The Hittites

What made the Hittites one of the great Bronze Age powers, and how did their empire survive on war, diplomacy and faith? Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Elena Devecchi to uncover ancient royal intrigue, lavish festivals, the 'Thousand God', and the world’s oldest known peace treaty. From Hattusha’s immense lion gates to secret archives and sacking Babylon, it’s a dramatic deep dive into an empire that once stretched as far as Troy. MORE The Bronze Collapse Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bronze-age-collapse/id1520403988?i=1000641437640 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/4dEddIFS5yfamKqVZd6xAE Tower of Babel Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tower-of-babel/id1520403988?i=1000677916205 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/5tLy73zqIUfKz4omIz4ZvW Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 0:34Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact? Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 1:16Tristan Hughes?

  Three thousand years ago, and the late Bronze Age world of the Near East is awash with remarkable powers. You have the Babylonians and the Assyrians in Mesopotamia, the Mycenaeans in Greece, the Minoans in Crete, the thriving kingdom of Egypt along the River Nile. And in central Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, was another power, a kingdom that had risen to become one of the major players of the late Bronze Age: the Hittites. Now, we know them as the Hittites because of their language, the oldest recorded Indo-European language in the world. A vast wealth of their documents have survived, giving us this fascinating insight into who

• 2:01Tristan Hughes?

  the Hittites were and how they ruled their empire. An empire that, at its height, stretched from Syria to potentially as far west as Troy.

• 2:13Tristan Hughes?

  The Hittites ruled over a multi-ethnic empire. They themselves appear to have migrated into Anatolia during the earlier Bronze Age, but when and from where exactly? We're not exactly sure, it's debated. But that is one of many fascinating parts of the Hittite story that we're covering today with our guest, Dr Elena Devecchi, Associate Professor at the University of Turin.

• 2:43Tristan Hughes?

  Elena, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Hi, thank you very much for the invitation.

• 2:48Tristan Hughes?

  And to give us a wonderful introduction to the Hittites, it's about time we covered the story of the Hittites on the Ancients. So, do we have a sense from the surviving material that they came into Anatolia from elsewhere? That they weren't originally from Anatolia? Is that the sense we're getting?

• 3:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's mainly because of the language they spoke, which belonged to the Indo-European family, but is not one of the local Anatolian languages. We know of other languages that are associated with groups of people who probably were originally there before they came. But the impression, I mean, of course, it's a history made of many conflicts and wars, and but the impression is that they did not, let's say, took over Anatolia brutally, but arrived and integrated also in a way with the local population.

• 3:44Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, which makes sense. And cast aside this idea that they come in and kill everyone, and then there's no local population left as it was, yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no, that's not the case. And we don't exactly where they came from. Some have suggested from the region between more or less the Caspian and the Black Sea, probably following trade routes. But without the sources, written sources telling us the story, it's difficult to know. And what we see is that there were, I mean, from sources coming from Syria, from the third millennium already, that there were already people with Hittite names or Indo-European names. So, but they started writing later than other Mesopotamian or ancient Asian cultures.

• 4:29Tristan Hughes?

  Well, you mentioned sources there, Elena, and so that particular source from Syria and Mesopotamia. But what types of sources do we have surviving to learn about the Hittites and what we know about them today?

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, we have actually thousands of cuneiform tablets, so plate tablets, written mostly in the cuneiform script.

• 4:48Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  From the Hittite capital, Hattusha. And Hattusha is nowadays a small city, village, 160 kilometres east of Ankara in Turkey. The archaeologists found the royal archives, temple archives, and really in thousands of tablets. So that's the biggest discovery, textual discovery, from Hittite sites, but other Hittite cities also yielded textual sources. And also the archives from Syrian kingdoms that at a certain point were controlled by the Hittites can contribute to reconstruct the history of the Hittite kingdom.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  And also, and even the Amarna letters from Egypt.

• 5:35Tristan Hughes?

  So it's a lot of documents, a lot of correspondence, and you mentioned that amazing archive from Hattusha, which we are certainly going to delve into. It almost feels like we did an episode several months ago on the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. So it feels similar, the amount of information we're going to garner from those surviving tablets. But before we get to that, Elena, a bit more on the whole structure of the Hittite state. When the Hittites have come into Anatolia and they've established themselves in the region, I mean, how do they rule? Should we be thinking of Hittite kings at the top?

• 6:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely. The Hittite kingdom was a monarchy, basically. And the king was the highest politically, military, judicial and religious authority. So, I mean, the king was the highest authority of the state in all aspects. And of course, I mean, it wasn't ruling alone. There are other members of the royal family, even the queen, had an important function. Especially in religious matters, but not only. I mean, some queens were very active also in what we call foreign affairs nowadays. And of course, the heir to the throne, princes and other dignitaries.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  And especially, I mean, this might be something that has been, say, inherited by the Hittite kingdom from the earliest phases of its history. At the beginning, it was a very small kingdom and it had to negotiate with other local powers. And especially in the very early phases, the power was not necessarily transmitted only within one family, but it could be, let's say, decided that it was, that the next king would come from another family of a powerful family of the region. Then the Hittites become the most important family, let's say, the most important kingdom.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  And then the power tends to remain within the dynasty.

• 7:36Tristan Hughes?

  Right, so within that dynasty, but you, we need to imagine also other kind of prominent noble families, factions at court. So potentially sometimes

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 7:45Tristan Hughes?

