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MEMORY OF THE WORLD
THE HITTITE EMPIRE
INTRODUCTION
If you want to find treasure you’ve got to start digging.
That’s what Charles Texier over 170 years ago, in 1834, when he was in the Turkish town of
Bogazkoy.
At first his discovery did not look like a classic treasure chest, but more like a few old bricks
and rocks that seemed to have been part of an old wall of an old building.
But the more he nad his team dug the more stones and walls and outlines of buildings they
discovered until, over the years, they had unearthed an entire ctiy.
When Texier and the team which followed him had finished the treasure they had discovered
turned out to be the remains of the famous, three thousand year- old ancient city of Hattusas,
the capitial of the Hittite Empire, an Empire as important and influential as the more famous
ancient Mesopotamian or ancient Egyptian Empires.
This is what it looked like from the air.
INSERT
Texier then started to imagine what it must have looked like when it was at its peak. He drew
down his visions and dreams. Have a look at them here.
INSERT
At the time, very little was known about the Hittites, other than a few references to people
called Hitittes in the Bible.
Nowadays the Hittites are thought to have been a people who came from the Causases to
Central Anatolia – the large stretch of land thought to provde the link between the two
continents of the Middle East and the West. It was in Anatolia that the Hittites established a
powerful state within the famous bend of the ancient Halys River.
INSERT
It was during the 2nd millenium BCE, in the middle of period called the Bronze Age, the
Hittite Empire became one of the two main super states of the period, and ruled the area for
600 years.
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THE PERIOD
The Hittite Empire flourished in a period of History known as the Bronze Age.
The Bronze Age begins around 3600 BCE and ends at around 600 BCE. It is preceded by the
Stone Age which begins about 3.4 million years ago, and ends somewhere between 4500 BCE
and 2000 BCE. It is followed by the Iron Age which begins at about 1200 BCE and ends at
around 400 CE.
It is called the Bronze age because weapons were made mainly from copper and its alloy
bronze (that is a mixture of copper and tin) at that time.
The term Stone Age implies the inability to smelt any ore. In the Bronze Age they had not
discovered how to smelt iron ore, in other words to produce a metal from its ore. (in other
words rock with minerals and metals in it)
GEOGRAPHY OF HITTITE EMPIRE
The Hittites were a Bronze Age Indo-European speaking people of Anatolia.
They established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around the 18th
century BC. This period is known as the Bronze Age. It is preceded by the Stone Age and
followed by the Iron Age.
The Hittite empire reached its height around the 14th century BC, encompassing a large part
of Anatolia, north-western Syria about as far south as the mouth of the Litani River (in
present-day Lebanon), and eastward into upper Mesopotamia. By the mid-14th century BC
(under king Suppiluliuma I), they had carved out an empire that included most of Asia Minor
as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. After c. 1180 BC, the empire
disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some surviving until the 8th
century BC.
THE RIVER
The Kızılırmak (Turkish: "Red River"), also known as the Halys River is the longest river in
Turkey among the rivers which originates and ends in Turkey (both origin and mouth being in
Turkey). It is a source of hydroelectric power and is not used for navigation.
It had a bend in it, and the land around that bend was seen as the heart of the Empire. Some
laws were different depedning upon which side of the river they were based on.
The Hittites called it the Maraššantiya. It formed the western boundary of Hatti, the core land
of the Hittite empire. In Classical Antiquity, it was the boundary between Asia Minor and the
rest of Asia, and also the boundary between Pontos and Paphlagonia. As the site of the Battle
of Halys or Battle of the Eclipse on May 28, 585 BC, it was the border between Lydia to the
west and Media to the east until Croesus of Lydia crossed it to attack Cyrus the Great in 547
BC. He was defeated and Persia expanded to the Aegean Sea.
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To the north of the Hittite Empire lived the mountainous people called the Kaskians.
To the southeast of the Hittites lay the Hurrian empire of Mitanni.
