The Ancients - The Hittites

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

What made the Hittites one of the great Bronze Age powers, and how did their empire survive on war, diplomacy and faith? Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Elena Devecchi to uncover ancient royal intrigue, lavish festivals, the 'Thousand God', and the world’s oldest known peace treaty. From Hattusha’s immense lion gates to secret archives and sacking Babylon, it’s a dramatic deep dive into an empire that once stretched as far as Troy.MOREThe Bronze CollapseListen on Apple Listen on SpotifyTower of BabelListen on Apple Listen on SpotifyPresented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. 3,000 years ago, and the late Bronze Age world of the Near East is awash with remarkable powers. You have the Babylonians and the Assyrians in Mesopotamia, the Mycenaeans in Greece, the Minoans in Crete, the thriving kingdom of Egypt along the River Nile. And in central Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, was another power, a kingdom that had risen to become one of the major players of the late Bronze Age. The Hittites. Now, we know them as the Hittites because of their language, the oldest recorded Indo-European language in the world.

A vast wealth of their documents have survived, giving us this fascinating insight into who the Hittites were and how they ruled their empire, an empire that at its height stretched from Syria to potentially as far west as Troy. The Hittites ruled over a multi-ethnic, empire. They themselves appear to have migrated into Anatolia during the earlier Bronze Age, but when and from where exactly, we're not exactly sure. It's debated. But that is one of many

fascinating parts of the Hittite story that we're covering today with our guest, Dr. Elena Devecci, Associate Professor at the University of Turin. Elena, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Hi, thank you very much for the invitation. And to give us a a wonderful introduction to the Hittites. It's about time we covered the story of the Hittites on the ancients. So do we have a sense from the surviving material that they came into Anatolia from elsewhere, that they weren't originally from Anatolia? Is that the sense we're getting? Yeah, well, that's mainly because of the language they spoke, which belonged to the Indo-European family, but is not one of the local Anatolian languages. We know of other languages. We know of other

languages that are associated with groups of people who probably were originally there before they came. But the impression, I mean, of course, it's a history made of many conflicts and wars, but the impression is that they did not, say, took over Anatolia brutally, but arrived and integrated also in a way with a local population. Yes, which makes sense. And cast aside this idea that they come in and kill everyone. And then there's no. no local population left as it was, yeah. No, no, no, no. That's not the case.

I mean, we don't know exactly where they came from. Some have suggested from the region between, more or less, the Caspian and the Black Sea, probably following trade routes, but without the sources, written sources, telling us the story, it's difficult to know. And what we see is that there were, I mean, from sources coming from Syria, from the third millennium already, that there were already people with Hittite names or Indo-European names. But they started writing later than other Mesopotamian or ancient nefarist and cultures. Well, you mentioned sources there, Elena, and so that particular source from Syria and Mesopotamia,

but what types of sources do we have surviving to learn about the Hittites and what we know about them today? Yeah. Well, we have actually thousands of cuneiform tablets, so plate tablets, written mostly in the cuneiform script from the Hittite capital, Hatusha. And Atusha is nowadays a small city, village, 160 kilometers east of Ankara in Turkey. The archaeologists found the royal archives, temple archives, and really in thousands of tablets. So that's the biggest discovery, textual discovery, from Hittite site, but other Hittite.

cities also yielded tax resources and also the archives from Syrian kingdoms that at a certain point were controlled by the Thaitites can contribute to reconstruct the history of the Hittite kingdom and even the Amarna letters

from Egypt. So it's a lot of documents, a lot of correspondence and you mentioned that amazing archive from Hatusha which we are certainly going to delve into. It almost feels like we did an episode several months ago on the Library of Ashibana Pal at Nineveh, so it feels similar the amount of information we're going to garner from those surviving tablets. But before we get to that, Elena, a bit more on the whole structure of the Hittite state. When the Hittites have come into Anatolia and they've established

themselves in the region, how do they rule? Should we be thinking of Hittite kings at the top? Absolutely. The Hittite kingdom was a monarchy, basically. And the king was the highest politically military, judicial and religious authority. So, I mean, the king was the highest authority of the state in all aspects. And of course, I mean, it wasn't ruling alone. Either other members of the royal family, even the queen, had an important function, especially in religious matters, but not only. I mean, some queens were very active also in what we call foreign affairs nowadays.

and of course the heir to the throne, princess and other dignitaries. And especially, I mean, this might be something that has been, say, inherited by the Hittite kingdom from the earliest phases of its history. At the beginning, it was a very small kingdom, and it had to negotiate with other local powers. And especially in the very early phases, the power was not necessarily transmitted only, within one family, but it could be, let's say, decided that it was, let's say, the next

king would come from another family of a powerful family of the region. Then the Hittites become the most important family, let's say, the most important kingdom. And then the power tends to remain within the dynasty. Right. So within that dynasty, but we need to imagine also other kind of prominent noble families factions at court. So potentially sometimes can we imagine that there were pretty violent struggles for power? It wasn't always smooth successions. No, no, no. It wasn't always smooth.

