When the main objective of the campaign had been fulfilled, the Hittite army returned to Carchemish and the city fell after an eight-day siege.

The oldest testimony of chariot warfare in the ancient Near East is the Old Hittite Anitta text ( 18th century BC ), which mentions 40 teams of horses ( 40? Í-IM-DÌ ANŠE. KUR. RA < sup >? I. A </ sup >) at the siege of Salatiwara.

The most valuable evidence, if relevant, are the treaties and letters mentioned in Hittite cuneiform texts of the same approximate era, which mention an unruly Western Anatolian warlord named Piyama-Radu ( possibly Priam ) and his successor Alaksandu ( possibly Alexander, the nickname of Paris ) both based in Wilusa ( possibly Ilion / Ilios ), as well as the god Apaliunas ( possibly Apollo ).

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

As archaeological discoveries revealed the scale of the Hittite kingdom in the second half of the 19th Century, Archibald Henry Sayce postulated, rather than to be compared to Judah, the Anatolian civilization " worthy of comparison to the divided Kingdom of Egypt ", and was " infinitely more powerful than that of Judah ".

The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey houses the richest collection of Hittite and Anatolian artifacts.

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

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.

The decipherment of Hittite mythical texts, notably the Kingship in Heaven text first presented in 1946, with its castration mytheme, offers in the figure of Kumarbi an Anatolian parallel to Hesiod's Uranus-Cronus conflict.

If we may believe the transmission of Nicolaus of Damascus who quotes him, Xanthus wrote the name with-ks -, like in the Hittite and Luwian texts ; given that Lydian also belongs to the Anatolian language family, it is possible that Xanthus relied on a local non-Greek tradition according to which Mukšuš was a Luwian.

The Anatolian languages are a family of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor ( ancient Anatolia ), the best attested of them being the Hittite language.

A second version opposes Hittite to Western Anatolian, and divides the latter into Lydian, Palaic and the Luwian Group ( instead of Luwic ).

Palaic, spoken in the north-central Anatolian region of Pala, extinct around the 13th century BC, is known only from fragments of quoted prayers in Old Hittite texts.

This is not a neologism, as Luvic had been used in the early 20th century to mean the Anatolian language group, or languages identified as Luvian by the Hittite texts.

These sounds have disappeared in all present-day Indo-European languages, but some laryngeals are believed to have existed in Hittite and other Anatolian languages.

The lateness of the discovery of these sounds by Indo-Europeanists is largely due to the fact that Hittite and the other Anatolian languages are the only Indo-European languages where at least some of them are attested directly and consistently as consonantal sounds.

This distinction is preserved in Anatolian languages, e. g. Hittite.

Given the dependence of Hittite chronology on Egyptian chronology, a lowering of Egyptian dates would result in a lowering of the end of the Hittite New Kingdom and a resulting reduction ( or complete removal ) of the Anatolian Dark Age.

This is suggested by, among other things, an admittedly corrupt late copy of the Hittite laws in which the geographical term Luwiya is replaced with Arzawa, a western Anatolian kingdom corresponding roughly with Mira and the Seha River Land ( although one scholar has argued that a chain of scribal error and revision led to this substitution, and that Luwiya was not coterminous with Arzawa but was further east in the area of the Konya plain ).

Long after the extinction of the Hittite language, Luwian continued to be spoken in the Neo-Hittite states of Syria, such as Milid and Carchemish, as well as in the central Anatolian kingdom of Tabal that flourished in the 8th century BC.

Part of the Hittite kingdom was invaded and conquered by the so-called Sea Peoples whose origins-perhaps from different parts of the Mediterranean, such as the Black Sea, the Aegean and Anatolian regions-remain obscure.

Other linguists, however, have taken the opposite point of view, the Schwund (" loss ") Hypothesis, that Hittite ( or Anatolian ) came from a Proto-Indo-European possessing the full range of features, but simplified.

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

In a treaty between the Hittite Great King Tudhaliya IV and his vassal, the king of Tarhuntassa, we read of the city " Parha " ( Perge ), and the " Kastaraya River " ( Classical Kestros River, Turkish Aksu Çayı ).

