Firstly, I have an apology to make. Being a self-confessed computer-inept, I have failed to work out how to insert pictures into the text, so they're all at the bottom. Please do look at them, and I'm sorry the text is so unseparated by pictures.
Imagine. It is 1590BC. It is late at night and you are a citizen of the mighty empire of Babylonia. You are walking the streets of her great capital, Babylon. Suddenly, you hear a shout and then the screams of men, women and children. Men in horned helmets run down the streets with flickering torches. They tear into the mudhuts on the streets, killing indiscriminately. Then, they set fire to the huts in which your neighbours and friends live. By morning, the city of Babylon is nothing but smouldering ruins. The city of Babylon has just suffered the wrath of a great empire: The Empire of the Hittites.
See Figure 1.
The Hittites were an empire that existed throughout the Bronze Age, co-existing with Egypt, Ancient Babylonia and the Mycenaen civilisation in Greece. They ruled much of modern day
Turkey, with their capital at the city of Hattusa, near modern Boğazkale in Anatolia. Hattusa was a great fortified city, with walls of up to 8 metres thick and huge watchtowers that stood far above any other structures in the land. The Hittites were believed to have migrated to Turkey from further east although there were no indications to their prior origin as their traditions appeared to be Indo-European. This is an extremely interesting theme which I will explain later. The original inhabitants of the land of Hatti were believed to speak a language which was not Indo-European (The language family that all modern
western languages are in as well as Latin and Greek). They are called the Hattians to differentiate them from the Hitties, alongside them were colonies from the Empire of Assyria, in Modern Day Iraq. In the 2nd millennium BC, the Hitties moved in and adopted a great deal of the local customs, including the Assyrian cylinder seals and the script of Cuneiform. They also took a great deal of Hattian civilisation to absorb into their own.The Hittite Empire began to expand under its Kings: around the 1600BC mark, the Hittite Empire destroyed the Babylonian city-state of the Amorites. At its height, the Hittite Empire took over Central Turkey, North-Western Syria and Upper Mesopotamia (North Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq). Their great power shook the balance of power in the Near East, where the centre of Western Civilisation was. They began to encroach onto the territory of the Empire of Egypt under the Pharaoh Ramesses II. The famous Battle of Qadesh was fought and the conclusion was indecisive but was regarded as a Hittite Strategic Victory which ended in a peace treaty between the King Hattusili III and Ramesses II. However, her empire soon began to fall: her main strength turned out to be her deadly weakness. Her capital was situated high in the Central Turkish mountains, where very few traders could get to and where agriculture could not be practically maintained. When Hattusa began to lose hold of her empire, she lost all her chains of supply: it was reputed that 22,000 hectares of was needed to feed Hattusa, and without her empire or any possible way to supply herself by trade (unlike the other great cities of Thebes, Ur and Nineveh).
See Figure 2.
Eventually, Hattusa had to be abandoned and the once great civilisation of the Hittites vanished from the pages of history, not even being known to modern archaeologists until the discovery of the ruins of the city at the turn of the 19th to 20th Century. The Hittite Civilisation was extremely sophisticated: the city of Hattusa had huge libraries where the documents of ancient Hittite Civilisation were preserved, including her laws. However, when they were first discovered, no-one could read them! Although the tablets were written in cuneiform, which archaeologists could read, no-one could understand what they said. It was like reading complete nonsense, but in our alphabet. Eg. "Je suis anglais" if you don't read French. So, what we end up with was a series of phonetic letters which don't seem to spell anything that makes sense.
