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, last known king of the Hittite Empire]] ''Hittites'' is the conventional English-language term for an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European Language and established a kingdom centered in Hattusa (Hittite URU'''') in north-central Anatolia from the 18th Century BC . In the 14th Century BC , the '''Hittite Empire''' was at its height, encompassing central Anatolia , north-western Syria as far as Ugarit , and upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC , the empire disintegrated into several independent " Neo-Hittite " city-states, some of which survived until as late as the 8th century. The term Hittites is taken from the KJV translation of the Hebrew bible, translating ''HTY'', or ''BNY-HT'' "Children of Heth ". The archaeologists who discovered the Anatolian Hittites in the 19th century initially identified them with these Biblical Hittites . Today, their identification with either the Hittite Empire proper or the Neo-Hittite kingdoms is a matter of dispute. The Hittite kingdom, or at least its core region, was apparently called Hatti in the Hittite Language . However, the Hittites should be distinguished from the " Hattians ", an earlier people who inhabited the same region until the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, and spoke a non-Indo-European language conventionally called Hattic . The native term of the Hittite language was ''Nesili'', the language of Nesa , the seat of the Hittite kings before the conquest of Hattusa . The Hittites were also famous for their skill in building and using Chariot s. The Hittites were pioneers of the Iron Age , manufacturing Iron artifacts from as early as the 14th Century BC , making them possibly even the first to do so. ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY ]] The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at the Assyria n colony of Kültepe (ancient Karum Kanesh ), 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 script on a monument at Boğazköy by a "People of Hattusas" discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar Hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo and Hamath in Northern Syria. In 1887 , excavations at Tell El- Amarna in Egypt uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton . Two of the letters from a "kingdom of ''Kheta''" -- apparently located in the same general region as the Mesopotamian references to "land of ''Hatti''" -- were written in standard Akkadian Cuneiform Script , but in an unknown language; although scholars could read it, no one could understand it. Shortly after this, Archibald Sayce proposed that ''Hatti'' or ''Khatti'' in Anatolia was identical with the "kingdom of ''Kheta''" mentioned in these Egypt ian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Sayce's identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century; and the name "Hittite" has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy. During sporadic excavations at Boğazköy (Hattusa) that began in 1905 , the archaeologist Hugo Winckler found a royal archive with 10,000 tablets, inscribed in cuneiform Akkadian and the same unknown language as the Egyptian letters from ''Kheta'' — thus confirming the identity of the two names. He also proved that the ruins at Boğazköy were the remains of the capital of a mighty empire that at one point controlled northern Syria. The language of the Hattusa tablets was eventually deciphered by a Czech linguist, Bedřich Hrozný ( 1879 – 1952 ), who on 24 November 1915 announced his results in a lecture at the Near Eastern Society of Berlin. His book about his discovery was printed in Leipzig in 1917 , with the title ''The Language of the Hittites; Its Structure and Its Membership in the Indo-European Linguistic Family''. The preface of the book begins with: The present work undertakes to establish the nature and structure of the hitherto mysterious language of the Hittites, and to decipher this language {Link without Title} It will be shown that Hittite is in the main an Indo-European language. For this reason, the language came to be known as the Hittite Language , even though that was not what its speakers had called it. The Hittites themselves apparently called their language and people "Neshili" and hence it has been suggested that the more technically correct term, "Neshite", be used instead. Nonetheless, convention continues and "Hittite" remains the standard term used. Under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute , excavations at Hattusa have been underway since 1932 , with wartime interruptions. Kültepe has been successfully excavated by late Professor Tahsin