And for some moments of a tight history where I know quite well that things didn't go smoothly. And we had fights for power within the royal family. Things would depose the predecessor. and people die in it. They died court and conspiracies. That's something that happened very often, not only, of course, in the that kingdom. It's history of Mesopotamian courts, more or less.

But it's great. And that one of the things that I think attracts so many people to the Bronze Age is the fact that you have all of these great stories surviving of conspiracies, of plots from the documents. I mean, do we have any surviving examples of a great conspiracy or plot in the Hittite kingdom of one figured trying to rise to power? Oh, yeah.

One actually managed to rise to power. It was King Hattosir III, and his predecessor was his nephew. And he managed to rule for a few years. And then Hattosili, yeah, took power, rose to power. And he was, basically, Hato Sidi was his uncle. The uncle, yes. The scheming uncle. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. And then his nephew went to, well, run away, went into exile. And probably was for a while at the Egyptian court. That's where he's at refuge. Right. So Hattasili wrestles power from his young nephew. The nephew flees and Hattu Sili is able to rule in his stead.

And that's just one of the plots, one of the conspiracy, one of the stories of a Hittite ruler gaining power that we have surviving. Absolutely. I mean, Atosite was afterwards a very successful king and also he ruled for a very long time. It's the one who signed a famous peace treaty with Egypt with Rameses II. And actually, the time after this treaty was signed and it corresponds more or less with the time of Hatucid's reign has been dubbed Pax Hittitica because, I mean, finally Egypt and the Hittites were, the biggest powers in the Western Asia, Anatolia, Syria, the Levant and Egypt, after decades of fighting each other, managed to make peace.

It's a great story of that, and I think they have a copy of it at the United Nations headquarters, often dubbed like the oldest known peace treaty in the world, Hatticelli and Ramesses the Great. So we have the kings at the top, Elena, and you have these powerful noble families around. What else do we know about the social structure, the social hierarchy? hierarchy of the Hittite kingdom, of the people who are often overshadowed by the surviving records, everyday people? What we know, of course, depends on the sources.

And most of the sources from Hattusha and the other Hittite archives deal mainly to a large degree with religion and either a description organization of religious festivals, rituals, and broadly speaking religion. And those give us a lot of details about religious life, not necessarily so much about people, but I don't know how many thousands of people mentioned in the sources. And since we had mainly official archives from either the court or temples, the people we see are mainly people dealing with the court in some ways, either members of the royal families or dignitaries. members of the army. And you can reconstruct the hierarchy among these people, courtiers and dignitaries, messengers you have very often priests, of course.

So, I mean, what is difficult sometimes is to distinguish one people from another because we have a lot of namesakes. And so sometimes you're not sure whether someone called the a certain name is always the same person across different sources. Do we also get intellectuals? Are they looking at the stars, like these other Bronze Age powers, like astronomers as well, in the surviving records? Yeah, that's something we don't know very well for the Hittite word.

I mean, we have, of course, they were interested in that and also concerned with ominous signs. So we have mentions of eclipsis, for instance. But for instance, that is something we know from historical sources from the annals of some kings. And I mean, there is a lot of texts about divination and different divinatory techniques, but less astronomy that what you know from, let's say, later archives from Mesopotamia. So you mentioned earlier how the Hittite kingdom is called its capital, Hattusha. So we should be imagining a kingdom that does have these urban centres,

these cities and presumably these people that are being mentioned in the surviving archives are living in those cities near the world family. So do we have any indication at all about the silent majority, the farmers, the everyday people who are living outside of the city walls and living off the land? Yeah, yeah. Well, we have lists of workers or mentions of different types of either farmers. The Itight economy was based on agriculture. and livestock. It was the basin, the most important sector, but also, of course, what you could call the secondary production, for instance, textile industry. That's, I mean, a traditional economy of a Mesopotamian kingdom. So we have mentions of different types of

artisans, like potters. You have names and professions. We know that the Hittite countryside side was, I'd say, dotted by villages because there are so many toponyms in the Hittite sources. I mean, of course, most of the times it's difficult, if not impossible, to associate it with an archaeological site. But Hattusha wasn't the only site that has been excavated. And the royal family and the kingdom, the royal family didn't only live in Hattusha. They had other royal residences. And at a certain point, the capital was even moved to the south of Anatolia for a while.

