Hittites, Iron, Indo-Europeans and Chariots

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HITTITES

20120209-HittiteLion_AnkaraMuseum.JPG
Hittite Lion
The Hittites were one of the ancient world's great powers for about five centuries. They were the main geopolitical rivals of ancient Egypt during New Kingdom period of King Tutankhamun and Ramses II. "In pre-modern times, with none of our infrastructure and technology, the Hittites controlled and ruled a huge region for centuries despite myriad challenges of space, threats from neighbors and entities incorporated into their empire, and despite being centered in a semi-arid region," Cornell University professor of arts and sciences in classics Sturt Manning said in a study published in the journal Nature.

The Hittite Empire dominated Asia Minor and parts of the Middle East from 1750 B.C. to 1200 B.C. Once regarded as a magical people, the Hittites were known for their military skill. They developed an advanced chariot and were one of the first cultures to smelt iron and forge it I to weapons and tools. They fought with spears from chariots and did not possess the more advanced composite bow.

The Hittites were an Indo-European people that served as a conduit and bridge for the cultures of Asia, the Middle East and Europe. They created a society with a government and laws, similar to those in Sumer in Mesopotamia . The Hittites fought against Kings of Babylonians and the Pharaohs of Egypt for possession what is now Israel, Lebanon and Syria. In the 12th century their empire fell to the Assyrians.

In the Bible, the Hittites were a source of land and wives for Old Testament patriarchs, including David, who ordered the beautiful Basheba into his bed and then arranged the death of Uriah, her inconvenient Hittite husband. Uriah was a Hittite captain, was in David’s army.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “The Hittites, who spoke an Indo-European language (a family of languages that includes English), dominated much of Anatolia and neighboring regions between about 1650 and 1200 B.C. It has been suggested that groups speaking languages related to Hittite first entered Anatolia at the end of the third millennium B.C., but the Hittites first rose to prominence around 1750 B.C., when King Pithana and his son Anitta captured the important city of Kanesh as well as a number of other city-states, including that of Hattusha (modern Bogazköy). [Source: Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. "The Hittites", Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2002, metmuseum.org \^/]

Websites on Mesopotamia: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; International Association for Assyriology iaassyriology.com ; Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago isac.uchicago.edu ; University of Chicago Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations nelc.uchicago.edu ; University of Pennsylvania Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations (NELC) nelc.sas.upenn.edu; Penn Museum Near East Section penn.museum; Ancient History Encyclopedia ancient.eu.com/Mesopotamia ; British Museum britishmuseum.org ; Louvre louvre.fr/en/explore ; Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org/toah ; Ancient Near Eastern Art Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org; Iraq Museum theiraqmuseum ABZU etana.org/abzubib; Archaeology Websites Archaeology News Report archaeologynewsreport.blogspot.com ; Anthropology.net anthropology.net : archaeologica.org archaeologica.org ; Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com ; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org ; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com; Live Science livescience.com/

Books: "Kingdom of the Hittites" by Trevor Bruce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). "Life and Society in the Hittite World by Trevor Bruce (Oxford University Press, 20020.



Hittites — the Name

20120209-AnkaraMuseumAlaca1.jpg According to Crystal Links: “Hittites is the conventional English-language term for an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language and established a kingdom centered in Hattusa (Hittite Hattushash) where today is the village of Bogazköy in north-central Turkey, through most of the second millennium B.C.. [Source:Crystal Links +/]

“The Hittite kingdom, which at its height controlled central Anatolia, north-western Syria down to Ugarit, and Mesopotamia down to Babylon, lasted from roughly 1680 B.C. to about 1180 B.C.. After 1180 B.C., the Hittite polity disintegrated into several independent city-states, some of which survived as late as around 700 B.C.. +/

“The Hittite kingdom, or at least its core region, was apparently called Hatti in the reconstructed Hittite language. However, the Hittites should be distinguished from the "Hattians", an earlier people who inhabited the same region until the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C., and spoke a non-Indo-European language conventionally called Hattic. +/

“Hittites or more recently, Hethites is also the common English name of a Biblical people who are called Children of Heth. These people are mentioned several times in the Old Testament, from the time of the Patriarchs up to Ezra's return from Babylonian captivity. The archaeologists who discovered the Anatolian Hittites in the 19th century initially believed the two peoples to be the same, but this identification remains disputed.The Hittites were also famous for their skill in building and using chariots. Some consider the Hittites to be the first civilization to have discovered how to work iron, and thus the first to enter the Iron Age.” +/

Hittite Empire

The Hittites established an empire that stretched across Anatolia and the Levant and southward to Kadesh (on the border of present-day Lebanon and Syria) from about 1700 to 1200 B.C. The Babylon empire came to an end when the Hittites sacked Babylon in 1595 B.C. See Mesopotamia

Hittite monarchs ruled as viceroys of the storm god of the mountainous homeland. The Hittite empire had many vassals states, possibly including Troy. When the Hittite empire collapsed many great cities in Asia Minor were sacked. The two headed eagle was the a Hittite religious symbol. It is said to have inspired the Austrian eagle which first appeared in the Crusades.