  Can we imagine that there were

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:47Tristan Hughes?

  pretty violent struggles for power? It wasn't always smooth successions?

• 7:51Speaker 03

  No, no, no, it wasn't always smooth. And for some moments of Hittite history, we know quite well that things didn't go smoothly. And we had fights for power within the royal family. Kings who had opposed the predecessor and people dying at the Hittite court and conspiracies. That's something that happened very often, not only, of course, in the Hittite kingdom. It's history of Mesopotamian courts, more or less.

• 8:21Tristan Hughes?

  But it's great. And that one of the things that I think attracts so many people to the Bronze Age is the fact that you have like all of these great stories surviving, like of conspiracies, of plots from the documents. I mean, do we have any surviving examples of a great conspiracy or plot in the Hittite kingdom of one figure trying to rise to power?

• 8:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. One actually managed to rise to power. It was King Hattusid the Third and

• 8:50Speaker 03

  His predecessor was his nephew and he managed to rule for a few years and then Hattusili took power, rose to power and he was, so basically Hattusili was his uncle.

• 9:03Tristan Hughes?

  The uncle, yes, the scheming uncle, okay.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then his nephew went to, well, ran away, went to, into exile and probably was for a while at the Egyptian court. That's where he sought refuge.

• 9:19Tristan Hughes?

  Right. So Hattusili wrestles power from his young nephew, the nephew flees and Hattusili is able to rule in his stead. And that's just one of, one of the plots, one of the conspiracy, one of the stories of a Hittite ruler gaining power that we have surviving.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I mean, Hattusili was afterwards a very successful king and also he ruled for a very long time, is the one who signed a famous peace treaty with Egypt, with Ramses II. And actually, the time after this treaty was signed and it corresponds more or less with the time of Hattusili's reign, has been dubbed Pax Hittitica because, I mean, finally Egypt and the Hittites were the biggest powers in, say, Western Asia, Anatolia, Syria, the Levant and Egypt, after decades of fighting each other, managed to make peace.

• 10:14Tristan Hughes?

  It's a great story that. And I think they have a copy of it at the United Nations Headquarters, often dubbed like the oldest known peace treaty in the world, Hattusili and Ramses the Great. So we have the kings at the top, Elena, and you have these powerful noble families around. What else do we know about the social structure, the social hierarchy of the Hittite kingdom, of the people who are often overshadowed by the surviving records, everyday people?

• 10:39Speaker 03

  What we know, of course, depends on the sources. And most of the sources from Hattusha and the other Hittite archives. Deal mainly to a large degree with religion and either description, organization of religious festivals, rituals and broadly speaking, religion. And those give us a lot of details about the religious life, not necessarily so much about people, but you have, I mean, I don't know how many thousands of people mentioned in the sources. And since we have mainly official archives from either the court or temples,

• 11:21Speaker 03

  the people we see are mainly people dealing with the court in some ways, either members of the royal families or dignitaries, members of the army. And you can reconstruct the hierarchy among these people. Porches and dignitaries, messengers you have very often, priests, of course. So, I mean, what is difficult sometimes is to distinguish one people from another because we have a lot of namesakes. And so you, sometimes you're not sure whether someone called in a certain name is always the same person across different sources.

• 12:05Tristan Hughes?

  Do we also get like intellectuals, are they looking at the stars, like these other Bronze Age powers, like astronomers as well in the surviving records?

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's something we don't know very well for the Hittite word. I mean, we have, of course, I mean, they were interested in that and also concerned with ominous signs. So we have mentions of eclipses, for instance. But for instance, that is something we know from historical sources, from the annals of some kings. And I mean, there is a lot of texts about divination and so different divinatory techniques, but less astronomy than what you know from, let's say, later archives and from Mesopotamia.

• 12:51Tristan Hughes?

  So you mentioned earlier how the Hittite kingdom, it's got its capital, Hattusha. So we should be mentioning a kingdom that does have these urban centers, these cities. And presumably, these people that are being mentioned in the surviving archives are living in those cities near the royal family. So do we have any indication at all about the silent majority, the farmers, the everyday people who are living outside of the city walls and living off the land?

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Well, we have lists of workers or mentions of different types of either farmers. The Hittite economy was based on agriculture and livestock. It was the base and the most important sector. But also, of course, what you could call a secondary production, for instance, textile industry. That's a traditional economy of a Mesopotamian kingdom. So we have mentions of different types of artisans, like potters. You have names and professions. We know that the Hittite countryside was dotted by villages

• 14:01Speaker 03

  because there are so many toponims in the Hittite sources. I mean, of course, most of the times it's difficult, if not impossible, to associate it with an archaeological site. But Hatusha isn't the only site, Hittite site, that has been excavated. And the royal family and the kingdom, the royal family didn't only live in Hatusha. They had other royal residences. And at certain point, the capital was even moved to the south of Anatolia for a while.

• 14:31Tristan Hughes?

  So we can imagine almost, not an itinerant, but the king and the royal family going around the kingdom, doing their duties as it was in that central Anatolian region.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  Exactly. And one of the important duty was taking part in religious festivities. The king, being also the high priest of the state, with the queen and other members of the royal family or the court, would basically travel through the kingdom to take part into these celebrations, religious celebrations that could last weeks. So they, and of course, in this way, they were present on the territory. And at the same time, they would take care of other duties.