So we can imagine almost not an itinerant, but the king and the royal family going around the kingdom, doing their duties as it was in that central Anatolian region. Exactly. And one of the important duty was taking part in religious festivities. The king being also the high priest of the state with the queen and other members. of the royal family or the court would basically travel through the kingdom to take part into these celebrations, religious celebrations, that could last weeks. And of course, in this way, they were present on the territory, and at the same time, they would take care of other duties. Well, exactly, that may think, do you think that actually the Hittite royal family, in the

grand scale of things, they were actually pretty visible for everyday people in the Hittite world, farmers, for shepherds and so on, if they're hearing that they're going to be attending certain festivals around the kingdom in that area? Yeah, in those kind of situations, yes. And we know from, because as I said, many texts describe these festivals. We know that there were dances on these occasions, of course. I mean, religious celebrations that involved music and dance and singers. And that was a kind of a way to state.

also the power of the king and to show in their power not only to celebrate the gods. And the king would also spend and invest a lot into taking care of temples and offerings. So they depended to large degree from the kings and from the state. So these kind of events, these big ceremonies where people will gather, lots of music, lots of celebrations, lots of decorations, very lavish, but also, yeah, to honour the gods, but also, I guess, giving out of donations to everyday people who are there as well, kind of bread and circuses, once again, that idea of the king at the top, but also someone, you know, keeping on the right side of the everyday people.

Yeah, yeah, somehow. And, I mean, I think those were the moments where the king was more visible, as you were saying, not necessarily in the Hittite capital where there is the citadel with the royal palace and other buildings related to the administration. And otherwise, in the low town of Hattusha, there were a lot of temples. And we assumed that other noble families didn't necessarily leave all in the capital. So the capital is quite big. The city walls over like seven kilometers or something like that. And it hasn't been excavated extensively yet, but probably other noble families live around the city, not necessarily in the city, in the capital, next to the king,

let's say. So, lots of archaeological work has been done at Titusia. So do we actually know, from what you were saying there, Elena, do we know quite a lot about the layout of this big Hittite city? Yeah. It has been excavated since the beginning of the 20th century. Wow. Okay. So the excavations at Atatra has been going on for a while now. The first mission was a German mission, and still is excavated by the German Archaeological Institute.

Of course, now with Turkish colleagues. So they work there every year, and they expose temples and other buildings belonging to the citadel, so the royal palace and other. administrative buildings, I would say. It's easier in a way to excavate at Hatusha and some other Anatolian sites compared to, let's say, Southern Mesopotamia, because they built a lot with the stone. So at least the plan of many buildings is relatively easy to recognize. And even now, if you visit Hatusha, you could easily recognize the shape of buildings. The shape of the city, the shape of the is determined by, of course, the morphology of the site, which is quite rocky, with different

levels. So that's why you have a sort of acropolis or a citadel, a royal citadel, and then the low town. And there's walls that were defensive walls, of course, with important gates that gave access to the town. And other structures of the Hittite kingdom, the Itait territory, especially religious structures, were open-air sanctuaries. Again, kind of using the morphology of the landscape of the treachery, so using creeks and stone walls that would be then decorated with reliefs,

and they would also build structures next to it. But somehow kind of using the natural elements that were then monumentalized. Right. So kind of a beautiful open-air. area becomes a sacred site, like sacred groves and the like, that idea to understand, yes. And also you mentioned there, what I found really interesting is why the archaeology is so good surviving from Hattushik, like, yes, in Mesopotamia, mud brick buildings that survive, but further north in Anatoli with the Hittites, they're building their foundations out of stone,

and the stone is more durable than mud brick over that time. And so that's why you have more of the layout of a place like Hattusha compared to U, or a rook, or somewhere like that in Euphrates. First of all, on those open-air sanctuaries, someone might think of the word a paradise, or the great gardens of the Bronze Age in Assyria, Babylon, hang gardens, for instance. Can we imagine that the Hittites were also very invested in the idea

of those open, beautiful, garden-like spaces? Hmm, garden-like. No, I mean, what they often, these open-air sanctuaries, had ponds and kind of pountains. So that was another natural beauty. That were built in some cases. I mean, there were not, let's say, natural ponds, but they would build kind of pountains next to these sanctuaries.

So water played an important role in their, let's say, cultic activities and celtic spaces. And we've mentioned words like rituals, cults, temples. So it begs the question, do we know much about Hittite religion, about the types of gods that they worshipped? Yeah, we know a lot because indeed many sources talk about religion and gods are mentioned basically everywhere. There is an expression that you find in Hittite text calling them the thousand god of the Hittite country. The thousand gods, did you say? Yeah.

The thousand god, okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we know that some were the major gods, the most important gods. gods were a divine solar goddess, the sun god Varina, and then the storm god. So those were, say, the most important gods of the Hittite pantheon. But the Hittites tend to integrate gods from the regions. So they come into contact from Anatolia and even other countries. So that's why the pantheon becomes very big. And yeah, the thousand gods. of the Hittites.

