Hittites

From Textus Receptus

The Hittites (/ˈhɪtaɪts/) were an Ancient Anatolian people who established an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1600 BC. This empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Asia Minor as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. After c. 1180 BC, the empire came to an end during the Bronze Age collapse, splintering into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BC.

The Hittite language was a distinct member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family, the oldest attested language of that family. They referred to their native land as Hatti. The conventional name "Hittites" is due to their initial identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology.

During the 1920s, connections to the Hittites became a matter of interest to proponents of Turkish nationalist ideologies, and attracted the attention of authors such as Ahmet Ağaoğlu. Interest in the Hittites began to influence the naming of institutions such as the state-owned Etibank ("Hittite bank").

Despite their use of the name Hatti for their core territory, 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 language possibly in the Northwest Caucasian languages group known as Hattic.

The Hittite military made successful use of chariots. Although belonging to the Bronze Age, they were the forerunners of the Iron Age, developing the manufacture of iron artifacts from as early as the 18th century BC; at this time, gifts from the "man of Burushanda" of an iron throne and an iron sceptre to the Kaneshite king Anitta were recorded in the Anitta text inscription.