The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who established an empire at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around the 18th century BC, which reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, encommpassing an area that included most of Asia Minor as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.

Despite the use of " Hatti ", the Hittites should be distinguished from the Hattians, an earlier people who inhabited the same region until the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, and spoke a non-Indo-European language known as Hattic.

It is a matter of considerable scholarly debate whether the biblical " Hittites " signified any or all of: 1 ) the original Hattians ; 2 ) their Indo-European conquerors ( Nesili ), who retained the name " Hatti " for Central Anatolia, and are today referred to as the " Hittites " ( the subject of this article ); or 3 ) a Canaanite group who may or may not have been related to either or both of the Anatolian groups, and who also may or may not be identical with the later Neo-Hittite ( Luwian ) polities.

Under the rules of Hammurabi's successors, the Babylonian Empire was weakened by military pressure from the Hittites, who sacked Babylon around 1531 BC ( short ).

In the background was the stabilizing influence of the Hittites, who monitored maritime movement and suppressed piracy.

The Philistines, while an integral part of the Canaanite milieu, do not seem to have been ethnically homogenous with the Canaanites ; the Hurrians ( who spoke a language isolate ), Hittites ( Indo-European speakers ), as well as the Semitic Aramaeans, Moabites, and Ammonites, are also considered " distinct " from generic Canaanites / Amorites, in scholarship or in tradition ( although in the Biblical Book of Nations, " Heth ", Hittites are a son of Canaan, despite the fact that it has been proven beyond doubt that the Hittites spoke an Indo-European language ).

He was followed by Adad-nirari I ( 1295 – 1275 BC ) who continued expansion to the northwest, mainly at the expense of the Hittites and Hurrians, conquering Hittite territories such as Carchemish and beyond.

The Hittite conquest of Aleppo ( Yamhad ), the weak middle Assyrian kings who succeeded Puzur-Ashur III, and the internal strifes of the Hittites had created a power vacuum in upper Mesopotamia.

According to the Hittitologist Trevor R. Bryce, Mitanni ( or Hanigalbat as it was known ) was permanently lost to Assyria during the reign of Mursili III of the Hittites, who was defeated by the Assyrians in the process.

Hittite ( natively " the language of Neša ") a. k. a. Nesite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, an Indo-European people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia ( Asia Minor ).

As Ramesses and the Egyptian advance guard were about 11 kilometers from Kadesh, south of Shabtuna, he met two Shasu ( nomads ) who told him that the Hittites were " in the land of Aleppo, on the north of Tunip " 200 kilometers away, where, the Shasu said, they were "( too much ) afraid of Pharaoh, L. P. H., to come south.

Modern historians essentially conclude the battle was a draw, a great moral victory for the Egyptians, who had developed new technologies and rearmed before pushing back against the years-long steady incursions by the Hittites, and the strategic win to Muwatalli II, since he lost a large portion of his chariot forces but sustained Kadesh through the brief siege.

2000 – 1700 BC by the Indo-European Hittites, who became identified with the " land of Hatti ".

The Hattians eventually merged with, or were replaced by, the Hittites, who spoke the Indo-European Hittite language.

But we do not know who those Hittites were, the soldiers of the Hittite army were certainly not from one language group.

who had occupied certain Assyrian districts in the Upper Euphrates ; then he overran Commagene and eastern Cappadocia, and drove the Hittites from the Assyrian province of Subartu, northeast of Malatia.

In 1882, in a lecture to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London, he announced that the Hittites, far from being a small Canaanite tribe who dealt with the kings of the northern Kingdom of Israel, were the people of a " lost Hittite empire ," which Egyptian texts were then bringing to light.

The Hittites believed that the kings derived their right to rule from Hanwasuit.

Unlike the Semitic Akkadians and their descendant Assyrians, whose Anatolian possessions were peripheral to their core lands in Mesopotamia, the Hittites were centred at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia by 2000 BC.

The conventional name " Hittites " is due to their initial identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology.

The Hittites themselves apparently called their language nešili "( in the manner ) of ( the city of ) Neša " and hence it has been suggested that the more technically correct term, " Nesite ", be used instead.

In Anatolia, the Hittites built massive stone walls around their cities, taking advantage of the hillsides.

Egyptians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Hittites variously occupied the strategic ground of Syria during this period, as it was a marchland between their various empires.

During these periods, Canaanites profited from their intermediary position between the ancient civilisations of the Middle East — Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia ( Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia ), the Hittites, and Minoan Crete — to become city states of merchant princes along the coast, with small kingdoms specializing in agricultural products in the interior.

These " proto-Canaanites " were in regular contact with the other peoples to their south such as Egypt, and to the north Asia Minor ( Hurrians, Hattians, Hittites, Luwians ) and Mesopotamia ( Sumer, Akkad, Assyria ), a trend that continued through the Iron Age.

Abd-Ashirta and his son Aziru, at first afraid of the Hittites, afterwards made a treaty with their king, and joining with the Hittites, attacked and conquered the districts remaining loyal to Egypt.