And especially, for instance, in the treaties, you have a very long list of gods from the Hittite pantern, and then they also include gods of the counterpart with whom they conclude the treaty were summoned at the end of the treaty as witnesses to the treaty. And the gods were,

those who would guarantee that the treaty was rest, respected and punish those who wouldn't respect the treaty. And then there, for instance, you have a very long list of gods from different cities in Anatolia and gives you an idea of how big and diverse was the pantheon. No wonder they start saying that they have a thousand gods. And it's also so interesting what you're saying, Elena, there with the goddess of the sun, the god of storms being like the chief deities,

and going back to what we mentioned earlier about what you're saying, how the Hittites they come in from elsewhere, they're not removing the local population, it's integration. So I guess could you potentially imagine, maybe this is just theory, but the Hittites when they come in, they have the Storm God, they have the Sun Goddess

and then they integrate all of these local gods, deities, into their pantheon as time goes on? Yeah, the Sun Goddess was probably especially the Sun Goddess of Arena, which is the hypothesis of the Sun god which is venerated by the Hittites, which is the most important goddess of the Italian

pantheon, was probably a local cult. And I mean, the sun god, the storm god, these are all natural elements and that's in a way universal, of course. I mean, the Sarm god is very important also in Syria, even in Mesopotamia. So it's not, let's say, a prerogative of the Hittite panty. And then each cultural civilization would give it a different name and would have a slightly different features. But that's something shared by these populations. Understood. And do we have any sense,

any idea of the rituals around these deities? Should we be thinking of sacrifices and offerings being the central areas? Yeah, especially we know about the libations. So that was, of course, part of the ritual and also the king and the queen. performing this unripo, especially for the most important gods of the country. Going back to what you were saying earlier about the royal family having important religious duties at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's also part of not only Hittite, but the Mesopotamian idea of kingship depending from the gods and needing divine support and favor. So you would be very careful in taking care of the gods. properly. Well, let's get towards that archive, but before we arrive at those archives and those documents, if anyone types in Hattusha today, you mentioned the walls, but perhaps the most iconic photo is of that particular gate, which has those lion statues either side. So, do we know much about the importance of lions to the Hittites and this particular structure?

I have the lions. I mean, the lion was important because it's a symbol of kingship. It's sometimes mentioned in the text as a metaphor, an animal symbolism for the king. So in that sense, I mean, having lions represented is in a way a representation of kingship. Then you have the other main gates with a human figure that is usually understood as a king or as a representation of the king, not necessarily specific one, and then the sphinx gates. So, yeah, the iconography of the sphinx is widespread, especially in the Levant, and in the area that came in contact with Egypt. Ah, so a lion gate, a king gate and a sphinx gate. Ah, okay. And so if we go up to the palace, to the citadel, was that where this archive,

this incredible archive, was discovered? Not all of them. I mean, some come from temples, especially the main temple, what is called Temple One, with the labels give it to by the archaeologists. The thing is, many of these texts, especially the biggest discoveries date to the very first campaigns. At that time, as it happened in also many other sites of Mesopotamia, the archaeologists were not as careful as we would like to be to record the exact fine spot of the tablets. So sometimes, I mean, especially in later excavations, they would still find fragments of tablets that were inerted in previous excavations, in previous years in the, say, dump of the earlier excavations. So in many cases, we know that the tablet comes from Temple One, for instance, but not exactly where it was kept in the temple, assuming that it would have been possible to understand

it from the archaeological excavation. These information are often missing. Of course, now it's very different. I mean, archaeologists started working in a much more careful way, but the first campaigns were not recorded that well. The first campaigns is in when the Hittites first come into Anatolia. Is that what I mean? No, no, no, sorry, the first archaeological campaigns.

Oh, the first archaeological campaigns. At the beginning of the archaeological investigations of Hapusha. In the early 20th century. Exactly, exactly. Got it understood. Well, let's have a look at some of the contents that have been discovered in this archive. I mean, first of all, regarding documents that talk about the Hittites state a bit more and its structure. because have they revealed quite a lot about Hittite laws, about their legal code?

The Hittites are one of the two, let's say, cultures of the ancient arist who wrote a law code. Yeah, we have a low code with different versions of it. So it was rewritten and changed a bit over time. and, well, it's not our only source about the tight law and judicial administration, but it's an important source, and it's phrased in a way similar to the more famous Hamurabi code, where all the norms are phrased as hypothetical sentences. If this and this happen, then this will be the consequence, the punishment, and so on. A law code.

That's how most locales from Mesopotamia are praised. And that's also the case with the Hittite laws. Also in other cases, they cover different aspects of Hittite life from what we would now call, let's say, family law, civil law. That's the reason why we try to avoid using the word code, refer to these ancient collections of laws because it isn't as systematic as our modern law codes. Is there anything similar in that law code? I won't say law code.

