Hittites
General Information
Hittites were nation which at the end of 3.millenium BC conquered middle and southern Asia (Turkey). In 2.millenium BC they made strong empire which in 1945 BC destroyed Babylon. Hittites took the writing from Babylonians and wrote many literature. About 1200 BC Hittite empire was ruined.
Religion
The Hittites adopted many of the gods of the Sumerians and Old Babylonians. The odd thing about the Hittites, though, is that they seemed to have recognised that all gods were legitimate gods. Whenever they conquered a people, they adopted that people's gods into their religious system.
As far as history is concerned, this has tremendous consequences for the history of the Hebrews. The Assyrians seem to have adopted the same tolerance towards other religions, which allowed the Jewish faith to persist after the Jewish state was decimated by the Assyrians. And the Assyrians seem to have adopted the same tendency to adopt the gods of conquered people, so the Assyrian conquerors of Palestine adopted the Hebrew god, Yahweh, into their religion. This eventually led to the only major religious schism in Hebrew history, the schism between Jews and Samaritans (there are still Samaritans alive today).
Language
Hittites have spoken a language from the Indo-European language family, which includes English, German, Greek, Latin, Persian, and the languages of India. Hittite tablets were excavated from the ruins of the ancient Hittite capital Hattusa located near the modern Turkish town of Boghazkšy about 210 km east of Ankara. Scientific excavation of these ruins were by a German expedition began in 1906. About 10,000 clay tablets script were recovered. Although some were written in the Akkadian language and could be read immediately, most were in an unknown language - Hittite language.
Within ten years the language had been deciphered. The number of common Hittite words were like one could translate with reasonable certainty increased steadily. Glossaries were published in 1936 by Edgar Sturtevant and in 1952 by Johannes. Today, seventy-five years after the decipherment, there still does not exists complete dictionary of the Hittite language.
The most famous kings
Mursilis
Tudhalyas
Suppilulimas
Gods
Hittites had many gods. For example:
• Uliliyassis
He is a minor god who, properly attended to, removes impotence.
• Kurunta?
This god's symbol is the stag. He is associated with rural areas.
• Kubaba
She is the chief goddess of the Neo-Hittites, she became Cybebe to the Phrygians and Cybele to the Romans.
• Yarris
He is a god of pestilence. A festival was held for him every autumn.
History of Hittites
During the second millennium BC lived the nation called Hittites, who spoke an Indo-European language, ruled over the 'Land of Hatti', in central and eastern Anatolia, that is modern Turkey. They had displaced the previous occupants, the Hattians, and ruled from the city of Hattusas near the modern Boghazkoy in northern central Turkey, possibly as early as 1900 BC.
Much of the Cappadocian plateau was under their control through kingdoms before 1800 BC and they profit from the thriving trade with the Assyrians. Around 1800 BC Anittas and his father Pitkhanas of Kussara sacked several Hittite cities, including Hattusas, though Anittas laid a curse upon that city and trade broke off until the founding of the Old Kingdom under King Labarnas around 1680 BC. He and his descendants greatly expanded the region of Hittite control, crossing the Taurus mountains and waging war on Syria and Assyria. King Mursilis (about 1620 to 1590 BC), Labarnas' grandson by adoption, brought down the Old Kingdom of Babylon - Hammurabi's dynasty. This expanded realm, also stretching to Anatolia's west coast, proved to susceptible to internal power struggles. In 1525 BC, Telepinus, last king of the Old Kingdom seized control and sacrificed some of the Western districts and all of the territory east of the Taurus mountains in favour of a more easily managed kingdom.
The Hurrians occupied the land between the Hittites and Assyria, having descended from the mountains south of the Caspian Sea. They ruled the kingdom of Mitanni. In the late 15th century BC the Hittite empire's beginning is marked by an influx of Hurrian names into the royal family. Tudhalyas I (1420 BC) reunited Western Anatolia under Hittite rule, and retook Aleppo but lost the Black Sea coast to the Kasha tribes. After some difficulty with the Mittani the Hittites resurged under King Suppilulimas around 1344-1322 taking a firmer hold on Syria. With Egypt, they dominated the lands of Canaan and the Levant during the 1200's. Their prosperity came to a sudden end when the invasion of the Sea Peoples coincided with increasing trouble from the Kaskas. While Hittite culture continued through about 700 BC, the Empire was shattered into several kingdoms and pressures such as the growing Assyrian Empire helped keep it from uniting again.
The Hittites were a patriarchal, highly agricultural society. They had rich iron deposits which they mined and traded with the Assyrians. They also used it for weaponry and were rather successful in the use of a three-man chariot. Through trade and conquest the languages and cultures of their neighbours seeped into Hittite society. Babylonian and Hurrian deities were worshiped along-side or assimilated with the native Hittite deities. This merging of cultures and free use of foreign languages is rather fortuitous. Parallel Hittite and Akkadian treaties and similar texts helped in cracking the Hittite hieroglyphic code. Unfortunately, while the ability to translate Hittite hieroglyphics has improved, the pronunciation of several Hittite ideograms, and hence their transcription into English, remains elusive. Often, as in the case with the Storm-god, we must resort to a descriptive name, or else use the appropriate Hurrian or Akkadian name.
Archaeological excavations
Archaeologists found Hittite statues of the Sky God and Goddess Tesub and Hepet , which are on this picture :
Also they found clay desks. They deciphered they writing.
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