• 15:13Tristan Hughes?

  Well, exactly. That makes sense. Do you think that actually the Hittite royal family, in the grand scale of things, they were actually pretty visible for everyday people in the Hittite world, for farmers, for shepherds and so on? If they're hearing that they're going to be attending certain festivals around... Around the kingdom in that area.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, in those kind of situations, yes. And we know from, because as I said, many texts describe these festivals. We know that there were dances on these occasions, of course, I mean, religious celebrations.

• 15:47Tristan Hughes?

  Parties are great.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  That involved music and dance and singers. And that was a kind of a way to to stage also the power of of the king. And to show in their their power, not only to celebrate the gods. And the the king would also spend and invest a lot into taking care of temples and offerings. So they depended to large, to large degree to from the kings and from the state.

• 16:19Tristan Hughes?

  Right, so so these kind of events, these big ceremonies where people will gather, yeah, lots of music, lots of celebrations, lots of decorations, very lavish, but also, yeah, to honour the gods, but also, I guess, giving out of donations to everyday people who are there as well, kind of bread and circuses, once again, that idea of the king at the top, but also someone, you know, keeping on the right side of the everyday people.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, somehow. And I mean, I think those were the moments where the king was more visible, as you were saying, not necessarily in the Hittite capital, where there is the citadel with the royal palace and other buildings related to the, let's say, the administration. And otherwise, in the low town of Hattusha, there were a lot of temples. And we assumed that other noble families didn't necessarily live all in the capital. So the the capital is quite big. The city was over like seven kilometres, something like that. And it hasn't been excavated extensively yet, but probably other noble families lived

• 17:24Speaker 03

  around the city, not necessarily in the city, in the capital, next to the king, let's say.

• 17:30Tristan Hughes?

  So lots of archaeological work has been done at Hattusha. So do we actually know, from what you were saying there, Elena, do we know quite a lot about the layout of this big Hittite city?

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it has been excavated since the beginning of the 20th century. Wow, okay. The excavation of Hatusha has been going on for a while now. The first mission was the German mission and still is excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, of course, now with Turkish colleagues. So they work there every year and they expose temples and other buildings belonging to the citadel, so the royal palace and other administrative buildings, I would say. It's easier in a way to excavate at Hatusha and some other Anatolian sites compared to,

• 18:26Speaker 03

  let's say, southern Mesopotamia, because they built a lot with the stone. So at least the plan of many buildings is relatively easy to recognize. And even now, if you visit Hatusha, you could easily recognize the shape of buildings. The shape of the city is determined by, of course, the morphology of the site, which is quite rocky with different levels. So that's why you have a sort of Acropolis or a citadel, a royal citadel, and then the low town. And there's walls that were defensive walls, of course, with important gates that gave access to the town.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  And other structures of the Hittite kingdom, the Hittite territory, especially religious structures, were open-air sanctuaries. Again, kind of using the morphology of the landscape of the territory, so using creeks and stone walls that would be then decorated with reliefs and they would also build structures next to it. But somehow, kind of using the nature.

• 19:39Speaker 03

  Natural elements that were then monumentalised.

• 19:43Tristan Hughes?

  Right, so kind of a beautiful, open air area becomes a sacred site, like sacred groves and the like, that idea to understand, yes. And also, you mentioned that what I found really interesting is why the archaeology is so good surviving from Hattusha, like, yes, in Mesopotamia, mud brick buildings that survive, but further north in Anatolia with the Hittites, they're building their foundations out of stone, and the stone is more durable than mud brick over that time. And so that's why you have more of the layout of a place like Hattusha compared to Ur or Aruk, or somewhere like that in Euphrates.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history. Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits. In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

• 21:40Speaker 04

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• 21:46Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 22:26Tristan Hughes?

  First of all, on those open-air sanctuaries, someone might think of the word a paradise or the great gardens of the Bronze Age in Assyria, Babylon, hanging gardens, for instance. Can we imagine that the Hittites were also very invested in the idea of those open, beautiful, garden-like spaces?

• 22:43Speaker 03

  Hmm, garden-like? No, I mean, what they often these open-air sanctuaries had ponds and kind of fountains. So that was another natural, natural beauty that were built in some cases. I mean, they were not, let's say, natural ponds, but they would build kind of fountains next to these sanctuaries. So water played an important role in their, let's say, Celtic activities and Celtic spaces.

• 23:14Tristan Hughes?

  And we've mentioned words like rituals, cults, temples. So begs the question, do we know much about Hittite religion, about the types of gods that they worshipped?

• 23:24Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm, yeah, we know a lot because indeed, many sources talk about religion and gods are mentioned basically everywhere. There is an expression that you find in Hittite texts, calling them the thousandth god of the Hittite country.

• 23:39Tristan Hughes?

  The thousand gods, did you say?

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:41Tristan Hughes?

  The thousand god, okay.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we know that some were the major gods. The most important gods were divine solar goddess.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  The sun god of Arina and then the storm god. So those were the the most important gods of the Hittite pantheon. But the Hittites tend to integrate gods from the regions. So they come into contact from Anatolia and even other countries. So that that's why the pantheon becomes very big. And yeah, the thousand gods of the Hittites. And then especially, for instance, in the treaties. You have very long lists of gods from the Hittite pantheon. And then they also include gods of the counterpart with whom they conclude the treaty.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Were summoned at the end of the treaty as witnesses to the treaty. So and the the gods were those who would guarantee that the treaty was respected. And punish those who wouldn't respect the treaty. So and then there, for instance, you have very long lists of gods from different cities in Anatolia. And that gives you an idea of how big and diverse was the the pantheon.