Özgüç (died in 2005) since 1948. LANGUAGE See Also: Hittite language The Hittite language was called by them "Nesili", and is recorded fragmentarily from about the 19th Century BC (in the Kultepe texts, see '' Ishara ''). It remained in use until about 1100 BC . Hittite is the best attested member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European Language Family . Due to marked differences in its structure and phonology some early Philologists , most notably Warren Cowgill even argued that it should be classified as a sister language to the Indo-European languages, rather than a daughter language (see Indo-Hittite ). By the end of the Hittite Empire, the Hittite language had become a written language of administration and diplomatic correspondence. The population of most of the Hittite Empire by this time spoke Luwian dialects, another Indo-European language of the Anatolian family that had originated to the West of the Hittite region. The later Lydian Language appears to be directly descended from Hittite rather than from Luwian. GEOGRAPHY The Hittite kingdom was centered around the lands surrounding Hattusa and Nesa , known as "the land Hatti " (URU''Ha-at-ti''). After Hattusa was made capital, the area encompassed by the bend of the Halys River was considered the core of the Empire, and some Hittite laws make a distinction between "this side of the river" and "that side of the river", for example, the reward for the capture of an eloped slave after he managed to flee beyond the Halys is higher than that for a slave caught before he could reach the river. To the south of the core territory was the land of Kizzuwatna in the area of the Taurus Mountains . To the west, the confederacy of Arzawa . To the north, the mountain people of the Kaskians . To the east, the Mitanni . After the incorporation or association of Arzawa and Mitanni (under Suppiluliuma I ), the Hittite sphere of influence under Mursili II bordered on the Hayasa-Azzi to the east, on the Ahhiyawa and the newly-forming Assuwa confederacy to the west, on Egypt -controlled Canaan to the south, and on Assyria to the south-east. HISTORY See Also: History of the Hittites The Hittite kingdom is conventionally divided into three periods, the Old Hittite Kingdom (ca. 1750 – 1500 BC ), the Middle Hittite Kingdom (ca. 1500– 1430 BC ) and the New Hittite Kingdom (the Hittite Empire proper, ca. 1430– 1180 BC ). The earliest known Hittite King , Pithana , was based at Kussara . Anitta in the 18th century BC conquered Nesa , where the Hittite kings had their capital for about a century until Labarna II conquered Hattusa and took the throne name of Hattusili "man of Hattusa". The Old Kingdom, centered at Hattusa, peaked during the 16th century, and even managed to sack Babylon at one point, but made no attempt to govern there, choosing instead to turn it over to the domination of their Kassite allies who were to rule it for over 400 years. During the 15th century, Hittite power fell into obscurity, re-emerging with the reign of Tudhaliya I from ca. 1400 BC . Under Suppiluliuma I and Mursili II , the Empire was extended to most of Anatolia and parts of Syria and Canaan , so that by 1300 the Hittites were bordering on the Egyptian sphere of influence, leading to the inconclusive Battle Of Kadesh in the early 13th century. Civil war and rivalling claims to the throne, combined with the external threat of the Sea Peoples weakened the Hittites and by 1160 BC , the Empire had collapsed. " Neo-Hittite " post-Empire states, petty kingdoms under Assyria n rule, may have lingered on until ca. 700 BC , and the Bronze Age Hittite and Luwian dialects evolved into the sparsely attested Lydian , Lycian and Carian languages. Remnants of these languages lingered into Persian times and were finally extinct by the spread of Hellenism . MYTHOLOGY See Also: Hittite mythology Hittite religion and mythology was heavily influenced Mesopotamian Mythology , increasingly so as history progressed. In earlier times, Indo-European elements may still be clearly discerned, for example Tarhunt the god of thunder, and his conflict with the serpent Illuyanka . BIBLICAL HITTITES See Also: Hittites in the Bible As mentioned above, the term "Hittites" is an Exonym , taken from the Hebrew Bible Heth , chosen because of the similarity in name to " Hatti ", and also because the Biblical Hittites are said to be a great power who dwell "in the mountains" and "towards the north" of Canaan. Since the Hebrew Bible was redacted well after the fall of the Hittite Empire, some scholars assume that the Biblical references may be to " Neo-Hittite " Luwian polities. LITERATURE
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