The peak of the Hiittite Empire cmae during the reign of Mursili II, when the Hittite empire
‘stretched from Arzawa in the west to Mitanni in the east, many of the Kaskian territories to
the north including Hayasa-Azzi in the far north-east, and on south into Canaan
approximately as far as the southern border of Lebanon, incorporating all of these territories
within its domain.
It gradually declined and faded.
Remnants of these languages lingered into Persian times (6th–4th centuries BC) and were
finally extinguished by the spread of Hellenism which followed Alexander the Great's
conquest of Asia Minor in the 4th century BC.
PHOTOS of RIVERS
http://www.livius.org/ha-hd/halys/halys.html
THE FINDING OF THE CUNEFORM TABLETS
50 years later, William Wright, found a monument there on which there was some form of
writing which no-one could read. It was a bit like the hieroglyphics that had been foundin
Northern Syria.
By 1906, lots of German archaeologists were being sent to dig and inviestigate and such for
more treasure. Once of them, Hugo Winckler then found a huge pile of tablets, 10,000 od
them, inscribed in cuneform, but written in Akkadian, though no-one could decipher them.
They were finally deciphered by a Czech in November 1915.
It is because of what is written on these clay tablets that we know so much about the Hittites
Empire.
Today archaeologists have discovered a series of about 25,000 very old clay tablets with
writing on them. The writing is known as cuneform – the first ever form of writing.
These tablets and the writing on them provide us with the only extant recorded material about
the civilization of the ancient Hittites.
During the 2nd millennium B.C. the Hitties were one of the most powerful political
organisations of the area known today as the Middle East, but historically known as Asia
Minor.
They privde us with information about the social, political, commercial, military, religious,
legislative and artistic lives of the era.
Included amongst the tablets is one which contains the Treaty of Quadesh.
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This was signed between Hittites and Egypt. This well-known treaty of "eternal peace"
guaranteed peace and security throughout the area.
These tablets also include many literary works, chiefly of an epic and mythological character;
some of the most important of these tell the story of the exploits and quarrels of the gods,
which in their essential features differ little from those of other Middle Eastern peoples.
The Hittite civilisation wash linked with that of the Akkadians and Sumerians. It also shows
traces of influence Egyptian and Hurrian influences.
Hittite arts and civilization had some influences on the arts of the Eagean.
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WRITING : CUNEFORM
For centuries, travellers to Persopolis had brought back descriptions of this writing found on
monuments but had been unable to decipher it.
A Venetiain called Barbero in the 15th century
1625 A Roman called Pietro dell valle
Thomas Hezrbet an Englihsman in 1634
Carsten Niebuhr, A German explorer and mathematician in the 18th century (c. 1775) was one
of the first to begin to publish accurate copies of the markings.
In 1835 an Englishman called Henry Rawlinson visited what are known as the Behistun
Inscriptions in Persia (carvings made sometime between 522–486 BCE during the reign of
King Darius of Persia). He managed to decipher some of them. This is the equivalent of the
moment when the Rosetta Stone (which contained Egyptain hieroglyphics) was first
deciphered. (an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis
in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. It was discovered in 1799 by a French soldier PierreFrancois Bouchard and it was deciphered 20 years later by Jean-Francois Champollion in
Paris in 1822)
The form of writing on these tablets is known as cuneform. This is a form of writing with a
blunt reed for a pen or stylus. You made wedges shapes (‘cuneus’ is latin for wedge shaped)
with it on clay tablets. It is one of the earliest known forms of the way humans expressed
themselves in writing.
Man began to use it around 35th century BCE until 1st century CE when it was eventually
replaced by the Pheonician alphabet. (which is another part of the Memory of the World
Programme)
Archaelologists first discovered it in the mid-19th cneutry. But like most of your handwriting,
they could not read it at first and it took them a long time to work out how to decipoher it.