• 25:07Tristan Hughes?

  No wonder they start saying that they have a thousand gods. And it's also so interesting what you're saying, Elena, there with the goddess of the sun, the god of storms, being like the chief deities. And going back to what we mentioned earlier about what you're saying, how the Hittites, they come in from elsewhere, they're not removing the local population, it's integration. So I guess, could you potentially imagine, maybe this is just theory, but the Hittites, when they come in, they have the storm god, they have the sun goddess, and then they integrate all of these local gods, deities into their pantheon as time goes on?

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, the sun goddess was probably, especially the sun goddess of Arina, which is the hypothesis of the sun god, which is venerated by the Hittites, and which is the most important goddess of the Hittite pantheon, was probably a local cult. And I mean, the the sun god, the storm god, these are all natural elements. And that's in a way universal, of course. I mean, the sun god is very important also in Syria, even in Mesopotamia. So it's not, let's say, a prerogative of the Hittite pantheon. Then each cultural civilization would give it a different name.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  And would have slightly different features, but that's something shared by these populations.

• 26:26Tristan Hughes?

  Understood. And do we have any sense, any idea of the rituals around these deities? Should we be thinking of sacrifices and offerings being the central areas?

• 26:37Speaker 03

  We know about the libations, so that was of course part of the ritual and also the king and the queen performing this ritual, especially for the most important gods of the country.

• 26:48Tristan Hughes?

  Going back to what you were saying earlier about the royal family having important religious duties at the same time.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's also part of not only Hittite, but the Mesopotamian idea of kingship depending from the gods and needing a divine support and in favor. So you would be very careful in taking care of the gods properly.

• 27:14Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's get towards that archive. But before we arrive at those archives and those documents, if anyone types in Hattusha today, you mentioned the walls, but perhaps the most iconic photo is of that particular gate, which has those lion statues either side. So do we know much about the importance of lions to the Hittites and this particular structure?

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Of the lions? I mean, the lion was important because it's a symbol of kingship. It's sometimes mentioned in the text as a metaphor, an animal symbolism for the king. So in that sense, I mean, having lions represented is in a way a representation of kingship. Then you have the other main gates with a human figure that is usually understood as a king or as a representation of the king, not necessarily specific one, and then the Sphinx Gate. So yeah, the iconography of the Sphinx is widespread, especially in the Levant and in the area that came into contact with Egypt.

• 28:21Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, so a lion gate, a king gate and a Sphinx gate. Ah, okay. And so if we go up to the palace, to the citadel, was that where this archive, this incredible archive was discovered?

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Not all of them. I mean, some come from temples, especially the main temple, what is called Temple One, with the labels given by the archaeologists. The thing is, many of these texts, especially the biggest discoveries, date to the very first campaigns. At that time, as it happened in also many other sites of Mesopotamia, the archaeologists were not as careful as we would like them to be to record the exact find spot of the tablets.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  So sometimes, I mean, especially in later excavations, they would still find fragments of tablets that were unearthed in previous excavations, in previous years, in the, let's say, dump of the earlier excavations. So in many cases, we know that the tablet comes from Temple One, for instance, but not exactly where it was kept in the temple, assuming that it would have been possible to understand it from the archaeological excavation. These information are often missing. Of course, now it's very different. I mean, archaeologists started working in a much more careful way, but the first campaigns were not recorded that well.

• 30:00Tristan Hughes?

  The first campaigns is in when the Hittites first come into Anatolia, is that what you mean?

• 30:04Speaker 03

  No, no, no, sorry, the first archaeological campaign.

• 30:07Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, the first archaeological campaign, right.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  At the beginning of the archaeological investigations of Hattusa.

• 30:12Tristan Hughes?

  In the early 20th century?

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly.

• 30:14Tristan Hughes?

  Got it, understood. Well, let's have a look at some of the contents that have been discovered in this archive. I mean, first of all, regarding documents that talk about the Hittite state a bit more and its structure, because have they revealed quite a lot about Hittite laws, about their legal code?

• 30:33Speaker 03

  The Hittites are one of the two, let's say, cultures of the ancient Greeks who wrote a law code.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, we have a law code with different versions of it. So it was rewritten and changed a bit over time. And, well, it's not our only source about Hittite law and judicial administration. But it's an important source and it's phrased in a way similar to the more famous Hammurabi code, where all the norms are phrased as hypothetical sentences. If this and this happen, then this will be the consequence, the punishment, and so on.

• 31:18Tristan Hughes?

  A law code.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  That's how most law codes from Zapatemia are phrased. And that's also the case with the Hittite laws. As also in other cases, they cover different aspects of Hittite life, from what we would now call, let's say, family law, civil law. But it isn't, let's say, that's the reason why we try to avoid using the word "code", to refer to these ancient collections of laws, because it isn't as systematic as our modern law codes.

• 31:56Tristan Hughes?

  Is there anything similar in that law code, in the, well, sorry, I won't say law code then. Is there anything similar in those Hittite laws to "an eye for an eye", or, you know, the classic thing that people think about with Hammurabi?

