The Hittites

Lore & Background

Their empire peaked under Šuppiluliuma I in the mid-14th century BC, controlling most of Anatolia and parts of northern Syria and Upper Mesopotamia. Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC, they were a dominant power, clashing with Egypt, the Middle Assyrian Empire, and Mitanni. By the 12th century BC, much of their empire was annexed by the Middle Assyrian Empire, with the remainder sacked by Phrygian newcomers. During the Late Bronze Age collapse, the Hittites splintered into small states, some surviving until the 8th century BC before succumbing to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Their descendants scattered and merged into modern populations of the Levant and Mesopotamia.

Reader's Guide

The Hittites are significant as one of the first major Bronze Age civilizations in West Asia, known for their early Indo-European language, Hittite (nešili), which is the oldest historically attested Indo-European language. Their history is reconstructed from cuneiform texts found in their territories and from diplomatic archives across the ancient Near East. The decipherment of these texts was a key event in Indo-European studies. Scholars once attributed the development of iron-smelting to the Hittites, but this theory has been increasingly contested; most Bronze Age iron objects appear to be meteoritic. The Hittite military made successful use of chariots. Their legacy endures through archaeological discoveries and their role in the ancient Near Eastern power balance.

Did You Know?

• The Hittite language, called nešili by its speakers, is the oldest historically attested Indo-European language.
• The Hittites called their kingdom Hattusa, a name received from the earlier Hattian people.
• The modern name 'Hittites' comes from 19th-century identification with Biblical Hittites, a view now under academic scrutiny.
• The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara houses the world's most comprehensive exhibition of Hittite art and artifacts.

The Concentric Invasions and the Fall of Ḫattuša

By the time Tudḫaliya III ascended the throne, the Hittite realm was already under severe strain. The Kaška had been raiding and sacking sacred cities—Tapikka, Šarišša, and Šapinuwa—operating within roughly a hundred kilometres of the capital itself. Arnuwanda I managed only limited success in repelling them and even attempted to buy peace through payments, yet large portions of Ḫatti remained under Kaška control. The kingdom was, by all accounts, a fragile entity lacking the manpower and resources to mount a sustained defence. Then came what later Hittite scribes described as a coordinated conspiracy: multiple neighbours struck simultaneously. Arzawa seized vast stretches of territory the Hittites had held since their founding two centuries prior, while Isuwa sacked Kizzuwatna. The capital Ḫattuša was either sacked or simply abandoned. The royal court first relocated to Šapinuwa, where Tudḫaliya mounted a failed counterattack, before ultimately retreating to Šamuḫa. The holy city of Nerik also fell to the Kaška. The Hittite state stood on the very edge of total annihilation.

The Long Road to Reconquest

From the temporary capital at Šamuḫa, Tudḫaliya III launched a determined effort to reclaim every lost province. The campaign would stretch across two decades and ultimately required the energy of his successor to be completed. The nearest threats were struck first: the Kaška to the north and Hayasa-Azzi to the northeast. The Kaška were hit repeatedly, and once they were broken, the Hittites turned on Hayasa-Azzi, forcing a decisive confrontation at Kumaha. The outcome was a vassal treaty that bound Hayasa-Azzi back into the Hittite orbit. The western front proved far more stubborn. Arzawa, which had swallowed enormous tracts of ancestral Hittite land, resisted for considerably longer than the northern foes. By this stage Tudḫaliya was seriously ill and delegated command to Šuppiluliuma. The Hittites methodically recaptured key strongholds—Sallapare, Tuwanuwa, and Tarḫuntašša—but Arzawa's ruler Anzapahhadu still managed to rout the Hittite general Himuili in the 1350s BC. Only a final, personally led incursion by Šuppiluliuma brought the campaign to a close and restored Hittite dominance over the region.

Succession, Ambition, and the Making of a King

The wars left the throne in disarray. When Tudḫaliya III died, the succession was supposed to pass smoothly to the crown prince, Tudḫaliya the Younger. But Šuppiluliuma, whose military genius had been the engine behind the reconquest, felt deeply slighted at being passed over in favour of a younger heir who had contributed less to the recovery. With the backing of the army, he had the crown prince assassinated and seized the kingship for himself. The coup reshaped the empire's trajectory. Šuppiluliuma went on to become one of the most formidable military commanders in Hittite history, and the wars of survival had, paradoxically, forged a stronger state. The devastation of grain-lands and cities was gradually repaired through refortification and repopulation. Most significantly, the elimination of the Arzawan and Kaška threats freed up Hittite military resources and administrative energy, setting the stage for Šuppiluliuma's ambitious Syrian Campaign. The existential crisis of the 14th century thus became the crucible from which the empire's greatest military era emerged.

Diplomacy in Crisis: The Wider World Watches

The Hittite collapse did not occur in isolation; it rippled across the diplomatic landscape of the ancient Near East. The Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III reached out to the Arzawan ruler Tarḫuntaradu, hoping to open formal relations. The exchange was complicated by a practical obstacle: the Arzawans lacked a scribe literate in Akkadian, the standard diplomatic language of the great powers. The correspondence was therefore composed in Hittite, a language familiar to the Arzawan court, though the Egyptian scribes had to approximate it with noticeable grammatical errors. Two of these letters survive among the Amarna collection in Egypt. In one, Amenhotep remarks with evident alarm that he has heard everything is finished and the country of Ḫattuša is paralyzed. Meanwhile, the Kaška, whose relations with the Hittites had been tense even before the invasions, were later bound by treaties restricting them to trade in designated Hittite cities and forbidding them from pasturing their flocks on Hittite soil. These documents reveal a world in which even the most brutal military conflicts were ultimately followed by the quiet machinery of diplomacy.