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 Mapa del Imperio hitita: en rojo oscuro, hacia 1560 a. C.; en rojo claro, su máxima extensión, antes de la batalla de Qadesh. |
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| Capital | Ḫattuša | |||
| Idioma principal | Hitita | |||
| Otros idiomas | Luvita, Hatti, etc. | |||
| Gobierno | Monarquía absoluta | |||
| Presidente | Labarna I (primero) | |||
| Suppiluliuma II (último) | ||||
| Historia | ||||
| • Establecido | 1600 a.C. | |||
Los hititas, también llamados hetitas o heteos,1 fueron una población de origen indoeuropeoque se instaló en la región central de la península de Anatolia entre los siglos XVIII y XII a. C., teniendo la ciudad deHattusa como capital. Hablaban una lengua propia indoeuropea, usando jeroglíficos propios y en otras ocasiones escritura cuneiforme prestada de Asiria. Aglutinó a numerosas ciudades-estado de culturas muy distintas entre ellas y llegó a crear un influyente imperio gracias a su superioridad militar y a su gran habilidad diplomática, constituyéndose así como la “tercera” potencia en Oriente Próximo (junto con Babilonia yEgipto). Perfeccionaron el carro de combate ligero, empleándolo con gran éxito, y se les atribuye una de las primeras utilizaciones delhierro en Oriente Próximo para elaborar armas y objetos de lujo.
Arqueología de los hititas
_Rhyton_at_the_Met_by_Mark_Dawson.jpg)
Un rhyton hitita del Museo Metropolitano de Arte.
A pesar de que actualmente se conoce bastante de la historia de este pueblo, tras su declive los hititas cayeron en el más absoluto olvido hasta el siglo XIX. Es sorprendente que quienes llegaron a constituir uno de los mayores imperios de la Antigüedad, hayan pasado totalmente inadvertidos durante tantos siglos. Gracias a numerosas excavaciones, algunas tan importantes como el descubrimiento de lo que sería similar a un “archivo nacional” en Hattusa, y muchas referencias en textos de origen asirio y egipcio, se ha podido reconstruir su historia y llegar a descifrar su escritura.
El nombre de Hatti
No se sabe a ciencia cierta cómo se llamaban a sí mismos. El nombre de Hatti proviene de las crónicas asirias que lo identificaban como el “País de Hatti” (Chati), y por otra parte los egipcios les denominaban “Heta”, que es la transcripción más común deljeroglífico “Ht” (la escritura egipcia carecía de vocales).
Por otra parte, los “hatti” eran un pueblo no indoeuropeo que vivía en la misma región que los hititas, antes del primer imperio hitita, y cuya conquista por parte de los segundos provocó que los asirios y demás Estados vecinos siguieran usando el nombre de “hatti” para denominar a los nuevos ocupantes, pasando a significar “La tierra de la ciudad de Hattusa”.2 La lengua hática de los hatti siguió siendo usada ocasionalmente y para ciertos propósitos dentro de las inscripciones en hitita.
El término proviene de las referencias bíblicas. Éste era llamado “Hittim”, que Luterotraduciría al alemán como “Hethiter”, los ingleses lo convirtieron en “Hittites”, mientras que los franceses los denominaron primero “Héthéens” para acabar llamándoles del mismo modo que los ingleses, “Hittites”. “Hititas” es el término general que se usa en español (también se ha usado el de “heteos”, pero es poco frecuente y está en desuso). Las referencias en la Biblia sobre los hititas las encontramos en Josué (3,10), Génesis (15,19-21), (23,3) Números (13,29) y Libro II de los Reyes (7,6).
En el libro 2 de Samuel, (11, 1-21), se hace referencia a Urías el hitita, combatiente de los ejércitos del rey David, y esposo de Betsabé. Luego de tomar a ésta última como concubina mientras Urías se encontraba en campaña bélica contra los amonitas, David, después de embarazar a Betsabé, provocó su muerte.
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Hittites
| Hittite Empire | |||||
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 The Hittite Empire, ca. 1400 BC (shown in Blue).
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| Capital | Hattusa | ||||
| Languages | Nesite, Luwian, many others | ||||
| Government | Absolute monarchy | ||||
| List of Hittite kings | Labarna I (first) | ||||
| Suppiluliuma II (last) | |||||
| Historical era | Bronze Age | ||||
| – | Established | c. 1600 BC | |||
| – | Disestablished | c. 1178 BC | |||
| Today part of |  Turkey Syria Lebanon |
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The Hittites (/ˈhɪtaɪts/) were an Anatolian people who established an empire atHattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1600 BC. This empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Asia Minor as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. After c. 1180 BC, the empire came to an end during the Bronze Age collapse, splintering into several independent “Neo-Hittite” city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BC.
