The Kingdom of the Hittites

Abstract

In 14th century BC, the Hittites became the supreme political and military power in the Near East. How did they achieve their supremacy? How successful were they in maintaining it? What brought about their collapse and disappearance? This book,which describes the Hittite kingdom, seeks to answer these questions. Hittitology is a relatively new discipline in the field of Near Eastern studies. Little more than a century ago, when important advances had already been and were continually being made in the study of the Bronze Age civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Hittites were regarded as no more than a small Canaanite tribe living somewhere in Palestine - an assumption based on a few scattered biblical references. We now know that Hatti, the kingdom of the Hittites, was one of the great powers of the Late Bronze Age, rivalling and eventually surpassing in the 14th century its two most powerful contemporaries, the kingdoms of Mitanni and Egypt. From their capital Hattusa in central Anatolia, the kings of the Land of Hatti controlled a widespread network of vassal states, which at the height of Hittite political and military development in the 14th and 13th centuries extended from the Aegean coast of Anatolia in the west through northern Syria to Damascus in the south, to the western fringes of Mesopotamia in the east.