Claudia: Should we think of the hatite lands as tightly and centrally controlled, or was it altogether looser an where are we there? Yes, we've already heard about the treaties and the agreements that er were concluded with these other political entities. And some of them also include a vassal states that ultimately become hitite vassal sandThese are either defeated in a military sense, or endiced to seek the protection of the hitite great king against either local, usually local, smaller, local enemies,. So in turn, these vassalser, especially the really prosperous ones, like the trading city of ugarit on the mediterranean coast, had to pay
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire that flourished in the Late Bronze Age in what is now Turkey, and which, like others at that time, mysteriously collapsed. For the next three thousand years these people of the Land of Hatti, as they called themselves, were known only by small references to their Iron Age descendants in the Old Testament and by unexplained remains in their former territory. Discoveries in their capital of Hattusa just over a century ago brought them back to prominence, including cuneiform tablets such as one (pictured above) which relates to an agreement with their rivals, the Egyptians. This agreement has since become popularly known as the Treaty of Kadesh and described as the oldest recorded peace treaty that survives to this day, said to have followed a great chariot battle with Egypt in 1274 BC near the Orontes River in northern Syria.
With
Claudia Glatz
Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow
Ilgi Gercek
Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and History at Bilkent University
And
Christoph Bachhuber
Lecturer in Archaeology at St John’s College, University of Oxford
Producer: Simon Tillotson