• 32:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, kind of, but you see some differences in the administration of justice. And this is something that, for instance, you find also in a, in a letter by a Hittite king, actually, again, Atosiri III, writing to a Babylonian king, was complaining about some Babylonian merchants being killed in the Hittite territory.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  And Hattu city would answer, no, I mean, in the Hittite territory, we don't even kill murder as a punishment. So it's highly unlikely that they would kill merchants. Yeah, I mean, Hittites tend to use often fines.

• 32:51Tristan Hughes?

  No, no, no, but but but I understand. So with Hittite laws, is it very much a death penalty? A death punishment is not something you see. It it's more it's more fines or some other type of punishment for, okay, wrongdoing. I see. And but you mentioned there also, which leads us on nicely to correspondence with other powers in the Bronze Age. We've talked with your good friend, Dr. Amanda. We've talked with your good friend, Dr. Amanda Padani, in the past about this kind of brotherhood of kings and how they interact with each other. And and so were the Hittites very much part of this? Did they have a lot of correspondence with neighboring kings, whether that's in Babylonia or in Egypt or elsewhere?

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the time when the Hittite kingdom becomes what some call an empire in the late 14th century and then through the 13th century was a time when the ancient East was divided among great powers. So and they were in contact with each other and they also fostered these contacts very much through the exchange of letters, for instance, and so the exchange of messengers that went together with the exchange of goods and gifts, but also of experts, for instance, and of princesses.

• 34:10Tristan Hughes?

  Princesses? Ah, okay.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, because a way to maintain a good relationship, so at least to try to build and consolidate alliances were interdonistic marriages. So we know of Hittite princesses were given to, for instance, the the pharaoh, but also to also to the small kings, so subordinate kings. Because that was seen as a way to guarantee that the next generation, so the the heir to the throne being born to a Hittite princess would be raised into Hittite culture, educated to the Hittite language and traditions.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  And that would be likely a more loyal vassal.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  So would be a way to guarantee that the next generation of subordinate ruler would be loyal to the Hittite kingdom.

• 35:09Tristan Hughes?

  This is strengthening of alliances and stability of these empires.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:13Tristan Hughes?

  And how

• 35:14Speaker 03

  And also the Hittite kings would marry foreign

• 35:17Tristan Hughes?

  Did they?

• 35:18Speaker 03

  But it would go both ways.

• 35:20Tristan Hughes?

  And there's cases of Egyptian princesses going to the Hittite kings and being married to a Hittite king as well. So is it the other way around?

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Never, never.

• 35:27Tristan Hughes?

  Ah.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Egyptian princesses never leave Egypt.

• 35:31Tristan Hughes?

  Right. So they were saying like, yes, we will take a Hittite princess, but you're not having one of ours. Okay.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. There is this famous letter, I don't know, perhaps Amanda quoted it or mentioned it by a Babylonian king writing to the Pharaoh and complaining about the fact that he would not give an Egyptian princess a marriage to him. And it's funny because he goes on saying, well, I mean, just send me a woman as long as she's pretty. Who would know that she's not a princess?

• 36:04Tristan Hughes?

  Gosh.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  He didn't get not even a nice looking woman from Egypt, so.

• 36:09Tristan Hughes?

  So it gives you an insight into that kind of diplomatic nature of these these correspondences that the Hittites were very much part of. I mean, how did, from the archive we have from Hattusha, Elena, how did Hittite kings, how did they correspond with foreign kings? How did they, they talk with them in these documents?

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Well, we have a pretty large dossier of letters of the correspondence between Ramses II and Atticus III and also the queen, the Hittite queen. She was also corresponding with Ramses II because that was in the wake of the Kadesh battle, when the two kingdoms were trying to come to good terms and so they were somehow, let's say, handling.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  And in a way, literally bargaining the dowry of the Hittite princesses who would marry Ramses II. And at the same time, defining the terms of the alliance. And what I always find interesting in these letters is that, I mean, if you think of, I assume I never read a letter between two presidents of two modern states. And nowadays, how they they phrase their correspondence, but I imagine it always being very official, at least the official letters they write to each other.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  But these kings were addressing very different issues and sometimes also being very rude in a way, but and also, yeah, very, very frankly speaking to each other. And trying to do the best that they could and get the best they could from this contact, from this interaction with other kingdoms.

• 37:50Tristan Hughes?

  And what language are they using in these tablets when they're exchanging these sometimes quite abrupt, quite rude messages with each other?

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Uh huh. Although Hittite was the official language of the Hittite state, these letters were written in Akkadian. Akkadian was used as the lingua franca, you would say, to, yeah, correspond among kingdoms. And people whose mother tongue was different, of course, but they kind of agreed at a certain point. We don't know how, of course, but to use Akkadian as a common language. And then Akkadian written in Babylonia, in Assyria, in Egypt, or in the Hittite kingdom was a bit different.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Because often, especially in these regions where it was on the original language of the scribes. And you can see a lot of influence and interference of their mother tongue. But they were still, let's say, good enough to understand each other.

• 38:54Tristan Hughes?