The Hittite king Suppiluliuma I invaded the Mitanni vassal states in northern Syria and replaced them with loyal subjects.

Finally a Hittite army conquered the capital Washukkanni and installed Shattiwaza, the son of Tushratta, as their vassal king of Mitanni in the late 14th century BC.

The unrest weakened the Mitannian control of their vassal states, and Aziru of Amurru seized the opportunity and made a secret deal with the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I. Kizzuwatna, which had seceded from the Hittites, was reconquered by Suppiluliuma.

A clause to return fugitives is part of many treaties between sovereign states and between rulers and vassal states, so perhaps the harbouring of fugitives by Ishuwa formed the pretext for the Hittite invasion.

But Hittite governors or vassal rulers are mentioned only for some cities and kingdoms.

The Hittite kings Suppiluliuma I and Mursili II, however, finally managed to defeat Arzawa around 1300 BC, and split it into vassal kingdoms.

The Hittitologist Trevor Bryce suggests that, although it may have fallen once again under Hittite control, it is more likely Amurru remained a Hittite vassal state.

Even this was threatened for a time by revolts among Egypt's vassal states in the Levant, and Ramesses was compelled to embark on a series of campaigns in Canaan in order to uphold his authority there before he could initiate further assaults against the Hittite Empire.

Neither side could afford the possibility of a longer conflict since they were threatened by other enemies: Egypt was faced with the task of defending her long western border with Libya against the incursion of Libyan tribesmen by building a chain of fortresses stretching from Mersa Matruh to Rakotis, while the Hittites faced a more formidable threat in the form of the Assyrian Empire, which " had conquered Hanigalbat, the heartland of Mitanni, between the Tigris and the Euphrates " rivers that had previously been a Hittite vassal state.

According to the Hittite form, after the stipulations were offered to the vassal, it was necessary to include a request to have copies of the treaty that would be read throughout the kingdom periodically.

Under Shattiwaza, Hanigalbat had become a vassal state of the Hittite empire, celebrated with a treaty, as a buffer to the ascendant Assyrians.

By the time Hattušili overthrew Urhi Teššup, the conquest was a fête accompli and a sheepish Hattušili was to request that Adad-nārārī intervene to curb the incursions of the people of Turira, a Hanigalbat frontier town, against those of Carchemish, still a loyal Hittite vassal ,“ If Turira is yours, smash it !... If Turira is not yours, write to me so that I may smash it.

During the Late Bronze Age circa 2000 BC, they created an empire, the Hittite New Kingdom, which reached its height in the 14th century BC, controlling much of Asia Minor.

Hittite sources mention, ruler of ( land of Achaeans ) in the 14th century BC.

Another group, the Mitanni, subjugated Assyria and for a time menaced the Hittite kingdom, but were defeated by the two around the middle of the 14th.

The Hittite campaign against the kingdom of Mitanni in the 14th century BC bypassed the fortified city of Carchemish.

Also in the 14th century BC, Ahhiya began to be troublesome to numerous kings of the Hittite Empire.

From the mid 14th century BC through to the 11th century BC, much of Canaan ( particularly the north, central and eastern regions of Syria and the north western Mediterranean coastal regions ) fell to the Middle Assyrian Empire, and both Egyptian and Hittite influence waned as a result.

After the Suppiluliuma I – Shattiwaza treaty ( 14th century BCE ) between the Hittite Empire and Mitanni, Harran was burned by a Hittite army under Piyashshili in the course of the conquest of Mitanni.

Some Hattic words can be found in religious tablets of Hittite priests, dating from the 14th and 13th centuries BC.

The Song of Kumarbi or Kingship in Heaven is the title given to a Hittite version of the Hurrian Kumarbi myth, dating to the 14th or 13th century BC.

The ancestors of the classical Pisidians were likely present in the region before the 14th century BC, when Hittite records refer to a mountain site of Salawassa, identified with the later site of Sagalassos.

His excavations revealed a stockpile of thousands of hardened clay tablets, many written in the hitherto unknown Hittite language, that allowed Winckler to draw a preliminary outline of Hittite history in the 14th and 13th centuries BC.