Is there anything similar in those Hittite laws to an eye for an eye, or the classic thing that people think about with Hamerabi? Yeah, kind of. But you see some differences in the administration of justice. And this is something that, for instance, you find also in a letter by Itite king, actually, again, Atosir the Third, writing to a Babylonian king was complaining about some Babylonian merchants being killed in the Hittite territory. And Hattu City would answer, no, I mean, in the Hittite territory, we don't even kill a murder as a punishment. And so it's highly that they would kill emergence. Yeah.

I mean, Hittites tend to use often fines. No, no, no, but I understand. So with Hittite laws, is it very much a death penalty, a death punishment is not something you see. It's more fines or some other type of punishment. Okay, wrongdoing. But you mentioned there also, which leads us on nicely to correspondence with other powers in the Bronze Age.

We've talked with your good friend Dr. Amanda, we've talked with your good friend Dr. Amanda Padani in the past about these kind of brotherhood of kings and how they interacted with each other. And so were the Hittites very much part of this? Did they have a lot of correspondence with neighboring kings, whether that's in Babylonia or in Egypt or elsewhere? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, the time when the Hittite kingdom becomes, what some call an empire, in the late 14th century and then through the 13th century, it was a time when the engineers was divided among great powers. And they were in contact with each other, and they also fostered these contacts very much through the exchange of letters, for instance, and so the exchange of messengers that went together

with the exchange of goods and gifts, but also of experts, for instance, and of princesses. Princesses? Ah, okay. Yeah, because a way to maintain a good relationship, so at least to try to build and consolidate alliances were interdynastic marriages.

So we know of the type princesses were given to, for instance, the pharaoh, but also to the small kings, so subordinate kings, because that was seen as a way to guarantee that the next generation, so the heir to the throne, being born to a tight princess, would be raised into the Itite culture, educated to the Hittite language and traditions, and that would be likely a more loyal vassal. So it would be a way to guarantee that the next generation of subordinate ruler would be loyal to the Hittite kingdom.

So this is strengthening of alliances and stability of these empires. Yeah. And also the Hittite kings would marry foreign. Did they? It would go both ways. And there's cases of Egyptian princesses going to the Hittite kings and being married to a Hittite king as well? Or is it the other way around? Never.

Never. Egyptian princesses never live Egypt. Right. So they were saying like, yes, we will take a Hittite princess, but you're not having one of ours. Okay. Yeah, yeah. There is this famous letter, I don't know, perhaps Amanda quoted it or mentioned it by a Babylonian king writing to the pharaoh and complaining about the fact that he would not give an Egyptian princess in marriage to him. And it's funny because it goes on saying, well, I mean, just send me a woman. As long as she's pretty, who would know that she's not a princess? Gosh.

It didn't get not even a nice-looking woman from Egypt. It gives you an insight into that kind of diplomatic nature of these correspondences that the Hittites were very much part of. I mean, how did, from the archive we have from Hattusha, Elena, how did Hittite kings, how did they correspond with foreign kings? How did they talk with them in these documents? Well, we have a pretty large dossier of letters of the correspondence between Rameses II and Atosid the third and also the queen, Houdouhepa, the Hittite queen.

She was also corresponding with Ramses I second because that was in the wake of the Kadesh battle when the two kingdoms were trying to come to good terms. And so they were somehow, let's say, handling and in a way literally bargaining the dowry of the Hittite princesses who would marry Ramses'i. second and at the same time defining the terms of the alliance. And what I always find interesting in these letters is that, I mean, if you think of, I assume I never read a letter between two precedents of two modern states, and nowadays how they phrase their correspondence.

But I imagine it always being very official, at least the official letters, they write to each other. But these kings were addressing very different issues and sometimes also being very rude in a way and also very frankly speaking to each other and trying to do the best that they could and get the best they could from this contact, from this interaction with other kingdoms. And what language are they using in these tablets when they're exchanging these sometimes quite abrupt, quite rude messages with each other? Although Itte was the official language of the Hittite state, these letters were written in Acadian.

Acadian was used as the lingua franca, you would say, to correspond among kingdoms. And people whose mother tongue was different, of course. But they kind of agreed a certain point, we don't know how, of course, but to use Akkadian as a common language. And Acadian, written in Babylonia, in Assyria, in Egypt, or in the Hittite kingdom was a bit different because often, especially in these regions where it was in the regional language of the scribes, and you can see a lot of influence and interference of their mother tongue, but they were still, let's say, good enough to understand each other.