  Right. The Hittite scribes, serving the Hittite king and queen, they have to learn this this lingua franca, diplomatic language, Akkadian, to interact with these other kings, which is another fascinating part. Elena, we need to explore some of these really interesting examples. You've mentioned already the one, you know, the after the bastion of Kadesh between the Hittites and the Egyptians. Before the peace treaty, we mentioned earlier how there's the bargaining between the Hittite king and queen and Ramses the Great over the Hittite princess going to Egypt and the dowry. What other great stories are there from this archive that you have a particular love of, that you'd love to tell us?

• 39:32Speaker 03

  One letter I like to read for myself, also with the students, is a very long letter written by Tussi the Third to the Babylonian king. And that's also because my other big

• 39:48Speaker 03

  area of research are the Khassites, the dynasty ruling Babylonia at this time, so the other great kings of the time. And we have this very long letter. Don't have so many letters between Hattie and Babylonia from this period. But this one is very long and it gives us a lot of information about also the time before this letter was written. So they often refers to events and facts that took place earlier. And so they often are very important sources for us to reconstruct the history of these kingdoms or their relationships. And in this

• 40:31Speaker 03

  letter, Atusiri, who must have been already, let's say, quite old, certainly not at the beginning of his reign, is writing to the Babylonian king, who is much younger.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  And Atusida refers to the good relationships he had with the father of the current Babylonian king, probably also quoting passages from a treaty that we don't have. I mean, despite the thousands of tablets found at Hatusha, we should always account for a lot of missing evidence. And sometimes the texts we have are clear evidence for what we are missing, because they refer to texts that were not discovered, and it's unlikely they will be discovered one day. So he's quoting passages from what seemed to be a treaty of an alliance between the

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Hittites and the Babylonians, and is complaining about the fact that Vice, sort of vizier probably, had the Babylonian court was very, yeah, unfriendly towards Atusida, while the Babylonian king was still very young, probably. So his vizier was probably running the kingdom for him while he was still young, and he was very unfriendly toward the Hittites.

• 41:55Tristan Hughes?

  So he's complaining about the past regent of Babylon, that like, he was being rude to me, like, I should have been treated better.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You must have the tablets I sent to your father and even to this regent. And so go and ask your scribes to read them to you, because, of course, they were not able to write and read, they had someone else doing it for them.

• 42:25Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, yes.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  And so, yeah, it's a nice, fascinating window you open into the interaction between these kingdoms. And then the letter goes on, for instance, mentioning this issue with merchants being killed in Hittite territory. And merchants were very important, of course. I mean, they were working for the state in a way. I mean, they were state merchants. And kings were very, let's say, they tried to make sure that they could do their business in a safe way. So we often find them in the correspondence. Kings, yeah, trying to to deal with problems that the merchant experience in the other king's territory.

• 43:11Tristan Hughes?

  Which completely makes sense, as if as they're the ones who are crossing the borders quite a lot to trade the goods and to to spread far and wide, yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then in the same letter, it's really very long and it addresses several topics.

• 43:24Tristan Hughes?

  Lots of issues, yes.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of issues. And one is the fate of Babylonian physician was sent to the Hittite court at a certain point, and that was a part of these exchanges of experts, for instance. So we know also of Egyptian physicians being sent to the Egyptian, to the Hittite.

• 43:47Tristan Hughes?

  Right, okay.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  And this Babylonian physician was sent to the Hittite court, from what we understand from Hattusha's reply to some complaint by the Babylonian king. This physician must have died soon after he reached Hattusha. And so the Hattusha Third is saying, it's not coming back because he died. I'm not withholding him here. And he's even mentioning that some other physician and a ritualist were still at the Hittite capital, and they were staying on their own free will. They were not held back by the Hittite king.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  And one even married the Hittite woman, had his house in Hattusha, so they simply didn't want to go back.

• 44:43Speaker 04

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• 45:27Speaker 04

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• 45:33Speaker 01

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• 45:40Speaker 02

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• 46:13Tristan Hughes?

  I love that particular story. So the young Babylonian king, or maybe the regent before, sent to Hattusili III one of their prized physicians. Going to say, you know, you're an ally, going to send you our prized physician to look after you. Then shady circumstances, this physician dies in Hattusha. And this letter we have surviving is Hattusili basically saying, yeah, about that, sorry, he's not coming back.

• 46:40Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. No, but he's also saying that he did his best to heal him. And when he died, he did all the mourning rites. And he's sending back his servants with the gifts he had given to the physician. So yeah, justifying the situation, but he really seems not to be guilty. I mean, and this physician, this particular physician, we are very lucky because it's mentioned also in sources from Babylonia. And he must have been already relatively old when he travelled to Hattusha. And it was a long travel, so.

• 47:16Tristan Hughes?

  So maybe not, yeah, not too suspicious circumstances then in those cases, yes?

• 47:22Speaker 03

  No, not necessarily suspicious, but the fact that he is addressing this topic in the letter, and it's a pretty long paragraph, tells us something about the value these positions, these experts had at the courts where they were working.

• 47:38Tristan Hughes?

  And Delaina, do these letters that have been found in the archive at Hattusha, do they continue for many, many generations? Do you see many different kings and queens sending letters? So that you can almost create a timeline of all of these diplomatic endeavours that went ahead, that were sent out from the Hittite capital and were received there too?