However, they would be unraveled, starting with a surprising revelation from one line:
"nu ninda en e-iz-za-te-ni wa-a-tar-ma e-ku-ut-te-ni".
nu ninda en e-iz-za-te-ni wa-a-tar-ma e-ku-ut-te-ni"
The Czech scholar (called Hrozny) who first looked at this noticed one symbol he COULD read "ninda en", the ideogram meaning "bread". So he knew this was a sentence about food and eating. Then, he came to a word that shocked him: "wa-a-tar-ma". It was basically identical to the English "water"! And it would make sense! (But it was probably more likely that he recognised it as the German word "wasser"). Now something occured to him, could it be possible that the language was not related to Semitic languages of nearby civilisations, but to be related to Indo-European languages (such as Latin). The other two larger words in the sentence must be verbs for the sentence to make sense. As an Indo-European language, it might be possible that Hittite was an "inflected" language, which means that the word endings convey meaning. If so, we can notice the ending "te-ni". "e-ku-ut" reminded the scholar of the Latin "aqua", associating the verb with water, so probably "drink". "e-iz-za" reminded him of the Old High German for "eat". "nu" reminded him of "nunc", Latin for "now".
So, the entire sentence now read (probably):"Now you will eat bread and drink water"
With this, the secret of Hittite began to be unlocked: we now knew it was inflected and we could work out a lot more. The language revealed to us the nature of Hittite society: it was based upon tough slavery and tough laws. The documents told us of the law of Hattusa, dictating many crimes punishable by death, such as rape, sorcery and slave disobedience. Slaves were completely under the command of their master. It seemed that Hattusa was easily as sophisticated as the other ancient civilisations of the time, of Assyria, Babylon and Egypt.
Well, I hope that has been interesting. For more information on the subject, I would recommend the BBC's "Lost Cities of the Ancients" series as well as a trip to the British Museum's Ancient Turkey Gallery.
-Σπογγος
P.S. Just thought I ought to add my own thoughts. I have this madcap theory that all modern Indo-European languages were descended from Hittite. It was where phonetic alphabet met inflected endings and grew into the modern Western tongues, for our alphabet is undoubtly Semitic. This then spread to Greece and Germany and Rome and created our linguistic heritage of today.
Imagine. It is 1590BC. It is late at night and you are a citizen of the mighty empire of Babylonia. You are walking the streets of her great capital, Babylon. Suddenly, you hear a shout and then the screams of men, women and children. Men in horned helmets run down the streets with flickering torches. They tear into the mudhuts on the streets, killing indiscriminately. Then, they set fire to the huts in which your neighbours and friends live. By morning, the city of Babylon is nothing but smouldering ruins. The city of Babylon has just suffered the wrath of a great empire: The Empire of the Hittites.
See Figure 1.
The Hittites were an empire that existed throughout the Bronze Age, co-existing with Egypt, Ancient Babylonia and the Mycenaen civilisation in Greece. They ruled much of modern day
Turkey, with their capital at the city of Hattusa, near modern Boğazkale in Anatolia. Hattusa was a great fortified city, with walls of up to 8 metres thick and huge watchtowers that stood far above any other structures in the land. The Hittites were believed to have migrated to Turkey from further east although there were no indications to their prior origin as their traditions appeared to be Indo-European. This is an extremely interesting theme which I will explain later. The original inhabitants of the land of Hatti were believed to speak a language which was not Indo-European (The language family that all modern
western languages are in as well as Latin and Greek). They are called the Hattians to differentiate them from the Hitties, alongside them were colonies from the Empire of Assyria, in Modern Day Iraq. In the 2nd millennium BC, the Hitties moved in and adopted a great deal of the local customs, including the Assyrian cylinder seals and the script of Cuneiform. They also took a great deal of Hattian civilisation to absorb into their own.The Hittite Empire began to expand under its Kings: around the 1600BC mark, the Hittite Empire destroyed the Babylonian city-state of the Amorites. At its height, the Hittite Empire took over Central Turkey, North-Western Syria and Upper Mesopotamia (North Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq). Their great power shook the balance of power in the Near East, where the centre of Western Civilisation was. They began to encroach onto the territory of the Empire of Egypt under the Pharaoh Ramesses II. The famous Battle of Qadesh was fought and the conclusion was indecisive but was regarded as a Hittite Strategic Victory which ended in a peace treaty between the King Hattusili III and Ramesses II. However, her empire soon began to fall: her main strength turned out to be her deadly weakness. Her capital was situated high in the Central Turkish mountains, where very few traders could get to and where agriculture could not be practically maintained. When Hattusa began to lose hold of her empire, she lost all her chains of supply: it was reputed that 22,000 hectares of was needed to feed Hattusa, and without her empire or any possible way to supply herself by trade (unlike the other great cities of Thebes, Ur and Nineveh).
