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.

Francis William Newman expressed the critical view common in the early 19th Century, that if the Hittites existed at all " no Hittite king could have compared in power to the King of Judah ...".

Sayce's identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century ; and the name " Hittite " has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy.

The word labyrinthos ( Mycenaean daburinthos < ref > da-pu < sub > 2 </ sub >- ri-to-yo po-ti-ni-ja ( KN Gg 702 ), daburinthoyo potnia meaning " mistress or lady of the Labyrinth ".</ ref >) may possibly show the same equivocation between initial d-and l-as is found in the variation of the early Hittite royal name Tabarna / Labarna ( where written t-may represent phonetic d -).

The date of the sack of Babylon by the Hittite king Mursilis I is considered crucial to the various calculations of the early chronology of the ancient Near East, since both a solar and a lunar eclipse are said to have occurred in the month of Sivan that year, according to ancient records.

In the early Late Bronze Age, Canaanite confederacies were centered on Megiddo and Kadesh, before again being brought into the Egyptian Empire and Hittite Empire.

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

The culture was early Hittite.

New buildings were constructed on top of the remains of the earlier periods ; thus, there is a deep stratigraphy from prehistoric times to the early Hittite period.

The name of Caria appears in a number of early languages: Hittite Karkija ( a member state of the Assuwa league, ca.

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.

Saussure's observations, however, did not achieve any general currency until after Hittite was discovered and deciphered in the early 20th century.

The language is attested in cuneiform, in records from the 16th ( Anitta text ) down to the 13th century BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC.

" Hittite, as well as its Anatolian cousins, split off from Proto-Indo-European at an early stage, thereby preserving archaisms that were later lost in the other Indo-European languages.

The " Old Hurrian " variety is known from some early royal inscriptions and from religious and literary texts, especially from Hittite centres.

Labarna was actually a title of the early Hittite rulers, rather than a personal name.

Other examples are range weapon soldiers with shield bearers such as archers ( Hittite chariot archers ), Sparabaras, crossbowmen ( pavise ) or early gunners ( Hussite Wars ).

Excavations at a mound known as Topraktepe indicate Hittite settlement in the area as early as 2600 BC, though little is known of Sivas ' history prior to its emergence in the Roman period.

The book made a comparative study of early Greek historiography down to the time of Herodotus, and various genres of Mesopotamian, Hittite, Egyptian and Levantine historiography as background for understanding the rise of historiography in ancient Israel.

The early Hittite religion bore traits descended from Proto-Indo-European religion, but the later Hittite religions became more and more assimilated to Assyria.

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.

The modern English word " evil " ( Old English ) and its cognates such as the German and Dutch are widely considered to come from a Proto-Germanic reconstructed form of * ubilaz, comparable to the Hittite huwapp-ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European form and suffixed zero-grade form.

This was later supported by the Hittite form Wilusa.

From the form of the name, it is suspected that Shamgar may actually have been a Hittite, a similar name occurring with Sangara, a Hittite king of Carchemish ; it is also the case that Anath is the name of a Canaanite deity, and son of Anath is thus merely a royal title.

Hittite was written in an adapted form of Peripheral Akkadian cuneiform orthography from Northern Syria.

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.

The form " Hittite " in English originally comes from biblical Heth, quite possibly connected to common Assyrian and Egyptian designations of " Land of the Hatti " ( Khatti ) west of the Euphrates.

Although the 30, 000 or so clay tablets recovered from Hattusa form the main corpus of Hittite literature, archives have since appeared at other centers in Anatolia, such as Tabigga ( Maşat Höyük ) and at Sapinuwa ( Ortaköy ).

The ancient and modern Greek language form of the name is ). Özhan Öztürk claims that Bergama means " high settlement / base " in Hittite language while Argoma ( modern Suluova in Amasya means " border settlement " at Hitite-Kaskians border

According to Michael Coogan, the structure of the covenant law was structured similarly to the Hittite form of suzerain.

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.

Below is a form of a Hittite Suzerainty Treaty.

Another form, the r-passive ( mediopassive ), was initially thought to be an innovation restricted to Italo-Celtic until found to be an archaism shared also with Hittite and Tocharian.

For example, the sign which has the form of a " taking " or " grasping " hand has the value / ta /, which is precisely the Hittite word ta -/ da-" to take ," in contrast with the Luwian cognate of the same meaning which is la -.

The name Nig ˘ de first occurs in written sources in the form na-hi-ti-ia in a Luwian inscription of king Saruanis from Andaval as was pointed out by Gelb ( Hittite Hieroglyphs II pp. 17 – 18 ).

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.

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.

However, Sargon took this process further, conquering many of the surrounding regions to create an empire that reached westward as far as the Mediterranean Sea and perhaps Cyprus ( Kaptara ); northward as far as the mountains ( a later Hittite text asserts he fought the Hattite king Nurdaggal of Burushanda, well into Anatolia ); eastward over Elam ; and as far south as Magan ( Oman ) — a region over which he reigned for purportedly 56 years, though only four " year-names " survive.

Myths in which Ea figures prominently have been found in Assurbanipal's library, and in the Hattusas archive in Hittite Anatolia.

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 ).

From 1550 until 1100, much of the Levant was conquered by Egypt, which in the latter half of this period contested Syria with the Hittite Empire.

Smaller scale excavations have also been carried out in the immediate surroundings of Hattusa, including the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, which contains numerous rock-cut relief's portraying the Hittite rulers and the gods of the Hittite pantheon.

Hittite archives, like the Tawagalawa letter mention of a kingdom of Ahhiyawa ( Achaea, or Greece ) that lies beyond the sea ( that would be the Aegean ) and controls Milliwanda, which is identified with Miletus.

Ahhiyawa or Ahhiya, which occurs a few dozen times in Hittite tablets over the century, is probably Achaiwia, reconstructed Mycenaean Greek for Achaea.

Neither of the names of the great kings are stated ; the Hittite king could be either Muwatalli II or his brother Hattusili III, which at least dates the letter to LHIIIB by Mycenaean standards.

From the 18th century BC the region was a part of the Hittite Empire with possible name Arzawa, which was destroyed by invaders during the 12th century BC together with the collapse of the Empire.

Kaneš, inhabited continuously from the Chalcolithic period to Roman times, flourished as an important Hattic / Hittite / Hurrian city, which contained a large merchant quarter ( kârum ) of the Old Assyrian kingdom, from ca.

In the 17th century BC, Anitta's descendents moved their capital to Hattusa ( which Anitta had cursed ), thus founding the line of Hittite kings.

Various Hittite and Assyrian texts speak of ceremonially strewing salt, minerals, or plants ( weeds, " cress ", or kudimmu, which are associated with salt and desolation ) over destroyed cities, including Hattusa, Taidu, Arinna, Hunusa, Irridu, and Susa.

< BLOCKQUOTE > Genesis 25: 9 And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre ; The field which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth: there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife .</ BLOCKQUOTE >

< BLOCKQUOTE > Genesis 49: 29 And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, In the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a buryingplace.