his feet. Let not any crime be set up against him.
If a (man flees from the country of Reamasesa, the Great King, king of the country of Egypt), or two men, or three men, and if they come (to Hattusili, the Great King), the king of the country of Hatti, my brother, then Hattusili, the Great King, king of the country of Hatti, my brother, has to take hold of them and to order them to be taken to Reamasesa, the Great King, the king of the country of Egypt, because Reamasesa, the Great King, king of the country of Egypt, and Hattusili are brothers. As for their crime, it should not be imputed; their tongue and their eyes are not to be pulled out; their ears and their feet are not to cut off; their houses with their wives and their children are not to be destroyed.
17. Likewise if a man flee from the land of Kheta, be it one, be it two, (or) be it three, and they shall come to Usermare-Setepnere, the great ruler of Egypt, let Ramses-Meriamon, the great ruler of Egypt, seize [upon them, and let him cause] that they be brought to the great chief of Kheta; and the great chief of Kheta shall not set up their crime against them; let not his house be injured, nor his wives, nor his children, let him not be killed, and let no injury be done to his ears, to his eyes, to his mouth, nor to his feet. Let not any crime be set up against him.
If a man flees from the country of Hatti, or two people, and if they flee from the country of Hatti, and if they come to the country of Egypt, and if a nobleman flees from the country of Hatti or of a city and they flee from the country of Hatti to go to the country of Egypt, then Reamasesa has to order them to be taken to his brother. Look, the sons of the country of Hatti and the children of the country of Egypt are at peace.
If some people flee from the country of Egypt to go to the country of Hatti, then Hattusili, the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, has to order them to be taken to his brother. Look, Hattusili the great king, the king of the country of Hatti, and Reamasesa, the great king, the king of the country of Egypt, your brother, are at peace.
If Reamasesa and the children of the country of Egypt don't observe this treaty, then the gods and the goddesses of the country of Egypt and the gods and goddesses of the country of Hatti shall exterminate the descendants of Reamasesa, the Great King, the king of the country of Egypt.
If Reamasesa and the children of the country of Egypt observe this treaty, then the gods of the oath shall protect them and their [...]
They who observe the words that are in the silver tablet the great gods of the country of Egypt and the great gods of the country of Hatti shall allow them to live and prosper in their houses, their country and with their servants.
They who do not observe the words that are in this silver tablet , the great gods of the country of Egypt as well as the great gods of the country of Hatti will exterminate their houses, their country and their servants.
14. Now, these words, which are upon this silver tablet, are for the land of Kheta and for the land of Egypt. As for him who shall not keep them, the thousand gods of the land of Kheta, and the thousand gods of the land of Egypt shall desolate his house, his land, and his subjects.
15. Now as for him who shall keep these words, which are upon this silver tablet, whether they be of Kheta, or whether they be people of Egypt, and they shall not devise (aught) against them; the thousand gods of the land of Kheta, together with the thousand gods of the land of Egypt, shall preserve his health, and his life, together with his issue, with his land, and his subjects.
18. That which is in the middle of this silver tablet: on its front side is a figure in the likeness of Sutekh embracing the likeness of the great chief of Kheta, surrounded by the following [words (?)]: "The seal of Sutekh, the ruler of the heavens; the seal of the treaty which Khetasar, the great chief of Kheta, the valiant, the son of Merasar (mrAsArA) the valiant, the great chief of Kheta, the valiant, made." That which is in the midst of the surrounding design is the seal [of Sutekh, the ruler of the heavens]. [That which is [in the middle on] its other side is a figure, in the likeness of [///] of Kheta, embracing the figure of the princess of Kheta, surrounded by the following words: "The seal of the Sun-god of the city of Ernen (ArnnA), the lord of the land; the seal of Petkhep (pw-tw-xjpA), the princess of the land of Kheta, the daughter of the land of Kezweden (qjDAwAdn), the /// /// /// of Ernen, the mistress of the land, the votress of the goddess. That which is in the midst of the surrounding design is the seal of the Sun-god of Ernen, the lord of every land."
J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Three, §§370ff.
This treaty is similar in form to many others discovered. The treaty between King Mursili and the king of Amurru, Duppi-Teshub [1], begins with the words
Thus speaks His Majesty Mursili, Great King, king of the Land of Hatti, beloved of the Storm God, son of Suppiluliuma, Great King, king of the land of Hatti, hero.
The treaty stipulates, that Amurru forces shall fight in the Hittite army, that the Hittites shall give military assistance to Amurru and be provided with food by the king of Amurru, that anti-Hittite movements shall be suppressed, that Hittite fugitives shall be returned and safe passage for refuge seekers in Hatti shall be given.
It ends with
If Duppi-Teshub does not keep these words of the obligation and of the oath, may these divine oaths destroy Duppi-Teshub, his wife, his son, his grandson, his house, his city and everything belonging to him.
If Duppi-Teshub keeps these words, may these divine oaths keep you.
Eighty gods and goddesses from Amurru and Hatti are invoked to witness this treaty.
Not every king could call himself brother or Great King, without angering Hattusili. When the king of Assyria did so, the Hittite asked
And why should I write to you about brotherhood? Were you and I born of the same mother? Do not write about brotherhood and Great Kingship to me.
The Egyptians were not less proud. According to them this treaty was the result of the Hittites begging for peace
Copy of the tablet of silver which the great chief of Hatti, Hattusili, caused to be brought to Pharaoh by the hand of his messenger Tartesub and his messenger Ramose, in order to beg peace from the Majesty [of User-maat-re Setepenre], son of Re, Ramesse-meri-Amun, bull of rulers, who makes his boundary where he will in every land.
 and the Hittite rule ca. 1350-1300 BC (green line).png)
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- Late Hittite period, 8th cent BCE. (Istl Archeological Museums-Ancient Orient Museum.jpg)
 was the Hurrian-Hittite goddess of fertility, war, and healing.jpg)
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![[1]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/AmarnaLetterOfMarriageNegotiation-BritishMuseum-August19-08.jpg){kind=link}
