Thier language was closely related to Hittite.

* Bedřich Hrozný, decipherer of the Hittite cuneiform script and language

Their Hittite language was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family.

Archaeological expeditions have discovered in Hattusa entire sets of royal archives in cuneiform tablets, written either in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the time, or in the various dialects of the Hittite confederation.

In the 18th century BC Anitta, his son and successor, made the Hittite speaking city of Neša into one of his capitals and adopted the Hittite language for his inscriptions there.

Hittite is the best attested member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family.

: The present work undertakes to establish the nature and structure of the hitherto mysterious language of the Hittites, and to decipher this language [...] 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.

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 Lydian language was an Indo-European language in the Anatolian language family, related to Luwian and Hittite.

Also in that period, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers, and this script was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, the East Semitic Akkadian ( Assyrian and Babylonian ) in around 2600 BC, and from there to others such as Elamite, Hattian, Hurrian and Hittite.

Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group.

A number of non-Greek etymologies have been suggested for the name, The form Apaliunas (< sup > d </ sup >) is attested as a god of Wilusa in a treaty between Alaksandu of Wilusa and the Hittite great king Muwatalli II ca 1280 BCE.

Among the proposed etymologies is the Hurrian and Hittite divinity, Aplu, who was widely invoked during the " plague years ".

In a Hittite text is mentioned that the king invited a Babylonian priestess for a certain " purification ".

However, this story may reflect a cultural influence which had the reverse direction: Hittite cuneiform texts mention a Minor Asian god called Appaliunas or Apalunas in connection with the city of Wilusa attested in Hittite inscriptions, which is now generally regarded as being identical with the Greek Ilion by most scholars.

The earliest attested name is the Hittite Assuwa a region in central-western Anatolia which seems to be connected with the Mycenean Greek epithet a-si-wi-ja in Linear B inscriptions found at Pylos.

Ancient Anatolia is subdivided by modern scholars into various regions named after the various Indo-European ( and largely Hittite, Luwian or Greek speaking ) peoples that occupied them, such as Lydia, Lycia, Caria, Mysia, Bithynia, Phrygia, Galatia, Lycaonia, Pisidia, Paphlagonia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia.

In the earliest reference to this land, a letter outlining the treaty violations of the Hittite vassal Madduwatta, it is called Ahhiya.

Another important example is the Tawagalawa Letter written by an unnamed Hittite king ( most probably Hattusili III ) of the empire period ( 14th-13th century BC ) to the king of Ahhiyawa, treating him as an equal and suggesting that Miletus ( Millawanda ) was under his control.

A current modern interpretation is that the Hittite sacral hieratic hunting bag ( kursas ), a rough and shaggy goatskin that has been firmly established in literary texts and iconography by H. G.

The theme is of retribution: David's sin against Uriah the Hittite is punished by God through the destruction of his own family, and its purpose is to serve as an apology for the coronation of Bathsheba's son Solomon instead of his older brother Adonijah.

The name is perhaps pronounced and sometimes rendered in translations as Ellil in later Akkadian, Hittite, and Canaanite literature.

As Ea, Enki had a wide influence outside of Sumer, being equated with El ( at Ugarit ) and possibly Yah ( at Ebla ) in the Canaanite ' ilhm pantheon, he is also found in Hurrian and Hittite mythology, as a god of contracts, and is particularly favourable to humankind.

The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying the essential features of a guitar is a 3, 300-year-old stone carving of a Hittite bard.

* Cybele: Hittite name of her is Kubaba, but her name changed as Cybele in Phrygia and Roman culture.

* In David Gemmell's Troy trilogy Hektor is seen as a man of peace and would rather breed his horses than go to war but is forced by King Priam to fight for the Hittite empire against the Egytians at the Battle of Kadesh and other conflicts.

After Hattusa was made capital, the area encompassed by the bend of the Halys River ( Hittite Marassantiya, ) 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.

The Hittite kingdom is conventionally divided into three periods, the Old Hittite Kingdom ( ca.

The Amoritic-Hurrian kingdom of Yamhad is recorded as struggling for this area with the early Hittite king Hattusilis I around 1600 BCE.

Cuneiform Luwian ( Melchert's CLuwian ) is recorded glosses and short passages in Hittite texts, mainly from Boğazkale, written in Cuneiform script.

This alliance is recorded in the correspondence between the Arzawan ruler Tarhundaradu and the Pharaoh Amenophis III called Arzawa letters, part of the archive of the Amarna letters ( Nr. 31 and 32 ), having played a substantial role in the decipherment of the Hittite language in which they were written.

His campaigns of reconquest culminated in the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC, where he led Egyptian armies against those of the Hittite king Muwatalli II and was caught in history's first recorded military ambush.

On the Hittite side, Ramesses II recorded a long list of 19 Hittite allies brought to Kadesh by Muwattallis.

One of the earliest recorded peace treaties was concluded between the Hittite and Egyptian empires after the ca. 1274 BC Battle of Kadesh ( see Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty ).

The stag was revered alongside the bull at Alaca Höyük and continued in the Hittite mythology as the protective deity whose name is recorded as < sup > d </ sup > KAL.

His campaigns of reconquest culminated in the Battle of Kadesh, where he led Egyptian armies against those of the Hittite king Muwatalli II and was caught in history's first recorded military ambush but Ramesses was able to rally his troops and turn the tide of battle against the Hittites thanks to the arrival of the Ne ' arin.

Traditional view held that the name " Magnesia " derived from the tribe of Magnetes who would have immigrated here from Thessaly at the dawn of the region's recorded history, although a connection with native Anatolian languages has also been suggested of recent date, particularly on the basis of discoveries made in the Hittite archives treating the Luwian western Anatolia.

The ancient city of Ḫaḫḫum ( Hittite: Ḫaḫḫa ) was located nearby ; it is recorded as a source of gold for ancient Sumeria.

During his own reign, Anitta defeated Huzziya last recorded king of Zalpuwa and the Hattic king Piyusti and then conquered his capital at the future Hittite capital of Hattusa.

The same characters were recorded in Boghaz-köy, and presumed by A. H. Sayce to be Hittite in origin.