• 47:59Speaker 03

  Uh huh, yeah. I mean, letters concentrated in the 13th century, 14th century a bit, but we know about other Hittite kings through other types of sources. We have historiographic texts, annals telling the deeds of other kings. We have edicts, we have the treaties. So we're able to reconstruct the sequence of Hittite kings pretty well. It's often difficult to know how long each king reigned. That's something that to establish an exact chronology of the dynasty and of each king is pretty difficult. And all together, I mean, we have sources about Hittite kings from the 17th century until the end of the 13th century,

• 48:44Speaker 03

  or even early 12th century.

• 48:47Tristan Hughes?

  I've got in my notes the name, which I'll always struggle to say, but I have to say it anyway, Suppiluliuma?

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, Suppiluliuma.

• 48:55Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, what a name. He's one of those kings, isn't he?

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, well, he's the one who, let's say, managed to transform in a, also in a stable way, the Hittite kingdom into an empire, because he managed to conquer Syria and annex it to the Hittite kingdom by defeating the kingdom of Mitanni, that was the big power, the great power. In northern Syria and northern Mesopotamia at the time. And so is the one who, the previous Hittite kings already led military campaigns to the south, to northern Syria, but never managed to annex it in a stable way.

• 49:42Tristan Hughes?

  And he's ruling at the time of that famous or infamous Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, isn't he, who seems to be very much, he's not as active in the military campaigning, he's enjoying the luxuries of his life in Egypt. So he kind of takes advantage, this Hittite king, I'm not going to repeat the name of, to seize land in Syria at that time. So it's interesting, isn't it, how that's helped?

• 50:03Speaker 03

  This is a time where the Hittite kings were corresponding also with Akhenaton, so Blumen the First was corresponding. We have a few letters from the Hittite kingdom also in the Aman archive, so the archive at Akhetaton that was, yeah, the capital of Akhenaton.

• 50:22Tristan Hughes?

  Akhenaton's capital, yeah, Akhenaton's capital.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:25Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I can ask so many more questions, but I'm not going to, because I've got a couple more areas I'd love us to explore. First off, I'd like to revisit this link with Babylon, because, Elena, you mentioned that your other big interest is this Cassite dynasty, which deserves a podcast in its own right. But am I correct that Hittite Babylonian relations hadn't always been very lovey dovey and good and nice? Is there also a story that the Hittites did once sack Babylon, arguably the greatest city in ancient history?

• 50:54Speaker 03

  True, that happened quite early in Hittite history, and the Hittite king Mursili the First managed to basically reach Babylon with his army. The exact data is kind of

• 51:11Speaker 03

  a matter of debate, depending on the chronology you use, but basically after leading a number of successful military campaigns in northern Syria, he took advantage of, let's say, power vacuum in northern Mesopotamia, and also the fact that even the dynasty that was ruling Babylon at the time was weakened by several factors. And he reached Babylon.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  He sacked it, even kidnapped local god Marduk. And that didn't lead to annexation of Babylonia to the Hittite kingdom. I mean, it was too far away and impossible to rule and to control. But as a symbolic act, certainly very, very powerful. But that's the only direct military confrontation we have between Hittites and Babylonians. Because the countries were too far away, actually, to get into conflict.

• 52:11Tristan Hughes?

  And the reason then you get Hittites fighting Egyptians is because the Egyptians want to meddle in northern Syria, hence closer to the Hittite heartlands, right?

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Exactly. I mean, they, they had a border in common, more or less, where the current border between Lebanon and Syria is running, more or less, to give you an idea. So, and they, they were both trying to expand either further south or further north, especially the Egyptians, I would say, were kind of...

• 52:40Tristan Hughes?

  Absolutely. And do you think of the chariots and everything like that? I don't think we got, we'll delve into the military in this case. But, but, but chariots, they're a big part of this Hittite story? Or are they just what we associate with them today, but were actually quite a small part?

• 52:53Speaker 03

  No, I mean, when the Hittite army is mentioned, it's made of soldiers and chariots. They go together. So, yeah, that, that become part of warfare in Mesopotamia in the Late Bronze Age.

• 53:08Tristan Hughes?

  Understood, understood. I have to ask, we have to look at West, lastly. Troy and the Hittites, is there a connection here?

• 53:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, there is. If we agree that the ancient site of Troy, so ancient Troy, corresponds to the city and the territory called Vilusa in the Hittite sources, which has been associated with Ilios, the Greek name of Troy. And that region was conquered by the Hittites at a certain point. We have a treaty between Hittite king Muatali II and the king of Vilusa, whose name was Alexandu, is a version of a Greek name like Alexandros. So that part of Anatolia, if Vilusa is Kiserlik Yuk...

• 54:02Speaker 03

  So Troy was at a certain point part of the Hittite Kingdom, which stretched, I mean, at its peak from Western Anatolia, the Aegean coast, to Eastern Anatolia and included Northern Syria and even Cyprus.

• 54:19Tristan Hughes?

  Cyprus as well. Ah, so yes, so seafaring of it too. And so Troy on the western edge is a vassal state. And people get very excited when they hear Alexander, don't they? They try to associate it with Paris from the Iliad and the Trojan War. So it's a, that's another rabbit hole that I'm sure we could delve into another time. But Elena, if the Hittites end up being so powerful in Anatolia as the Bronze Age progresses for centuries, they're one of the big powers that are interacting with the other great states of the ancient Near East. How does it all end? How does it all come tumbling down? What is the story of the end of the Hittites?

