Hittites (Heb. jittîm, benê Jêth, “sons of Heth”; ac. hatti; ugar. hty ; Eg. ht3). The Hittites (or Hittites, as they are generally known) are frequently mentioned in the OT, but were not heard of in secular sources until the late 19th century AD. The resurrection of their history, culture, religion, and language is one of the the successes of modern archaeology. Scholars in the 19th century began to note that recently deciphered ancient records mentioned a hitherto unknown major country and nation, identified as Kheta in Egyptian inscriptions and Hatti (sometimes transliterated Khatti) in Assyrian texts. In 1884, 2 scholars, A. H. Sayce and W. Wright, published their views that certain undeciphered hieroglyphics on rock carvings and inscriptions (which occurred in many parts of Asia Minor and northern Syria) belonged to this people, and that they must be the Hittites of the Bible. Later discoveries proved the correctness of that theory. Hugo Winckler, Assyriologist from Berlin, in excavations at Boghazköy, in central Asia Minor (1906-07 and 1911-12), found that the ancient capital of the Hittites had been there: Khattushash. He also discovered the royal archives of the Hittite kings which contained more than 10,000 clay tablets written in Babylonian cuneiform. Some of these texts, written in Akkadian, could be read immediately; while others were in an unknown tongue. When this language was deciphered by B. Hrozny in 1915, it became known that it was Hittite and belonged to the Indo-European family of languages. Subsequent excavations at Boghazköy, carried out intermittently to the present day, have increased our knowledge of the Hittites. Greater knowledge of this people was added with the exploration of other Hittite cities, especially Carchemish, which in later Assyrian texts is called the capital of the Hittites. Texts in several ancient Anatolian languages were discovered and deciphered. Since 1947 the Hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions mentioned above, found on different rocks in Asia Minor and which had not been read for a long time, began to reveal their secrets. The decipherment was made possible by H. Th. Bossert’s 1947 discovery of a bilingual inscription at Karatepe, eastern Anatolia, containing parallel texts in Phoenician script and Hittite hieroglyphics. Map III, B-3/4. I. Ethnic origin of the Hittites. The racial origin of the Hittites is still an unresolved problem. Ancient reliefs show them as short people, with large noses, sloping foreheads, and thick lips. They are usually shown on monuments wearing heavy clothing and shoes with raised toes. Since the decipherment of their language has shown that they spoke an Indo-European language, some scholars concluded that they must have belonged to the same race as the Greeks, Medes, and other Indo-European speaking peoples, who appear in the Bible as descendants of Japheth. However, Gen 10:15 includes Heth, ancestor of the Hittites, among Cara’s descendants by way of Canaan. The so-called Hittites who left us their records called themselves Neshumli, and used the term Hattili to designate the people they displaced when they entered Apatholia sometime in the early 2nd millennium BC These replaced people are today called proto-Hittite, and these are the true descendants of Heth, son of Canaan. These proto-Hittites were absorbed by the Neshumli and abandoned their language to use that of their Indo-European invaders, or Japhetic Hittites, who occupied their territory. Little is known of the early Hittites. A few religious texts in their language have survived, with later Hittite translations. II. History of the Hittites. The oldest written records of the territory of the Hittites 559 come from Assyrian settlers in the 19th century BC, who lived in various Anatolian cities as a trader and had Kanesh as their headquarters (near modern Kültepe, immediately south of the Halys River). ). For some unknown reason, these colonies ceased to exist after a century. An Anatolian kingdom ruled by Anitas then followed, but whether or not it was Hittite is uncertain. The first Hittite king of whom we have any certain knowledge is Labarnas, whom later Hittite kings regarded as their ancestor and whose name they used as their title. Labarnas’s reign is late 17th century BC, according to the shortest chronology. By this time, the Hittites were rooted in central Asia Minor, their capital being the mountainous Khattushash, now Boghazköy, in the arc formed by the river Halys. Labarna’s great-grandson, Mursilis I, was the first Hittite king to invade Mesopotamia, making a name for himself in history. He conquered Babylon (c 1550 BC), ended the 1st Babylonian dynasty, and took away the golden statue of Marduk. During the following century, the Hittites fought against various hostile tribes to maintain their position in Anatolia. At the same time a fierce infighting arose within the royal family, resulting in the violent deaths of several Hittite kings. The 1st great king after Mursilis I, and the 1st, empire builder, was Supiluliumas, who lived in the 1st half of the 14th century BC and was a contemporary of the pharaohs Amenhotep III and IV of Egypt. During his reign all of eastern Asia Minor constituted his territory, and