Introduction:
The people of Hittites gained popularity from
their mention in the Bible as a small group belonging
to Northern Syria who lived in the hills of Canaan
during the time period of the Patriarchs. The
Hittite people were of Indo-European origin and
were identified within the population of Canaan
and referred to as ‘sons’ of Canaan
in the Table of Nations (Gen. 10:15, 17).
The earliest finds linked to the biblical Hittites
were in the form of hieroglyphic scripts which
were found at Aleppo and Hamath in Northern Syria.
The script was the same as another found on a
monument at Boghazkoy by an Indoeuropean ‘People
of the Land of Hatti’ and at that time,
it was said that these were the same people as
the biblical Hittites. This subject has come under
a lot of controversy since then, because generally,
a lot of Biblical stories have been refuted for
the lack of proof relating to them (Gurney, 1990;
Oglesby, 2003).
History of the Hittites:
Historically, Hittite is the name given to a kingdom
in central Asia Minor, which in 2nd millenium
B.C. was most famous for its reign over Asia Minor
and Mesopotamia (which is today, all of central,
eastern and southern Turkey and northern Syria).
People from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds
lived in this kingdom, but the language most spoken
was an Indo-European one called nasili. As times
changed, so did the name of this language, today
referred to as Hittite (Gurney, 1990).
It is because of the fact that much of the Hittites’
royal archives remain today that historians and
archeologists have been able to put together facts
and stories about theur past. At their earliest,
the Hittites were the people living in a small
city-state named Kussara, which has not been identified
by archeologists as yet. Their king was named
Anittas, and under his leadership, the state expanded
to include the cities of Kanesh and Hattush (also
known as Hattusas). This was the capital of the
Hittite kingdom when the Hittite power was at
its peak. It is located near the Turkish village
of Bogazk and can be visited today (Gurney, 1990).
It was when Hattusilis I conquered the plain
south of Hattush and all the land up to wht is
today Aleppo in Syria that he Hittite Empire was
born. Once the Hittites had a firm foothold on
their land and empire, they made Boghazkoy their
capital. This state became a prime center for
administration, business and trade activities.
The people of the Hittite Empire also developed
its own particular law code, symbols of which
when found were very similar to the code of Hammurabi.
It was when Boghazkoy was excavated that around
10,000 clay tablets were found. There were lexicons
which provided the Hittite word, as well as its
Sumerian and Assyrian equivalents, and facilitated
the task of translators (Gurney, 1990).
The heir of Hattusilis I, Mursilis I, continued
to follow in his footsteps and continued with
the conquests of Hattusilis, even reaching to
Mesopotamia and threatening Babylonia. But what
he had not accounted for was the terrible strain
this campaign had proved to be for the nation’s
resources and soon, the capital had reached a
state close to anarchy. After some time, Mursilis
was assassinated and the Hittite Empire’s
days of glory were over. Their successors were
the Hurrians, a tribe residing in the mountainous
region along the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
who saw the chaos prevalent in the Hittite Empire
and captured Aleppo and the surrounding areas
for themselves (Lehmann, 1975).
The true end for the Hittite kingdom however,
came when Northern nomadic warrior tribes started
attacking their territories and capturing them.
The fall of the Hittities was as fast and rapid
as had been their rise. Each of their great cities
one by one became the target of their enemies.
This was largely due to the fact that their enemies
had gained hold over what was previously the Hittities’
prime secret weapon – iron.
The Hittites were the very first people to gain
perfection in the craft of iron smelting, and
they were the only ones able to do so for a number
of centuries. Iron was cheap to produce and the
Hittites armed themselves with superior weapons
and defeated their enemies (Lehmann, 1975).
The last of their great cities, Carchemesh was
captured by the Assyrians in 717 BC. Their people
contined living in small discrete holdings in
Central and southeastern Anatolia and their language
and culture remained as late as the 5th century
AD (Lehmann, 1975).
Link with Archeology
For centuries, the Bible was considered a source
of true historical stories. It was considered
true and authentic, and no one dared to cast a
shadow of doubt about what was transcribed in
the Holy Book. Events such as ones in the Garden
of Eden, the Flood, the construction of the tower
of Babel, the deeds of the patriarchs, the Exodus
from Egypt – people had no doubt that all
these had happened exactly as was written in the
scripture. But it was in the era of ‘Enlightenment’,
also called the Age of Reason of the 17th and
18th centuries that European intellectuals started
claiming that it was only when human, scientific
reason was applied that true knowledge was acquired,
and never without that. Hence, the scriptural
accounts were no longer believed without doubt,
rather, the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’
of biblical events were for the first time considered.
What further aggravated debate and controversy
was the 19th century theory of evolution, which
gave another twist to the existence of man. This
alternative version had no mention of God and
the Bible was completely left out of the picture
(Archeologists are digging up bible stories; Gaalyah,
1976).
Soon a lot of scholars began to complete disregard
the Scripture as an authentic account of events
and started considering it unhistorical. They
began to consider biblical history the same as
ancient Greek and Roman myths. The Bible came
to be viewed by skeptics as a collection of myths,
rather than anything with authenticity and verifiability.
Hence, in the same vein, even though the Bible
refers to the great Hittite Empire more than 40
times, scholars did not believe in the existence
of such a kingdom as no archaeological evidence
had ever been found in its proof (Archeologists
are digging up bible stories).
Archaeology has however, helped a lot in correcting
the impression that the Bible and the history
associated with it could not be trusted at all
times. At many times, archeological findings have
shown that the Bible should be trusted in what
it says. The case with The Hittites is similar.
It was n 1906 that Hugo Winckler, as part of a
German expedition, uncovered a library of around
10,000 clay tablets.
These historical records fully documented the
ancient Hittite Empire and were a complete proof
of the reliability of the Bible. The excavations
which were carried out after this time even uncovered
Boghazkoy, which was the capital city of this
so-called mythical empire (Gaalyah, 1976).
This is what makes this topic interesting –
how scholars vehemently denied the existence of
any such Empire, but were proved wrong when the
Bible was in fact proved correct by modern archeology.
These discoveries not only lent authenticity to
the Scripture, but also shed light on many aspects
of biblical culture. For example, the following
quotation recounts the scenario of Abraham’s
purchase of Ephron’s field: “So Ephron’s
field, which was in Machpelah, which faced Mamre,
the field and cave which was in it, and all the
trees which were in the field, that were within
all the confines of its border, were deeded over
to Abraham for a possession in the presence of
the sons of Heth” (Genesis 23:17). This
illuminates a common Hittite practice of counting
the trees involved in any purchase or sale of
land. Also, it should be noticed that the witnesses
to this purchase were the “son's of Heth”,
that is, the Hittites (Jenkins, 2001; Oglesby,
2003).
Critics and scholars might have continued to
treat the Bible and its events with skepticism
and disbelief had excavations not been conducted.
It was in the latter half of the 19th century
that the first Hittite remnants were uncovered
at Carchemish on the Euphrates River in Syria,
which sufficiently supported the Bible account.
Then, as was said earlier, the 1906 excavations
at Boghazkoy (which is another name for ancient
Hattusas, capital of the Hittite empire) in Turkey
led to the discovery of uncountable Hittite documents,
which provided a lot of information about the
history and culture of this tribe. Some of the
tablets had vocabularies with Sumerian, Babylonian
and Hittite equivalents, and others were with
regard to the administration of government. Still
others were written in Akkadian and contained
laws and codes. As was said in the Bible, these
people had a lot of power and were once the dominant
peoples of Asia Minor and the Near East. All this
was proven true as the documents justified these
accounts (Jenkins, 2001).
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