Several populations within anatolia, or situated along its borders, had been resisting hittite rule for a very long time. Andi mention another aspect of hittite campaigning and warfare that were: deputy populations which are taken from areas th the hittites conquer, and then resettled on the central anatolean plateau. i think this created also disfranchise e population that was either outright hostile to a hittite interest and culture, or was entirely disinterested in it. That is part of why in the central hitite area, clearly at hatusa, the capital, after the administrative paratus leaves the city and part of it is destroyed, we see very little of
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