The Hittites controlled vast trade routes that extended east into Asia, south into Egypt and Syria and north towards the Black Sea. As the moved towards the Mediterranean Sea they clashed with the Greece-based Mycenaeans who fought Troy in the Trojan Wars. For a time Troy was a major Hittite trading center. See Mycenaeans

Bogazkale (120 miles northeast of Ankara on the road to Samsun) was the capital of the Hittites, the first people to use iron. The empire they ruled, starting in 1,700 B.C., was as large and powerful and ancient Egypt. Located on a craggy hill and also known as Hattuşas, Bogazkale is ringed by the remains of a six-mile-long double wall. Most of the ruins are piles of stones and foundations with the exception of the stone lions at the Lion Gate, the 200 foot-long underground tunnel, and the 70 room "Big Temple." In nearby Yazilikaya you can see a natural open-air temple with base-reliefs carved into the rock faces. Twenty miles away in Alaca Höyük is a Hittite sphinx gate and the remans of a 6000-year-old pre-Hittite civilization.

Hittites and the Iron Age


relief of men with swords, maybe made of iron

The Hittites are regarded as the first people to produce iron and thus are the civilization that ushered in the Iron Age. About 1200 B.C., scholars suggest, cultures other than the Hittites began to possess iron. The Assyrians began using iron weapons and armor in Mesopotamia around that time with deadly results, but the Egyptians did not utilize the metal until the later pharaohs. Lethal Celtic iron swords dating back to 950 BC have been found in Austria and its is believed the Greeks learned to make iron weapons from them.

Iron was made around 1500 B.C. by the Hitittes. About 1400 B.C., the Chalbyes, a subject tribe of the Hitittes invented the cementation process to make iron stronger. The iron was hammered and heated in contact with charcoal. The carbon absorbed from the charcoal made the iron harder and stronger. The smelting temperature was increased by using more sophisticated bellows.

Hittites are believed to have monopolized the iron-making process during the Bronze Age. This theory has been questioned in recent decades, especially in light of the Hittites’ demise in the Late Bronze Age collapse around 1200 B.C. , which is around the time the Iron Age began. spread of ironworking technology in the Middle East and Europe is now seen as a relatively slow, continuous process. While there are some iron objects from Bronze Age Anatolia, the number is comparable to that of iron objects found in Egypt and in other places from the same period; and only a small number of these objects are weapons. X-ray fluorescence spectrometry suggests "that most or all irons from the Bronze Age are derived from" meteorites. [Source: Wikipedia]

Hittite Iron

The Hittites mined iron in the Black Sea region. Hittite Iron mines supplied the region with metal. Metal making secrets were carefully guarded by the Hittites and the civilizations in Turkey, Iran and Mesopotamia. Iron could not be shaped by cold hammering (like bronze), it had to be constantly reheated and hammered. The best iron has traces of nickel mixed in with it.

It is the opinion of some scholars that the Hittites probably learned the secret of making iron as early as 1600 B.C., but it is doubtful when they first employed it for military purposes. Its first uses seem to have been for ornaments, not weapons. Perhaps the first effective military use of iron was by the Sea Peoples, who effected the breakup of the Hittite Empire near the close of the 13th century B.C. Allusion to the iron monopoly of these Sea Peoples, known to Bible readers as the Philistines, is to be found in 1 Samuel 13.19–22.

The value attached to iron can be ascertained from a famous letter written about 1250 B.C. by a Hittite king to accompany an iron dagger-blade sent to a fellow monarch, probably the king of Assyria, about his order for iron. It reads: 'In the matter of the good iron about which you wrote, good iron is not at present available in my storehouse in Kizzuwatna. I have already told you that this is a bad time for producing iron. They will be producing good iron, but they won't have finished yet. I shall send it to you when they have finished. At present I am sending you an iron dagger-blade.' [Source: H.W.F. Saggs Civilization before Greece and Rome, Batsford 1989, page 205]

