The Hittites
The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa on the central Anatolian plateau in the 18th century BCE. The Hittite Empire reached its height around 1285 BCE, encompassing a large part of Anatolia, north-western Syria about as far south as the mouth of the Litani River, and eastward into upper Mesopotamia. After c. 1180 BCE, the empire disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some surviving until as late as the 8th century BCE.
The term "Hittites" was taken from the King James translation of the Hebrew Bible, translating חתי HTY, or בני-חת BNY-HT "Children of Heth" (Heth is a son of Canaan). The archaeologists who discovered the Anatolian Hittites in the 19th century CE initially identified them with these Biblical Hittites. Today the identification of the Biblical peoples with either the Hattusa-based empire or the Neo-Hittite kingdoms is a matter of dispute.
The Hittite kingdom was commonly called the Land of Hatti by the Hittites themselves. The fullest expression is "The Land of the City of Hattusa". This description could be applied to either the entire empire, or more narrowly just to the core territory, depending on context. The word "Hatti" is actually an Akkadogram, rather than Hittite; it is never declined according to Hittite grammatical rules. 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 BCE, and spoke a non-Indo-European language called Hattic. The Hittites themselves referred to their language as Nesili (or in one case, Kanesili), an adverbial form meaning "in the manner of (Ka)nesa", presumably reflecting a high concentration of Hittite speakers in the ancient city of Kanesh (modern Kültepe, Turkey). Many modern city names in Turkey are first recorded under their
The term "Hittites" was taken from the King James translation of the Hebrew Bible, translating חתי HTY, or בני-חת BNY-HT "Children of Heth" (Heth is a son of Canaan). The archaeologists who discovered the Anatolian Hittites in the 19th century CE initially identified them with these Biblical Hittites. Today the identification of the Biblical peoples with either the Hattusa-based empire or the Neo-Hittite kingdoms is a matter of dispute.
The Hittite kingdom was commonly called the Land of Hatti by the Hittites themselves. The fullest expression is "The Land of the City of Hattusa". This description could be applied to either the entire empire, or more narrowly just to the core territory, depending on context. The word "Hatti" is actually an Akkadogram, rather than Hittite; it is never declined according to Hittite grammatical rules. 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 BCE, and spoke a non-Indo-European language called Hattic. The Hittites themselves referred to their language as Nesili (or in one case, Kanesili), an adverbial form meaning "in the manner of (Ka)nesa", presumably reflecting a high concentration of Hittite speakers in the ancient city of Kanesh (modern Kültepe, Turkey). Many modern city names in Turkey are first recorded under their