See Figure 2.
Eventually, Hattusa had to be abandoned and the once great civilisation of the Hittites vanished from the pages of history, not even being known to modern archaeologists until the discovery of the ruins of the city at the turn of the 19th to 20th Century. The Hittite Civilisation was extremely sophisticated: the city of Hattusa had huge libraries where the documents of ancient Hittite Civilisation were preserved, including her laws. However, when they were first discovered, no-one could read them! Although the tablets were written in cuneiform, which archaeologists could read, no-one could understand what they said. It was like reading complete nonsense, but in our alphabet. Eg. "Je suis anglais" if you don't read French. So, what we end up with was a series of phonetic letters which don't seem to spell anything that makes sense.
However, they would be unraveled, starting with a surprising revelation from one line:
"nu ninda en e-iz-za-te-ni wa-a-tar-ma e-ku-ut-te-ni".
nu ninda en e-iz-za-te-ni wa-a-tar-ma e-ku-ut-te-ni"
The Czech scholar (called Hrozny) who first looked at this noticed one symbol he COULD read "ninda en", the ideogram meaning "bread". So he knew this was a sentence about food and eating. Then, he came to a word that shocked him: "wa-a-tar-ma". It was basically identical to the English "water"! And it would make sense! (But it was probably more likely that he recognised it as the German word "wasser"). Now something occured to him, could it be possible that the language was not related to Semitic languages of nearby civilisations, but to be related to Indo-European languages (such as Latin). The other two larger words in the sentence must be verbs for the sentence to make sense. As an Indo-European language, it might be possible that Hittite was an "inflected" language, which means that the word endings convey meaning. If so, we can notice the ending "te-ni". "e-ku-ut" reminded the scholar of the Latin "aqua", associating the verb with water, so probably "drink". "e-iz-za" reminded him of the Old High German for "eat". "nu" reminded him of "nunc", Latin for "now".
So, the entire sentence now read (probably):"Now you will eat bread and drink water"
With this, the secret of Hittite began to be unlocked: we now knew it was inflected and we could work out a lot more. The language revealed to us the nature of Hittite society: it was based upon tough slavery and tough laws. The documents told us of the law of Hattusa, dictating many crimes punishable by death, such as rape, sorcery and slave disobedience. Slaves were completely under the command of their master. It seemed that Hattusa was easily as sophisticated as the other ancient civilisations of the time, of Assyria, Babylon and Egypt.
Well, I hope that has been interesting. For more information on the subject, I would recommend the BBC's "Lost Cities of the Ancients" series as well as a trip to the British Museum's Ancient Turkey Gallery.
-Σπογγος
P.S. Just thought I ought to add my own thoughts. I have this madcap theory that all modern Indo-European languages were descended from Hittite. It was where phonetic alphabet met inflected endings and grew into the modern Western tongues, for our alphabet is undoubtly Semitic. This then spread to Greece and Germany and Rome and created our linguistic heritage of today.
Figure 1. The Ancient Hittite Empire (highlighted in Blue). I have no idea why it appears to be in German.
Figure 2. Just a part of the ruins of the Hittite Capital, Hattusa
Figure 3. An aerial view, just to give you an idea of the remoteness of Hattusa.
Figure 4. An example of Cuneiform script, the "alphabet" Hittite was written in. Notice the distinctive shapes of the characters, like little wedges. Their name comes from the Latin cuneus, meaning wedge.
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