Jay Bennett wrote in National Geographic: More terms for iron appear in records from the Hittite Empire, which became the dominant power in much of present-day Turkey and Syria around the 14th century B.C. These include “good iron,” “black iron,” and possibly “white iron,” apparently to distinguish different types. A ritual preserved in several texts describes the gods building a temple. In one version, a line states: “They brought black iron of the sky” — a possible reference to the black crust that coats meteorites after their fiery plunge through the atmosphere. “This kind of thing does indicate that they seem to know that it’s coming from the sky,” says Mark Weeden, a scholar of Hittite texts at University College London. [Source: Jay Bennett, National Geographic, May 9, 2023]

Hittite inventories mention hundreds of iron objects, including blades, jewelry, statuettes, and a 66-pound basin. The amount of iron described in these texts, as well as descriptions of people working iron, have led some scholars to conclude the Hittites may have developed iron smelting by this point. But only about two dozen artifacts of rusty iron have been discovered at Hittite sites, and they have not been analyzed to determine if they are meteoritic, leaving the extent of ironworking at this time a mystery.

Iron Age


Iron grave goods from a Greek warrior, 900 BC

Iron smelting was first developed by the Hittites and Africans in Termit, Niger around 1500 B.C. The Iron Age began around 1,500 B.C. It followed the Stone Age, Copper Age and Bronze Age. North of Alps it was from 800 to 50 B.C. Iron was used in 2000 B.C. Improved iron working from the Hittites became wide spread by 1200 B.C.

About 1400 B.C., the Chalbyes, a subject tribe of the Hitittes invented the cementation process to make iron stronger. The iron was hammered and heated in contact with charcoal. The carbon absorbed from the charcoal made the iron harder and stronger. The smelting temperature was increased by using more sophisticated bellows. About 1200 BC, scholars suggest, cultures other than the Hittites began to possess iron. The Assyrians began using iron weapons and armor in Mesopotamia around that time with deadly results, but the Egyptians did not utilize the metal until the later pharaohs.

Iron — a metal a that is harder, stronger and keeps an edge better than bronze — proved to be an ideal material for improving weapons and armor as well as plows (land with soil previously to hard to cultivate was able to be farmed for the first time). Although it is found all over the world, iron was developed after bronze because virtually the only source of pure iron is meteorites and iron ore is much more difficult to smelt (extract the metal from rock) than copper or tin. Some scholars speculate the first iron smelts were built on hills where funnels were used to trap and intensify wind, blowing the fire so it was hot enough to melt the iron. Later bellows were introduced and modern iron making was made possible when the Chinese and later Europeans discovered how to make hotter-burning coke from coal. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]

Textual Evidence of Iron from Anatolia Dating to 4,000 Years Ago

Jay Bennett wrote in National Geographic: Artifacts that could help piece together the puzzle of the Iron Age’s origins are gradually corroding, but additional clues about iron are still being discovered in early texts. Between the 20th and 18th centuries B.C., the Old Assyrian city-state of Assur in modern Iraq established trade colonies in what is now Turkey. Some 20,000 cuneiform tablets found at Kültepe-Kanesh, the site of the primary outpost, reveal details of this trade. The records include multiple terms connected to iron, such as the Akkadian word parzillum, which is also used in later periods. One of the most common, however, is the term amūtum, which appears with cuneiform signs that can mean “metal” and “sky.” [Source: Jay Bennett, National Geographic, May 9, 2023]

Whether this term refers explicitly to meteoritic iron, or if it could simply be the word for a type of metal, is unclear. “Whatever it is, it’s super expensive,” says Gojko Barjamovic, an Assyriologist at Harvard University. The records from Kültepe-Kanesh show that this sky metal was traded for as much as 40 times the price of silver.

Parzillum appears again in two cuneiform tablets sent to Egypt in the 14th century B.C. The tablets, among 382 found in the ancient Egyptian capital of Amarna, describe three daggers with iron blades as well as bracelets of iron and an iron mace covered in gold. These objects are included on lists of gifts sent from Tushratta, the ruler of the Mitanni kingdom in what is now Syria and Turkey, to the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Tutankhamun is believed to have been Amenhotep III’s grandson, which has led some scholars to argue that Tut’s iron dagger could be one of those mentioned in the lists, perhaps passed down as an heirloom.

Hittites in the Bible


david handing a letter to Uriah, the Hittite

The Hittites were mentioned numerous times in the Bible. The Near East at the time of the first Jews was a time of chaos. The Bronze Age was ending and the Iron Age was emerging and the Near East was a patchwork of rival kingdoms that included the Israelites, Jebusites, Amorites, Ammonsites, Hittites, Horvites and Philistines. The Assyrians and Phoenicians were rising, Egypt was in a temporary state of decline, and the Mycenaeans were fighting the Trojans in the Trojan War.