Right. So the Hittite scribes serving the Hittite king and queen, they have to learn this Linguar-Franka diplomatic language Acadian to interact with these other kings, which is another fascinating part. Elena, we need to explore some of these really interesting examples. You've mentioned already the one, you know, after the Bast of Kadesh between the Hittites and the Egyptians,

before the peace treaty we mentioned earlier, how there's the bargaining between the Hittite king and queen and Ramsey's the Great over the Hittai Princess going to Egypt and the dowry. What other great stories are there from this archive that you have a particular love of that you'd love to tell us? One letter I like to read for myself and also with the students is a very long letter written by Joseph to see the third to the Babylonian king. and that's also because my other big area of research are the cassides, the dynasty ruling Babylonia at this time, so the other great kings of the time. And we have this very long letter.

We don't have so many letters between Hatti and Babylonia from this period, but this one is very long and it gives us a lot of information about also the time, before this letter was written. So they often refers to events and facts that took place earlier. And so they often are very important sources for us to reconstruct the history of these kingdoms or their relationships. And in this letter, Atosid, who must have been already, I'd say, quite old, certainly not at the beginning of his brain, is writing to the Babylonian king who is much younger. And Atosid refers to the good relationships he had with the father of the current Babylonian king,

probably also quoting passages from a treaty that we don't have. I mean, despite the thousands of tablets founded Tatusha, we should always account for a lot of missing evidence. And sometimes the texts we have, I mean, are clear evidence for what we are missing, because they referred to texts that were not discovered, and it's unlikely that would be discovered one day. So he's quoting passages from what seemed to be a treaty of an alliance between the Hittites and the Babylonians,

and is complaining about the fact that a vice sort of vizier probably at the Babylonian court was very, yeah, unfriendly, of course, I had to see him while the Babylonian king was still very young, probably. So his vizier was probably running the kingdom for him while it was still young, and it was very unfriendly toward the Hittites. So he's complaining about the past regent of Babylon that he was being rude to me, like I should have been treated better. Yeah, exactly, right.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We must have the tablets I sent to your first. father and even to this regent. And so go and ask your scribes to read them to you because, of course, they were not able to write and read. They had someone else doing it for them. Oh, yes.

You mentioned it. Yeah. It's a nice, fascinating window you open into the interaction between these kingdoms. And then the letter goes on. For instance, mentioning this issue with the merchants being killed. United Territory, and merchants were very important, of course. I mean, they were working for the state in a way. I mean, there were state merchants, and kings were very, let's say, they tried to make

sure that they could do their business in a safe way. So we often find them in the correspondence. Kings, yeah, trying to deal with problems that the merchant experienced in the other king, territory. Which completely makes sense as if they're the ones who are crossing the borders quite a lot to trade the goods and to spread far and wide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then in the same letter, it's really very long and it addresses several topics. Lots of issues, yes. Yeah, a lot of issues. And one is the fate of Babylonian physician who was sent to the Hittite court at a certain point and that was part of these exchanges of experts, for instance.

So we know also of the Egyptian physicians being sent to the Hittite court. Right, okay. And this Babylonian physician was sent to the Hittite court from what we understand from Hatozili's reply to some complaint by the Babylonian king. This physician must have died soon after he reached Hattusha. And so the Atosivza Thirt is saying, no, it's not coming back because he died. I'm not withholding him here. And he's even mentioning that some other physician and a ritualist were still at the Hittite capital.

And they were staying on their own free wheel. They were not held back by the Hittite king. And one even married the Hittite woman, had his house in Hattusham. So they simply didn't want to go back. I love that particular story. So the young Babylonian king, or maybe the regent before, sent to Hatticelli the third, one of their prized physicians. You're an ally, going to send you our prized physician to look after you.

Then, shady circumstances, this physician dies in Hattusha. And this letter we have surviving is Hattiseli basically saying, yeah, about that. Sorry, he's not coming back. Exactly, exactly. But he's also saying that he did his best to heal him. And when he died, he did all the mourning rights. And he's sending back his servants with the gifts they had given to the physician. So, yeah, justifying the situation.

But he really seems not to be guilty. I mean, and this physician, this particular physician, we are very lucky because it's mentioned also in sources from Babylonia. And it must have been already relatively old. when it traveled to Hattuckah. And it was long travel. So maybe not, yeah, not too suspicious circumstances then in those cases, yes. No, not necessarily suspicious, but the fact that he is addressing this topic in the letter and it's a pretty long paragraph tells us something about the value his positions,

these experts had at the courts where they were working. And, Delaina, do these letters that have been found in the archive at Hattush? do they continue for many, many generations? Do you see many different kings and queens sending letters so that you can almost create a timeline of all of these diplomatic endeavors that went ahead that were sent out from the Hittai capital and were received there too?

Yeah, I mean, letters concentrate in the 13th century, 14th century a bit, but we know about other tight kings through other types of sources. We have historiographic texts, annals telling the deeds of other kings, we have edicts, we have the treaties. So we are able to reconstruct the sequence of it type of king's pretty well.