What made it even more difficult is that it changed across time
It was around the period 2500 BCE that this writing changed direction and people started to
write left to right in vertical columns.
Sometime the same symbol was used for the same word eg Life and Arrow. And then some
changed from being pictograms to being syllabograms.
THE TREATY OF QADESH
One of the most important discoveries at the site has been the cuneiform royal archives of
clay tablets, 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
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United Nations in New York City as an example of the earliest known international peace
treaties.
The Battle of Kadesh (also Qadesh) took place between the forces of the Egyptian Empire
under Ramesses II and the Hittite Empire under Muwatalli II at the city of Kadesh on the
Orontes River, in what is now the Syrian Arab Republic.[9]
The battle is generally dated to 1274 BC,[10] and is the earliest battle in recorded history for
which details of tactics and formations are known.[11] It was probably the largest chariot
battle ever fought, involving perhaps 5,000–6,000 chariots
So far as the religion is concerned the Hittites were polytheist, and it proves the
composite nature of their civilisation. Together with their own gods and goddesses they
had the deities with Hurrian and Mesopotamian origin; so much so that the Hittites were
known as the people of the thousand gods.
As for the military power, the Hittites had a well-disciplined, well-equipped, welltrained
regular army. The infantry of the Hittite army were more numerous than the
charioteers, but in open battle, which the Hittites generally sought, they played a
subordinate part. There was no cavalry, though occasionally messengers on horseback
were used to speed up the dispatching of messages.
THE QADESH TREATY
One of the most famous document is a peace treaty, written and signed after the Battle of
Qadesh, which took place between the Hittites and the Egyptians.
the Quadesh Treaty came to be known as the treaty of the “eternal peace” because it is the
earliest document to have as its main aim the establishment a “brotherhood”, in order to make
war between the two powers impossible and to try to guarantee peace and security in the
entire region.
The text of the treaty was in Akkadian and had been inscribed on clay tablets in
cuneiform.
This text was inscribed on the walls of Karnak Temple in Egypt is in Egyptian
hieroglyphics.
A copy of the Quadesh Treaty also adorns the walls of the United Nations Building, USA.
THE HITTITE COMMUNITY
The Hittites was a community which was ruled by a King.
the king who was at the same time, the commander of the army, supreme judicial authority,
and the chief priest, through he was never actually deified. In fact, the Hittite king, for the first
time in the history of the ancient east, possessed no divine attributes.
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Another peculiar feature of the Hittite monarchy is the strongly independent position
of the queen. She played a prominent part in affairs of state, and was regularly associated
with her husband in all state documents. The text of the Quadesh Treaty testifies that she
possessed her own official seal.
The most important and powerful positions around the King were
that of the Gal Mesedi (Chief of the Royal Bodyguards), the Gal Gestin (Chief of the Wine
Stewards), and the Gal Dubsar (Chief of the Scribes).
LANGUAGE
Whilst there were 8 different languages in this Empire, their main language is called Nesili (or
Hittite), though official documents are also found written in Akkadian
‘It remained in use until about 1100 BC. Hittite is the best attested member of the Anatolian
branch of the Indo-European language family.’
The language of the Hattusa tablets was eventually deciphered by a Czech linguist, Cedřich
Hrozný (1879–1952), who on 24 November 1915 announced his results in a lecture at the
Near Eastern Society of Berlin.
STORIES
Hittite religion and mythology were heavily influenced by their Hattic, Mesopotamian, and
Hurrian counterparts. In earlier times, Indo-European elements may still be clearly discerned.
Many of their most prominent Gods were called ‘Storm Gods’.
Tarhunt (Hurrian's Teshub) was referred to as 'The Conqueror', 'The king of Kummiya', 'King
of Heaven', 'Lord of the land of Hatti'. He was chief among the gods and his symbol is the bull.
