The Hittites
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.
Guests
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Claudia Glatz No other episodes
Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow -
Ilgi Gercek No other episodes
Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and History at Bilkent University -
Christoph Bachhuber No other episodes
Lecturer in Archaeology at St John's College, University of Oxford
Reading list
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Hittite Diplomatic Texts
Gary M. Beckman (Society of Biblical Literature, 2nd ed., 1999) Google Books → -
Life and Society in the Hittite World
Trevor Bryce (Oxford University Press, 2002) Google Books → -
The Kingdom of the Hittites
Trevor Bryce (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2006) Google Books → -
The Trojans and their Neighbours
Trevor Bryce (Routledge, 2006) Google Books → -
Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East: The Royal Correspondence of the Late Bronze Age
Trevor Bryce (Routledge, 2014) Google Books → -
Warriors of Anatolia: A Concise History of the Hittites
Trevor Bryce (Tauris, 2018) Google Books → -
The Hittites and their World
Billie-Jean Collins (Society of Biblical Literature, 2007) Google Books → -
Hittites: An Anatolian Empire
M. Dogan-Alparslan and M. Alparslan (Yayinlari, 2014) -
Insights into Hittite History and Archaeology
Hermann Genz and Dirk Paul Mielke (eds.) (Peeters, 2011) Google Books → -
The Kaska and the Northern Frontier of Hatti
Ilgi Gercek (De Gruyter, 2021) -
The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia: Hittite Sovereign Practice, Resistance, and Negotiation
Claudia Glatz (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Google Books → -
Hittite Myths
Harry A. Hoffner (Society of Biblical Literature, 2nd ed., 1998) -
Letters from the Hittite Kingdom
Harry A. Hoffner (Society of Biblical Literature, 2009) Google Books → -
Ancient Turkey: A Traveller's History
S. Lloyd (British Museum Press, 1992) Google Books → -
Ancient Turkey
A. Sagona and P. Zimansky (Routledge, 2009) Google Books → -
Hattusha Guide: A Day in the Hittite Capital
J. Seeher (Ege Yayinlari, 2011) Google Books → -
Hittite Prayers
Itamar Singer (Society of Biblical Literature, 2002) Google Books → -
The Elements of Hittite
Theo van den Hout (Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 2013) Google Books →
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Programme ID: m0012q5n
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012q5n
Auto-category: 930 (Ancient history)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. Around 1274 BC, there was a mighty chariot battle at Kadesh in modern Syria, to be followed by what's often called the first known peace treaty, the Treaty of Kadesh.