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a story we still don't know a lot about because at some point they simply leave the Hittite capital. And we don't have sources telling us what happened exactly. But Hattusha is abandoned at the beginning, let's say, of the 12th century. This is part of a crisis that invades the whole Eastern Mediterranean, not only the Hittite Kingdom. The so-called the sea people are often associated with this crisis and this collapse of the late Bronze Age system of great powers. And the sea people are groups of populations which probably came from the West,

• 55:41Speaker 03

  broadly speaking, and are described and even represented in Egyptian reliefs on boats. And you had this very famous relief from the time of Rameses III from Medinatabu showing these hordes of boats with people attacking the coast, basically. And the stories told in the Egyptian sources are very dramatic. And they describe it as an invasion and a violent invasion. It's difficult to confirm this version, but it's true that many sites are abandoned,

• 56:22Speaker 03

  more or less at this time, not only in Anatolia, and some even show traces of destruction. Another reason of this collapse, at least for the Hittite kingdom, what we see in the sources from the last decades of the Hittite history is that they seem to struggle to have enough cereals. And so the grain supply seemed to be.

• 56:49Tristan Hughes?

  So famine or drought or something like that, yeah?

• 56:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, something like that, something like that. Might have played a role as well. But another factor of weakness could have been what we mentioned at the very beginning. So struggles within the royal family. So when the uncle took over from the nephew, and to see the third took power, this probably caused some, let's say friction, to use an euphemism, within not only the royal family, but the court and the elite. And having the support of the elite and of the nobility was important,

• 57:33Speaker 03

  of the aristocracy was important to be able to maintain the power. So it's probably a combination of factors that caused the collapse of the Hittite kingdom, which, however, is only one of the big powers that disappears from the map at this time. More or less at the same time, even the Messenian civilization experiences a crisis. Egypt as well, Babylonia for different reasons. It's generalized chaos.

• 58:03Tristan Hughes?

  Yeah, generalized chaos, the Bronze Age collapse. Hittites don't fare too well in it.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  And the fact that they all kind of, there's a very intense interaction they had in the previous centuries and decades, probably made them in a way very much dependent on one another. I mean, at least the general.

• 58:20Tristan Hughes?

  Yes.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  Balance they found.

• 58:23Tristan Hughes?

  A domino effect, exactly, because they're so interlinked.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  If one started to fall and then it's sort of domino effect.

• 58:30Tristan Hughes?

  Gosh, yes, the Hittites, they don't fare well during that time. And that's the end of their story. Although, Elena, I do see later on, once again, this is an episode in its own right. You do see the word Neo Hittites, but are they very different from the Hittites pre Bronze Age collapse? Or should we also call them Hittites?

• 58:47Speaker 03

  Well, they are pretty different in terms of extension, for instance, of the Neohittite states or kingdoms, which are smaller kingdoms in southern Anatolia and northern Syria. But they consider themselves as the heirs of the great Hittite kingdom, partly because some dynasties originally descended from the Hittites. And they use a writing system and a language that was used also in the Hittite kingdom. Next to cuneiform and Hittite, the Hittites developed also a writing system that is called Anatolian Olybrian Hieroglyphic.

• 59:31Tristan Hughes?

  Ah, this is the hieroglyphs of Anatolia, okay.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was used already at the time of the Hittite kingdom, also on official, official texts, seals, for instance, and reliefs. And that becomes the writing system and the language used in this Neohittite state. So you see also a cultural and linguistic link with traditions that were already current at the time of the Hittite kingdom.

• 1:00:01Tristan Hughes?

  Right, so hieroglyphs, they're not just Egyptian. And there's, I guess, it explains, isn't it, if they saw themselves as the heirs, as the successors, why you have a Suppiluliuma, the second or third, the Neo Hittites, and his mad statue, if you type his name, you see this, with big bulging eyes looking at you. So I guess that's, yeah, more that continuation into the Iron Age, slightly different, but that continuation linguistic and the name Hittite.

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  And the Assyrians kept calling this region Hatti.

• 1:00:33Tristan Hughes?

  Hatti, there you go. So it continues.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Hittites didn't exist anymore, but the name kept being associated with northern Syria and part of Anatolia.

• 1:00:46Tristan Hughes?

  Elena, there's been such fascinating conversation, a wonderful introduction to the story of the Hittites. There's so much more we could explore, but I guess that's also why this topic, this Bronze Age civilisation, these people are so exciting today, because there is a lot that we know about them and more's been discovered every day, week, month, year.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true. It's for me never-ending. It's a goldmine of stories that I like to research, of course for scientific purposes, but I also like to read these texts with students because they offer a lot of information and also a lot of opportunities to discuss about different aspects about these ancient people interacting with each other.

• 1:01:32Tristan Hughes?

  Elena, it just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

• 1:01:37Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thank you again.

• 1:01:43Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr Elena De Vecchi giving you an introduction to the story of the Hittites, this remarkable Bronze Age power centred in Anatolia. I hope you enjoyed the episode. We have just scratched the surface with the story of the Hittites. There are so many different parts of their story that we can delve into in future episodes. So really want to hear from you. Really do hope you enjoyed the episode. Let us know your thoughts. Let us know if you want more episodes on the Hittites in the future. But in the meantime, thank you for listening to this episode. If you're enjoying the ancients so far, please make sure that you're following the show, whether that be on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating too, we'd really appreciate it. It really

• 1:02:28Tristan Hughes?

  helps us out. Now, lastly, don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.