It's often difficult to know how long each king reigned. That's something to establish an exact chronology of the dynasty and of each king is pretty difficult. And altogether, I mean, we have sources about Itight kings. kings from the 17th century until the end of the 13th century, or even early 12th century.

I've got in my notes the name, which I'll always struggle to say, but I have to say it anyway, Sipilululuma. Yeah, Supiluluma. Wow, what a name. He's one of those kings, isn't he? Yeah, yeah. Well, he's the one who, let's say, managed to transform in a, also in a stable way, the Hittite kingdom into an empire because he managed to conquer Syria and annexed it to the

Hittite kingdom by defeating the kingdom of Mithani, that was the big power, the great power in northern Syria and northern Mesopotamia at the time. And so is the one who, the previous It's hitite kings already led military campaigns to the south and northern Syria, but never managed to annex it in a stable way. And he's ruling at the time of that famous or infamous Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, isn't he, who seems to be very much, he's not as active in the military campaigning. He's enjoying the luxuries of his life in Egypt. So he kind of takes advantage this Hittite king, if I'm not going to repeat the name of, to

kind of seize land in Syria at that time. So it's interesting, isn't it, how that's helped? This is a time where the Hittag Kings were corresponding also with Akenaton. So, Blumen I was corresponding. We have a few letters from the Hittai Kingdom also in the Amal Archive. So the archive at Akhetaton that was the capital of Akanatons. Atis capital. Yeah, Akanaton's capital. Well, I can ask only more questions, but I'm not going to,

because I've got a couple more areas I'd love us to explore. First off, I'd like to revisit this link with Babylon, because, Elena, you mentioned that your other big interest is this Cassite dynasty, which deserves a podcast in its own right. But am I correct that Hittite-Babolian relations hadn't always been very lovety-dovey and good and nice? Is there also a story that the Hittites did once sack Babylon, arguably the greatest city in ancient history? True. That happened quite early in the Thai history, and the Hittite King Mursili I, managed to basically reach Babylon with his army. The exact date is kind of a matter of debate depending on the chronology you use. But basically, after a leading number of successful military campaigns in northern Syria, he took advantage of, I'd say, power vacuum in northern and also the fact that even the dynasty that was ruling Babylon at the time was weakened by several factors. And he reached Babylon.

He sacked even kidnapped local god Marduk. That didn't lead to annexation of Babylonia to the Hittite kingdom. I mean, it was too far away and impossible to rule and control. But as a symbolic act, certainly very, very powerful. But that's the only direct military confrontation we have between Hittites and Babylonians, because the countries were too far away, actually, to get into conflict. And the reason then you get Hittites fighting Egyptians

is because the Egyptians want to Mezzal in northern Syria, hence closer to the Hittite heartlands, right? Exactly. I mean, they had a border in common, more or less, where the current border between Lebanon and Syria was running, more or less, to give you an idea. And they were both trying to expand either further south or further north, especially the Egyptians, I would say, were kind of... Absolutely.

Do you think of the chariots and everything like that? I don't think we've got... We'll delve into the military in this case, but chariots, they're a big part of this Hittite story, or are they just what we associate with them today, but we're actually quite a small part? No, I mean, when the Itite Army is mentioned, it's made of soldiers and chariots. They go together. So, yeah, that become part of warfare in Mesopotamia in the late Bronze Age. Understood, understood.

I have to ask, we have to look at West, lastly. Troy and the Hittites, is there a connection here? Yeah, there is, if we agree that the ancient site of, So ancient Troy, corresponds to the city and the territory called Vilusa in the Hittite sources, which has been associated with Ilius, the great name of Troy. And that region was conquered by the Itites at a certain point. We have a treaty between Height king, Muatali II and the king of Vilusa, whose name was Alakshundu, It is as a version of a Greek name like Alexandros.

So that part of Anatolia, if Pelusa is Kisselaik U. So, Troy was at a certain point part of the Hittite kingdom, which stretched, I mean, at its peak from western Anatolia, the Aegean coast to eastern Anatolia and included northern Syria and even Cyprus. Cyprus as well? Ah, so yeah, so seafaring of it's too. And so, you know, Troy on the western edge is a vassal state. And people get very excited when they hear Alexandria, don't they? They try to associate it with Paris from the Iliad and the Trojan War. So that's another rabbit hole that I'm sure we could delve into another time.

But Elena, if the Hittites end up being so powerful in Anatolia, as the Bronze Age progresses for centuries, they're one of the big powers that are interacting with the other. the great states of the ancient Near East. How does it all end? How does it all come tumbling down? What is the story of the end of the Hittites? Yeah, it's a story we still don't know a lot about, because at a certain point they simply leave the Hittite capital, and we don't have sources telling us what happened exactly. But Hattusha is abandoned at the beginning, say, of the 12th century. This is part of a crisis that invests the whole Eastern Mediterranean, not only the Hittite kingdom. The so-called sea people are often associated with this crisis and this collapse of the late Bronze Age system of great powers.