After Ramesses II succeeded in defeating the invaders and capturing some of them, Sherden captives are depicted in this Pharaoh's bodyguard, where they are conspicuous by their helmets with horns with a ball projecting from the middle, their round shields and the great Naue II swords, with which they are depicted in inscriptions of the Battle with the Hittites at Kadesh.

" The circumstances of their doing so remain obscure, whether they were Hittites writing in Luwian, or Luwians writing in Hittite, or bilinguals, has not been established.

In order to protect their Syrian border zone the new Pharaoh Akhenaten instead received envoys from the resurgent powers of the Hittites and Assyria.

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.

The first dateable recorded sea battle occurred about 1210 BC: Suppiluliuma II, king of the Hittites, defeated a fleet from Cyprus, and burned their ships at sea.

After their expulsion from Mesopotamia, the Amorites of Syria came under the domination of first the Hittites and from the 14th century BC, the Assyrians.

There is no evidence of any collaboration with the Hittites or malicious intent on their part, and if Ramesses considered it, he never left any record of that consideration.

When they were attacked by the Hittites, Ramesses II complained of the failure of his officials to dispatch scouts to discover the true location of the Hittites and reporting their location to him.

Pinned against the Orontes, the elements remaining of the Hittites not overtaken in the withdrawal were forced to abandon their chariots and attempt to swim the Orontes ( This flight is depicted in Egyptian inscriptions as " hurried " to say the least —" as fast as Crocodiles swimming "), where many of them drowned.

Sayce and other scholars also mention that Judah and the Hittites were never enemies in the Hebrew texts ; in the Book of Kings, they supplied the Israelites with cedar, chariots, and horses, as well as being a friend and allied to Abraham in the Book of Genesis.

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.

In this capacity, he defeated the Hittites ' enemies among the Azzi-Hayasa and the Kaskas.

Hattusili's forces even included elements of the Kaska peoples who were sworn enemies of the Hittites.

Much is made of the general opinion that she is " not strikingly beautiful " and " possesses little womanly charm "; however, her natural charm and selflessness win her the undying affection and loyalty of many people, both Hittites and their enemies.

: 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.

The Hurrian myth “ The Songs of Ullikummi ”, preserved among the Hittites, is a parallel to Hesiod's Theogony ; the castration of Uranus by Cronus may be derived from the castration of Anu by Kumarbi, while Zeus's overthrow of Cronus and Cronus's regurgitation of the swallowed gods is like the Hurrian myth of Teshub and Kumarbi.

Prior to modern archaeological studies, most Biblical scholars held the opinion that the Jebusites were identical to the Hittites, which continues to be the case, though less so.

Though the worship of Dionysus came into mainland Greece from Asia Minor ( where the Hittites called themselves " Nesi " and their language " Nesili "), the locations of the mythical Nysa may simply be conventions to show that a magically distant chthonic land of myth was intended.

Amenhotep records that the kings of Babylon, the Hittites, and Mitanni came to make peace and pay tribute to him after his ninth year, although this may be outlandish boasting.

The rising power of the Hittites eventually persuaded Mitanni to seek an ally, and there was definitely a treaty of some sort between Egypt and Mitanni by the time of Amenhotep's successor, but it may be that it was enacted after Amenhotep's campaigns, to try to prevent any more of campaigns of mass deportations.

In the early 20th century, the Biblical Hittites were identified with a newly discovered Indo-European-speaking empire of Anatolia, a major regional power through most of the 2nd millennium BC, who therefore came to be known as the Hittites.

Apart from the similarity in names, the Anatolian Hittites were a powerful political entity in the region before the collapse of their empire in the 14th-12th centuries BC, so one would expect them to be mentioned in the Bible, just in the way that the ḤTY post-Exodus are.

Trevor Bryce suggests that biblical references to Hittites may be separated into two distinct groups.

They were a small group living in the hills, and clearly to be distinguished from the Hittites of the Anatolian Kingdom.

In this period ( in which can be included the promise made to Abraham, centuries earlier, and its recall by Nehemiah half a millennium later ), the Hittites are mentioned about a dozen times as part of an almost fixed formula that lists the " seven nations greater and mightier than Hebrews " whose lands will be eventually conquered.

Among the five references to the Hittites that cannot be classified as a variant of that formula, two ( and ) declare that the Hittites " dwell in the mountains ", together with the Jebusites, Amorites, and Perizzites, whereas the Canaanites live " on the east and on the west ", on the coast of Jordan, and the Amalekites live " in the south ".

*: And it shall be when the L < SMALL > ORD </ SMALL > shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in this month.

*: From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.

5: And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: 6: And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

Then Hittites are said to be among the " strange women " that Solomon loved, along with " the daughter of the pharaoh " and women from the other peoples in the region.

He is intrigued by Yuri's ingenuity and bravery in preventing a war between Egypt and the Hittites following Zannanza's assassination, and requests to be assigned to Hattusa as a military liaison.