As Teshub he was depicted as a bearded man astride two mountains and bearing a club. He
was the god of battle and victory, especially when the conflict involved a foreign power.[11]
Teshub was also known for his conflict with the serpent Illuyanka
Teshub is depicted holding a triple thunderbolt and a weapon, usually an axe (often doubleheaded) or mace. The sacred bull common throughout Anatolia was his signature animal,
represented by his horned crown or by his steeds Seri and Hurri, who drew his chariot or
carried him on their backs.
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MEMORY OF THE WORLD
THE HITTITE EMPIRE
QUESTION SHEET
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MEMORY OF THE WORLD
THE HITTITE EMPIRE
EXTENSION ACTIVITIES AND HOMEWORKS
TASK 1:
Choose a HITTITE momument/remain and do some research on it and present that research in
the form of a 5 slide powerpoint presentation.
Your slides should indicate clearly
a) WHAT: i.e; the name of the monument/remain you have chosen
b) WHERE: where in present day Turkey the monument/remain is located
c) WHEN: the date or period when the monument/remain was first built
d) WHY: give any other information you can about what this monument/remain was orginally
used for, who discovered it, why it is improtant etc.
To choose your monument, look at this website
http://www.hittitemonuments.com/
TASK 2 :
LOOK AT THE MAPS ON THE MR HISTORY WEBSITE PAGE DEDICATED TO THE
HITTITES (and also on the school Server) AND THEN WORK OUT WHAT PRESENT
DAY COUNTRIES THEY SUGGEST WERE PART OF THE HITTITE EMPIRE.
To helpo you with this you can also go to HITTITES.info
TASK 3 :
Red River is a manga about a fifteen-year-old Japanese girl named Yuri Suzuki, who is
magically transported to Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia. She was
summoned by Queen Nakia who means to use Yuri as a human sacrifice.As the story progress,
however, Yuri not only repeatedly manages to escape Nakia's scheming, she also becomes
revered as an incarnation of the goddess Ishtar and falls in love with prince Kail. The story
takes place during the reign of King Suppiluliuma I, at a time when the Hittite Empire was
near its peak of power, rivaled only by Egypt, which was then ruled by the young Pharaoh
Tutankhamen. Many of the people and events in the story are drawn from actual history, from
Princes Kail Mursili, Sari Arnuwanda, and Zannanza, to battles with the neighboring Mitanni
kingdom around the town of Kizzuwatna.
DRAW A CARTOON OF ONE VERSION OF THE FOLLOWING HITTITE LEGEND
WHICH IS CONTAINED IN ONE OF THESE FAMOUS CUNEFORM TABLETS
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VERSION 1
In the first version, the two gods fight and Illuyanka wins. Teshub then goes to the Hattian
goddess Inaras for advice. Having promised her love to a mortal named Hupasiyas in return
for his help, she devises a trap for the dragon. She goes to him with large quantities of food
and drink, and entices him to drink his fill. Once drunk, the dragon is bound by Hupasiyas
with a rope. Then the Sky God Teshub appears with the other gods and kills the dragon.
VERSION 2
In the second version, after the two gods fight and Teshub loses, Illuyanka takes Teshub's
eyes and heart. To avenge himself upon the dragon, the Sky God Teshub marries the goddess
Hebat, daughter of a mortal, named Arm. They have a son, Sarruma, who grows up and
marries the daughter of the dragon Illuyanka. The Sky God Teshub tells his son to ask for the
return of Teshub's eyes and heart as a wedding gift, and he does so. His eyes and heart
restored, Teshub goes to face the dragon Illuyanka once more. At the point of vanquishing the
dragon, Sarruma finds out about the battle and realizes that he had been used for this purpose.
He demands that his father take his life along with Illuyanka's, and so Teshub kills them both
with thundery rain and lightning. This version is illustrated on a relief which was discovered
at Malatya (dating from 1050-850 BC) and is on display in the Museum of Anatolian
Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey.
YOUTUBE VIDEOS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0PoG4xoLb8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxBMpMR4pqs