The Canaanites are believed to have been the first people to possess an alphabet. A 13th century B.C. tablet with column of Canaanite words was found at Ashkelon. Believed to have used to teach scribes languages, the tablet appears to have contained other columns with other languages, perhaps the Semitic cuneiform language of Akkadian and another unrelated tongue, possibly Hurrian or Hittite.

After Abraham returned from Jerusalem, he settled in Beersheba. Sarah died in Qiryat Arba, near Hebron, at the age of 127. Abraham buried her in Hebron in the cave of Machpelah, which he bought for 400 shekels from a Hittite who took advantage of his grievous state and overcharged him. Abraham never owned a piece of land in his entire life until he bought the cave. As a nomad he never needed a place to live but according to one scholar "the dead require a permanent resting place."

David seduced Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, who was then killed after being sent to the front line of battle by David. The Prophet Nathan predicted that tragedies would occur in David’s family for this evil deed. Bathsheba later gave birth to Solomon.

Arrival of the Indo-Europeans and Hittites in Asia Minor

Indo-European (Aryan) intrusions into Iran and Asia Minor (Anatolia, Turkey) began about 3000 B.C.. The Indo-European tribes originated in the great central Eurasian Plains and spread into the Danube River valley possibly as early as 4500 B.C., where they may have been the destroyers of the Vinca Culture. Iranian tribes entered the plateau which now bears their name in the middle around 2500 B.C. and reached the Zagros Mountains which border Mesopotamia to the east by about 2250 B.C.. The Guti may have been Indo-European.

Hittites and related tribes began entering Anatolia [modern Turkey] from both the northwest (the European Balkans) and the northeast (Russian Georgia) after 3000 B.C.. They conquered and partially absorbed the former residents [the Hatti, from whom the Hittites drew their name]. Small kingdoms were formed and there was some trade with Old Assyria. At some time after 2000 B.C. the separate Hittite kingdoms confederated under the leadership of a king called King, Great King, King of Kings.

This title was common in the ancient world and is frequently translated as emperor. Like many other early Indo-European kingships, the top position was not passed by way of primogeniture; the successor could be any male member of the ruling family. As a result, civil wars frequently determined the succession; and the "Empire" of the Hittites could not maintain a consistent strength because of quarrels over succession. The same is true of related peoples like the Hurrians and the Mitanni. In 1600 B.C. the Hittite Empire was very powerful, but after the successful raid on Babylon in 1590, the Hittites entered a period of weakness.

Indo-European Charioteers

Around 1500 BC, Aryan (Indo-European) charioteers from the steppes of northern Iran conquered India. Aryan tribes also gave birth to early civilizations in Greece, Europe and India and were master charioteers. The Aryans were a loosely federated, semi-nomadic herdsmen people who spread both east and west from Central Asia, taking their sky gods with them. The Aryans first settled in the Punjab and later moved on to the Ganges Valley. They are also ancestors of Persians, pre-Homeric Greeks, Teutons and Celts.

20120209-Lion-hunt_relief_(Aslantepe).jpg
Hittite Lion-hunt relief
at Aslantepe
Between 2000 and 1000 B.C. successive waves of Aryans migrated to India from Central Asia (as well as eastern Europe, western Russia and Persia) . The Aryans invaded India between 1500 and 1200 B.C., around the same time they moved into the Mediterranean and western Europe. At this time the Indus civilization had already been destroyed or was moribund.

The Aryans had advanced bronze weapons, later iron weapons and horse drawn chariots with light spoked wheels. The native people the conquered at best had oxcarts and often only stone-age weapons. "Charioteers were the first great aggressors in human history," the historian Jack Keegan wrote. About 1700 BC, Semitic tribes known as the Hykos, invaded the Nile Valley, and mountain people infiltrated Mesopotamia. Both invaders had chariots. Around 1500 BC, Aryan charioteers from the steppes of northern Iran conquered India and the founders of the Shang Dynasty (the first Chinese ruling authority) arrived in China on chariots and set up the world's first state. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]

Early Chariots

Luis Alberto Ruiz wrote in National Geographic: The earliest chariots appeared in Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C. They were very different from the familiar horse-drawn vehicles seen in ancient Greece and Rome. Early prototypes often had four solid wheels, and their main purpose was for use in parades and funerary rites. These vehicles were not pulled by horses, but by oxen and other draft animals, or equids such as donkeys or mules. The Standard of Ur, a casket from the Sumerian city of Ur dating to around 2600 B.C., features a chariot that looks like a solid-wheeled wagon pulled by either mules or donkeys. [Source: Luis Alberto Ruiz, National Geographic, May 1, 2020]

The beginning of the second millennium B.C. was a period of rapid change for chariot building. In this period, the horse was first used as a draft animal, and wheels became increasingly spoked, and therefore much lighter. The advances in speed and mobility that resulted from these innovations led to the chariot becoming essential military equipment in the Bronze Age. (Constantinople's chariot races were all the rage in the Roman Empire.)

