Hittites, the English name of a people who waged war with Egypt and Assyria for a thousand years, and who moved on parallel lines with the people of Israel from the call of Abraham to the Captivity. The Hittites have scarcely any record in classical history, but in late years we have much information respecting them from various sources.
First in order and importance are the narratives of the Old Testament. When the Semitic tribe with Abraham at their head moved from Haran to Canaan the Hittites inhabited the land (Gen. xv. 20), and fifty years later Abraham, a wandering sheikh, purchased a grave for his wife from the Hittites, who were then in possession and power at Hebron (Gen. xxiii. 4). The patriarch's family continued to live side by side with the Hittites; and Esau, the bedawi, the grandson of Abraham, married two Hittite wives, who 'were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah' (Gen. xxvi. 35). During the sojourn in Egypt the Israelites had the promise of occupying the land of the Hittites oft repeated, and from the bush on Horeb the promise was again renewed to bring them 'into the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites' (Exod. iii. 8).
We now see that these peoples are mentioned in their topographical order as viewed from the Egyptian standpoint. The traveller northward from Egypt first came to Canaan, then he reached the Hittite colony in the neighbourhood of Hebron, and finally arrived at the Jebusites, who then inhabited Jebus, afterwards known as Jerusalem. After the exodus the spies found 'the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites' dwelling in the mountains whither they had been driven by successive Egyptian invasions. The Hittites were conspicuous among those who opposed Joshua's entrance into the promised land, and the serried lines of Hittite chariots were scattered in confusion by Joshua's army in the decisive battle by Lake Merom. Hittite captains marshalled and led the hosts of David and Solomon, and Hittite ladies were conspicuous in the harems of the same renowned monarchs (1 Kings, xi. 1). King David pushed his conquests and extended his border in 'the land of the Hittites' (the correct reading in 2 Sam. xxiv. 6 being not Tahtim-hodshi but 'Kadesh of the Hittites'); and, in the time of Jehoram, Benhadad of Damascus fled headlong from Samaria with his Syrian horde when an alarm was raised that the Hittites were coming (2 Kings, vii.). The geographical position generally of the Hittites in the time of Joshua was 'from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates . . . and unto the going down of the sun' (Josh. i. 1-4). This summary of the most important references to the Hittites in the Old Testament covers a period of a thousand years.
Next in importance is the testimony of the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions. In the Egyptian inscriptions the Hittites stand out as rivals of the Pharaohs in peace and war from the 12th to the 20th dynasty. As soon as the key was found to the long silent records of Egypt and Assyria the veil began to lift off dark continents of history, and the forgotten but mighty Hittite people began to emerge; and now in the increasing light from Egypt and Assyria they stand before us in broad outline and in incidental detail. The two capitals of the Hittites were Kadesh on the Orontes and Carchemish on the Euphrates. The centre of their empire was in the north, but as an enterprising people they pushed a wedge-like colony down through Syria as far as Hebron and Egypt. According to Brugsch, the Hittites appeared on the Egyptian border as early as the 12th dynasty. The capital of the Hyksos dynasty was Zoan or Tanais, and Mariette declares that one of the Hyksos dynasties was Hittite. In the Old Testament there is a curious statement that 'Hebron was built seven years before Zoan.' This casual statement now seems to indicate the order in which the Hittites consolidated their advance southward. The wave of invasion reached Hebron and made a lodgment there nine years before it swept over the border and made a lodgment in the land of Goshen. The discoveries at Tel-el-Amarna in 1887 throw additional light on the Hittites in Syria and Palestine, and a despatch written on a clay tablet, now at Berlin, contains an urgent request from Egyptian officers in Palestine for Egyptian assistance against the Hittites, then marching southwards.
Thothmes III. came to the throne about 1600 B.C. The monuments of his reign, one of which stands on the banks of the Thames, are very numerous. In the hieroglyphics of Karnak there is a detailed account of thirteen campaigns waged by this Pharaoh against the Hittites. Great battles were fought at Megiddo, at Carchemish, at Kadesh, and elsewhere, and the Egyptian records boast of victories over the Hittites; but the Hittite resistance was not broken, and succeeding years saw new Egyptian armies marching through the length of Syria against the hereditary foe. On the death of the great Thothmes the Hittites became more formidable, and after about fifty years of constant wars a treaty of peace was concluded between Rameses I. and Saplel the Hittite king.
Seti I. came to the throne two hundred years after the death of Thothmes III., and he at once marched against the Hittites as the 'avenger of broken treaties.' The details of this sanguinary campaign are depicted in the battle scene on the north side of the great temple of Karnak. At this period the Hittites were dominant in Syria, for one of the inscriptions declares that Syria was brought into subjection through Pharaoh's victory over the Hittites.
Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression, succeeded his father, Seti I., and carried on the war in many campaigns. Many temples are adorned with the records of his achievements, the chief of which was his famous battle with the Hittites at Kadesh. Pentaur was present with the Pharaoh as war-correspondent, and he has recorded the events of the day in the world's most ancient epic. A copy of the epic adorns many temples in Egypt, and is written on a papyrus roll now in the British Museum. Kheta-sira had assembled his confederates and allies from many lands, even from Troy, and the battle ended in a draw, followed by an offensive and defensive treaty, and a dynastic alliance. Kheta-sira treats with the Pharaoh on equal terms, and his name stands first in the world's oldest treaty, which was written in Hittite on a silver plate, Egyptian translations of which have come down to us. Kheta-sira went down into Egypt with his eldest daughter, who became Pharaoh's queen, and thus inaugurated an era of peace.
Mineptah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, loyally maintained the treaty, and 'sent wheat in ships to preserve the lives of the Hittites.' More than a hundred years later Rameses III. waged a cruel war in the land of the Hittites, and it is recorded on the temple of Medinet Abon that he brought back into captivity the king of the Hittites. We thus learn from the Egyptian inscriptions that the Hittites were rivals of the Egyptians from the 12th to the 20th dynasty. The shock of Egyptian invasion exhausted itself at Kadesh and Carchemish, but the centre of Hittite power lay beyond in the broad plains and highlands of Asia Minor, and so they had fresh armies and abundant wealth to enable them to withstand the might of Egypt for a thousand years.
The Hittites occupy an important place in the Assyrian inscriptions. The reign of Sargon of Agade has been placed about the 19th century B.C.; and one date has been deciphered, which if correct would fix that reign about 3800 B.C. Even as early as the reign of Sargon I. the Hittites were a formidable power, and it has been supposed that in the time of the 19th dynasty in Egypt the Hittites occupied Mesopotamia. When we come to the era of Tiglath-pileser I., about 1130 B.C., the Hittites were paramount from the Euphrates to the Lebanon. Tiglath-pileser I. drove back the Hittites from his borders, and for a time made them tributaries, but they soon threw off the Assyrian yoke, and a desperate struggle for supremacy was waged for four hundred years between the empire of Assyria and that of the Hittites. The reign of Assur-nasir-pal (883-858 B.C.) is largely a record of wars with the Hittites. His son, Shalmaneser, undertook thirty campaigns chiefly 'in the land of the Hittites.' The war continued to the close of the king's reign, and was carried on by the kings who succeeded him; and one hundred years later the Assyrians were still in deadly conflict with the Hittites.
The Hittites, who first appear in the Assyrian inscriptions in the reign of Sargon I., were destined to disappear from history in the reign of his namesake. Sargon II. came to the throne in 721 B.C., and his first year was distinguished by the capture of Samaria and the captivity of the Israelites, and four years later (717 B.C.) he brought the empire of the Hittites to a close by the defeat of Pisiri and the capture of Carchemish.
Thus ended the mighty empire of the Hittites, having maintained its existence, defying all enemies, longer than the empires of Babylon, or Assyria, or Greece, or Rome. The fact that the frontier towns of the Hittites had continued their resistance to the Assyrian arms, in almost yearly campaigns, throughout successive centuries, suggests that the Hittite empire must have been strong in resources beyond the frontier; and the mention of over 300 geographical Hittite names, in the inscriptions, shows how extended that dominion must have been.
In November 1872 the writer of this article succeeded in making casts of the famous Hamah (q.v.) inscriptions, which he declared to be Hittite remains. The theory, at first received with incredulity, is now admitted, and sculptures of the same character are now found to exist throughout the length and breadth of Asia Minor and northern Syria, from Hamah on the Orontes to Eynk by the Halys, and from Carchemish on the Euphrates to the Enxine and the Ægean. A beginning has been made in decipherment, but the first steps, though sure, are slow. There is no room for doubt as to their Hittite origin. The cuneiform inscriptions were called Assyrian before Grotefend made the happy guess that led to their decipherment. The hieroglyphics were called Egyptian before Champollion and Birch began to unravel the mysteries of the Rosetta Stone; and it does not seem a violent supposition that the remarkable inscriptions 'in the land of the Hittites' may have been produced by the warlike but cultured people who once inhabited the land.
A set of Hittite inscriptions and sculptures may be seen in The Empire of the Hittites, by the present writer (1884; 2d ed. 1886), as well as chapters on Hittite geography, art, and learning, religion and nationality. See also Sayce, The Hittites; or, the Story of a Forgotten People (R. T. S., 1888); Léon de Lantscheere, Les Hittites (Brussels, 1892); Conder, The Hittites and their Language (1898).