And the sea people are groups of populations which probably came from the West, broadly speaking, and are described and even represented in Egyptian reliefs on boats. And you have this very famous relief at the time of Ramesis III, from Medinatabu, showing these hord, boats with people attacking the coast, basically. And the stories told in the Egyptian sources are very dramatic, and they describe it as an invasion. and a violent invasion. It's difficult to confirm this version, but it's true that many

sites are abandoned, more or less at this time, not only in Anatolia, and some even show traces of destruction. Another reason of this collapse, at least for the Hittite kingdom, what we see in the sources from the last decades of the Hittite history is that they seem to struggle to have enough serious. And so the grain supply seemed to be... So famine or droughts or something like that, yeah? Yeah, something like that. Something like that.

Might have played a role as well. But another factor of weakness could have been, what we mentioned at the very beginning, so struggles within the royal family. So when the uncle took over from the nephew and to see the third took power. This probably caused some, let's say, friction to use an alphemism within not only the royal family, but the court and the elite.

And having the support of the elite and of the nobility was important. Of the aristocracy was important to be able to maintain the power. So it's probably a combination of factors that. caused the collapse of the Hittite kingdom, which, however, is only one of the big powers that disappears from the map at this time, more or less at the same time, even the Messianian civilization experiences a crisis, Egypt as well, Babylonia for different reasons. It's generalized chaos. Yeah, generalized chaos, the Bronze Age collapse, Hittites don't fare too well in it. And the fact that they all kind of, there's a very intense interaction they had in the previous centuries and decades,

probably made them in a way very much dependent on one another. I mean, at least the general balance they found. A domino effect, exactly, because they're so interlinked. If one started to fall and then it's a sort of domino effect. Gosh, yes. The Hittites, they don't fare well during that time. And that's the end of their story. Although, Elena, I do see later on, once again, this is an episode in its own right,

you do see the word neo-Hittites, but are they very different from the Hittites pre-Bronze age collapse, or should we also call them Hittites? Well, they are pretty different in terms of extension, for instance, of the Neo-Itite states or a kingdom, which are smaller kingdoms in southern Anatolia and northern Syria. but they considered themselves as the heirs of the great Hittite kingdom, partly because some dynasties originally descended from the Hittites. They use a writing system and a language that was used also in the Hittite kingdom, next to Cuneiform and Hittite.

The Hittites developed also a writing system that is called Anatolian or Lubian aeroglyphic. This is the hieroglyphs of Anatolia, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was used already at the time of the Eytite kingdom, also on official, pro-official texts, seals, for instance, and reliefs. And that becomes the writing system and the language are used in this new Eight state. So you see also a cultural and linguistic link with traditions that were already current at the time of the Eithite kingdom. I'd say hieroglyphs, they're not just Egyptian.

And there's, I guess, it explains, isn't it, if they saw themselves as the heirs, as the success is, why you have a superlulululiuma, the second or third, the Neo-Hitites. And his mad statue, if you type his name, you see this with big bulging eyes looking at you. So I guess that's, yeah, more, that continuation into the Iron Age, slightly different, but that that continuation linguistic and the name Hittites. And the Assyrians kept calling this region Hattie. Hattie, there you go. So it continues. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the Hittites didn't exist anymore, but the name kept being associated with northern Syria and part of Anatolia. Elena, there's been such fascinating conversation, a wonderful introduction to the story of the Hittites. So much more we could explore. But I guess that's also why this topic, this Bronze Age civilized. these people are so exciting today because there is a lot that we know about them and more has been discovered every day, week, month, year. Yeah, that's true.

It's for me, never ending. It's a gold mine of stories that I like to research, of course, for scientific purposes, but I also like to read this text with students because they offer a lot of information and also a lot of opportunities to these students. discuss about different aspects about these ancient people interacted with each other.

Elena, it just goes to me today. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you. Thank you again. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Elena Devecci giving you an introduction to the story of the Hittites, this remarkable Bronze Age power centered in Anatolia. I hope you enjoyed the episode.

We have just scratched the surface with the story of the Hittites. There are so many different parts of their story that we can delve into. in future episodes. So really want to hear from you. Really do hope you enjoyed the episode. Let us know your thoughts. Let us know if you want more episodes on the Hittites in the future. But in the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode. If you're enjoying the ancients so far, please make sure that you're following this show, whether that be on Spotify or wherever you get to your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favor. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating too, we'd really appreciate it. It really helps us out. Now lastly,

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