Hittite power extended eastward to Upper Mesopotamia, and southward to Syria, as far as Kadesh on the Orontes and Lebanon. Two of Supiluliumas’s sons were appointed kings: one of Carchemish and the other of Aleppo. During this period the Hittite Empire reached the height of its power and became a powerful rival to Egypt. The magnitude of Hittite power is illustrated by the fact that an Egyptian queen – Tutankhamun’s widow – asked Supiluliumas to send you one of her sons to be her husband and king of Egypt. Although this Hittite prince never occupied the Nile throne, as he was assassinated on his way to this country, the attempt to make him king is significant. The Hittites remained powerful for a time after Supiluliumas’s death, but it was clear that a clash between the 2 world powers could not be long. This finally came during the reign of Muwatalis, in the famous battle of Kadesh on the Orontes against Ramesses II of Egypt (c 1300 BC), which ended with neither winner nor loser. The Hittites held all of Syria, and even gained some territory. A few years later, Ramses II signed a treaty of peace and friendship with the Hittites under Hatusilis III (c 1283 BC), and married a Hittite princess. From that time forward, the Hittites and the Egyptians lived in peace with each other. Map III, B/C-3/4. 262. Hittite soldiers on a carved slab from Carchemish. However, the former soon had to contend with a new power invading Anatolia from the west: the Sea Peoples, among whom were the Philistines. Under their advance, Khattushash and many other Hittite cities were destroyed and the empire rapidly disintegrated and disappeared (c 1200 BC). However, remnants of the Hittites consolidated in Upper Mesopotamia and northern Syria for another 300 years in the form of city-states. The best known is Carchemish, on the Euphrates, where many Hittite monuments of this latter period were found. Other city-states were Karatepe on the Ceyhan River, and Hamat on the Orontes. These states eventually engaged in a fight to the death with the Assyrians and were gradually annihilated by their vicious war machine in the 9th and 8th centuries BC; by the end of the latter, the last redoubt of Hittite power had ceased to exist. Even the memory of them disappeared, as evidenced by the fact that they are never mentioned in classical literature. The Bible alone perpetuated the 560 record of this nation lost to secular history. Map III, B-4. III. Culture and religion of the Hittites. The Hittites were a long-suffering, highlander people who had higher ethical values than most ancient nations. This is especially noticeable in its laws and penal codes, which are the most humane of all those known from that period. They were not artists, and their productions in the field of the arts compare unfavorably with those of their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia. His craftsmanship was mediocre; however, they had the advantage over their neighbors of owning iron mines, which for a time gave them a virtual monopoly on its production and on weapons and tools made from that metal. Their religion is still not well known. They worshiped a whole pantheon of gods, most of whom had been adopted from local cults or from foreign nations. The Horite weather god, Teshub, was one of the major Hittite gods; They also worshiped the Horean form of the Babylonian Ishtar, as well as the sun god, in addition to many other divinities who, according to the concepts of the ancients, controlled the various forces of nature. Some of the later Anatolian deities appearing in the NT had their origin in the Hittite religion. For example, Cybele, the Magna Mater, or mother goddess, had as her prototype a goddess named Kubaba, who played a prominent role in the popular religion of Asia Minor for many centuries. Worship consisted mainly of rituals, in some cases orgiastic, and of sacrifices. The will of the gods was consulted through oracles, and decisions were made according to the indications of magic. The dead were cremated, and the remaining bones were collected and deposited in a separate building, where rites were performed for the welfare of the deceased. IV. The Hittites in the Bible. The Hittite word(s) appears frequently in the OT under the form “Hittee(s)”. The Het of Gen 10:15, son of Canaan and grandson of Ham (cf v 6), must have been the ancestor of the proto-Hittites who had settled in Asia Minor and were absorbed by the Indo-European Hittites when they entered Anatolia from the northeast. Some of these proto-Hittites would have lived in Palestine at the time of Abraham (15:18-20; 23:3-20). This was probably the people to which Esau’s 2 wives belonged (26:34), and the “Hittites” in the lists of nations that inhabited Canaan when the Israelites entered the country (Exo 3:8; Deu 7:1; 20:17; Josh 3:10; 11:3; 24:11); although it is possible that at the time of the Israelite invasion there were settlers from the Indo-European Hittites in Canaan. The remains of the proto-Hittites would also have been among those who intermarried with the Israelites at the time of the judges (Jdg 3:5, 6). Addressing the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Ezekiel tells them in a sarcastic tone, in relation to the pre-Israelite population…