The Hittite language was a distinct member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. They referred to their native land as Hatti. The conventional name “Hittites” is due to their initial identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology.
Despite the use of Hatti for their core territory, the Hittites should be distinguished from theHattians, an earlier people who inhabited the same region (until the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC) and spoke a language possibly in the Northwest Caucasian languages group known as Hattic.[1]
The Hittite military made successful use of chariots.[2] Although belonging to theBronze Age, they were the forerunners of the Iron Age, developing the manufacture ofiron artifacts from as early as the 18th century BC, when the “man of Burushanda“‘s gift of an iron throne and iron sceptre to the Kaneshite king Anitta was recorded in theAnitta text inscription.
After 1180 BC, amid general turmoil in the Levant associated with the sudden arrival of the Sea Peoples, the kingdom disintegrated into several independent “Neo-Hittite” city-states, some of which survived until as late as the 8th century BC. The history of the Hittite civilization is known mostly from cuneiform texts found in the area of their kingdom, and from diplomatic and commercial correspondence found in various archives inEgypt and the Middle East.
Archaeological discovery
Bronze religious standard from a pre-Hittite tomb at Alacahöyük, dating to the third millennium B.C., from theMuseum of Anatolian Civilizations,Ankara.
The Hittites used Mesopotamian cuneiform letters. Archaeological expeditions toHattusa have discovered entire sets of royal archives in cuneiform tablets, written either in the SemiticMesopotamian Akkadianlanguage of Assyria and Babylonia, the diplomatic language of the time, or in the various dialects of the Hittite confederation.[3]
Before the discoveries, the only source of information about Hittites had been the Old Testament (see Biblical Hittites). Francis William Newman expressed the critical view, common in the early 19th Century, that, if the Hittites existed at all, “no Hittite king could have compared in power to the King of Judah…”.[4] As archaeological discoveries revealed the scale of the Hittite kingdom in the second half of the 19th Century, Archibald Henry Sayce postulated, rather than to be compared to Judah, the Anatolian civilization “[was] worthy of comparison to the divided Kingdom of Egypt”, and was “infinitely more powerful than that of Judah”.[5] Sayce and other scholars also mention that Judah and the Hittites were never enemies in the Hebrew texts; in the Book of Kings, they supplied the Israelites with cedar, chariots, and horses, as well as being a friend and allied to Abraham in the Book of Genesis.
The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at theAssyrian colony of Kültepe (ancient Karum Kanesh), containing records of trade between Assyrian merchants and a certain “land of Hatti“. Some names in the tablets were neither Hattic nor Assyrian, but clearlyIndo-European.[citation needed]
The script on a monument at Boğazköy by a “People of Hattusas” discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo andHamath in Northern Syria. In 1887, excavations at Tell El-Amarna in Egypt uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton. Two of the letters from a “kingdom of Kheta“—apparently located in the same general region as the Mesopotamian references to “land ofHatti“—were written in standard Akkadian cuneiform script, but in an unknown language; although scholars could read it, no one could understand it. Shortly after this, Archibald Sayceproposed that Hatti or Khatti in Anatolia was identical with the “kingdom of Kheta” mentioned in these Egyptian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Others, such as Max Müller, agreed thatKhatti was probably Kheta, but proposed connecting it with Biblical Kittim, rather than with the “Children of Heth“. Sayce’s identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century; and the name “Hittite” has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy.[citation needed]
During sporadic excavations at Boğazköy (Hattusa) that began in 1906, the archaeologist Hugo Winckler found a royal archive with 10,000 tablets, inscribed in cuneiform Akkadian and the same unknown language as the Egyptian letters fromKheta—thus confirming the identity of the two names. He also proved that the ruins at Boğazköy were the remains of the capital of an empire that, at one point, controlled northern Syria.
Under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute, excavations at Hattusa have been underway since 1907, with interruptions during both wars. Kültepe was successfully excavated by Professor Tahsin Özgüç from 1948 until his death in 2005. Smaller scale excavations have also been carried out in the immediate surroundings of Hattusa, including the rock sanctuary ofYazılıkaya, which contains numerous rock-cut reliefs portraying the Hittite rulers and the gods of the Hittite pantheon.
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MIGA PRIMERA 