1
MEMORY OF THE WORLD
NAME______
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 and 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 PHOTO)
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 HalysRiver.
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.
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 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 HalysRiver 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.
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
THE FINDING OF THE CUNEFORM TABLETS
Some 50 years after Charles Texier discovered Hattusa, William Wright, found a monument there on which there was some form of writing which no-one could read. The writing 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.
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.
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 Pierre-Francois 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 IstanbulArchaeologyMuseum, 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.
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 OrontesRiver, 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 KarnakTemple 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.
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 double-headed) 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.
MEMORY OF THE WORLD
THE HITTITE EMPIRE
EXTENSION ACTIVITIES AND HOMEWORKS
AFTER YOU HAVE ANSWERED THE QUESTIONS IN ALL OF THE QUIZZES MOVE ON TO THESE TASKS.
TASK 1:
BIOGRAPHIES
Write a short biography of any of the following people who have been involved with the discovery of this Hittite treasure.
Your biographical sketch should include the following information:
WHO
WHAT
WHERE
WHEN
Charles Texier
William Wright
Hugo Winckler
TASK 2:
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
TASK 3:
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 4:
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 PharaohTutankhamen. 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 FOLLOWINGHITTITE LEGEND WHICH IS CONTAINED IN ONE OF THESE FAMOUS CUNEFORM TABLETS
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