John Noble Wilford wrote in the New York Times, “In ancient graves on the steppes of Russia and Kazakhstan, archeologists have uncovered skulls and bones of sacrificed horses and, perhaps most significantly, traces of spoked wheels. These appear to be the wheels of chariots, the earliest direct evidence for the existence of the two-wheeled high-performance vehicles that transformed the technology of transport and warfare.[Source: John Noble Wilford, New York Times, February 22, 1994]

20120209-Yazilikaya rGruppe.jpg
Yazilikaya Group

Hittite Chariots

Luis Alberto Ruiz wrote in National Geographic: Two-wheeled models were acquired for military use by the leading powers of the day, including the Egyptians and the Hittites. In 1650 B.C., during the siege of a city called Urshu, the Hittite king Hattusilis mentions 30 Hittite chariots ranged against 80 chariots belonging to his Hurrian enemies. The Hittite fleet of chariots would grow exponentially in subsequent centuries, from tens to hundreds, and later, to thousands. [Source: Luis Alberto Ruiz, National Geographic, May 1, 2020]

Anatolian techniques of bending and shaping wood helped the Hittites develop sophisticated two-wheeled models. The imperial-era Hittites left little illustrative evidence behind of such vehicles (although, following the collapse of the Hittite Empire, craftsmen in surviving Hittite enclaves did leave artworks that depict chariots). Other evidence tells historians that by the 17th century B.C., Hittite chariots had developed lighter wheels.

Unlike Egyptian two-man chariots, the Hittite model could carry three people: the driver, a warrior armed with lances or bow and arrows, and a shield bearer. The latter was tethered to the back section of the carriage, lending stability during tight maneuvers. The introduction of the light chariot in Egypt has been attributed to the Hyksos, who invaded the Nile Delta around 1650 B.C. Lighter than the Hittite model, and crewed only by two men (a driver and an archer), their lightness could be an advantage when needing to maneuver quickly on the battlefield.

Chariots are only as good as the animals that draw them, making a supply of healthy, well-trained horses a priority to the Hittites. A fascinating text on equine management, dated to the 13th century B.C., was found at the ancient site of the Hittite capital Hattusa. It begins with the words “Thus [speaks] Kikkuli, the horse trainer of the land of Mitanni.” An immigrant in the service of the Hittite king, Kikkuli’s vocabulary is of great interest to historians: a mixture of Hittite, his native Hurrian, as well as a smattering of other words from the Middle East. The text is divided into three parts. First, Kikkuli explains the four-day process of selecting the right animals. Then, he details a training method that begins in autumn and lasts for 184 days. The routine starts with the horses practicing exercises without pulling any weight to build up their stamina and help prevent injury. The third section gives instructions on how the horses should be fed and watered. The focus is entirely equestrian, and does not dwell on the other, vital component of a chariot: the drivers.

Advances in Hittite chariot design coincided with the rise of the Hittite Empire as a powerful player in the eastern Mediterranean. Able to mount rapid surprise attacks, chariots played a key role in King Suppiluliumas I’s conquests of Syria and the forging of Hittite regional supremacy in the 14th century B.C.

Hittite Archaeology

According to Crystal Links: “The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at the Assyrian colony of Kultepe (ancient Karum Kanesh), containing records of trade between Assyrian merchants and a certain "land of Hatti". Some names in the tablets were neither Hattic nor Assyrian, but clearly Indo-European. [Source: Crystal Links +/]

“The script on a monument at Bogazkoy by a "People of Hattusas" discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo and Hamath in Northern Syria. In 1887, excavations at Tell El-Amarna in Egypt uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton. Two of the letters from a "kingdom of Kheta" - apparently located in the same general region as the Mesopotamian references to "land of Hatti" - were written in standard Akkadian cuneiform script, but in an unknown language; although scholars could read it, no one could understand it.

Shortly after this, Archibald Sayce proposed that Hatti or Khatti in Anatolia was identical with the "kingdom of Kheta" mentioned in these Egyptian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Sayce's identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century; and so, rightly or wrongly, the name "Hittite" has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Bogazkoy. +/

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum, Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu , National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, especially Merle Severy, National Geographic, May 1991 and Marion Steinmann, Smithsonian, December 1988, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated June 2024


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