Hittite Empire Timeline

The period of the 15th century BC is largely unknown with few surviving records. During the Old Hittite Kingdom prior to 1400 BC, the king was viewed not as a living god like Egyptian pharaohs but rather as a first among equals; only from 1400 until 1200 BC did kingship become more centralized and powerful.

The 'Hittite Empire period' proper dates from the reign of Tudhaliya I from c. 1430 BC. Around 1400 BC, Tudhaliya I, again allied with Kizzuwatna, vanquished the Hurrian states of Aleppo and Mitanni, and expanded westward at the expense of Arzawa, a Luwian state.

Image source: Tudḫaliya I

The Middle Assyrian Empire once more began to grow in power with the ascension of Ashur-uballit I in 1365 BC. Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC, the Hittites were among the most dominant powers of the Near East, coming into conflict with Egypt, Assyria, and Mitanni.

Image source: Middle Assyrian Empire

The kingdom recovered its former glory under Šuppiluliuma I (c. 1350 BC), who again conquered Aleppo. The empire reached its peak under him, encompassing most of Anatolia and parts of northern Syria and Upper Mesopotamia, bordering the rival empires of the Hurri-Mitanni and Assyrians.

After Šuppiluliuma I's rule and the brief reign of his eldest son Arnuwanda II, another son, Mursili II, became king around 1330 BC.

Image source: Muršili II

This battle between the Hittites and the New Kingdom of Egypt took place in the 5th year of Ramesses II, c. 1274 BC by the most commonly used chronology, in what is today Syria.

Image source: Battle of Kadesh

From the late 12th century BC, during the Late Bronze Age collapse, the Hittites splintered into several small independent states, some of which survived until the 8th century BC before succumbing to the Neo-Assyrian Empire; their descendants scattered and ultimately merged into the modern populations of the Levant and Mesopotamia.

Image source: Neo-Hittite states

A study of tree rings of juniper trees growing in the region showed a change to drier conditions from the 13th century BC into the 12th century BC, including drought for three consecutive years in 1198, 1197 and 1196 BC.

Image source: Late Bronze Age collapse

Although the capital of Hattuša was abandoned around 1190 BC, this abandonment was not absolute. The evacuation concerned mainly the officialdom, with a modest native population remaining until the 10th century BC. Two decades after abandonment, changes near Gordion saw the end of Wheel-made ceramics (Hittite) at the end of the 10th century.

This left the Hittite homelands vulnerable to attack from all directions, and Hattusa was burnt to the ground sometime around 1180 BC following a combined onslaught from new waves of invaders: the Kaskians, Phrygians and Bryges.

By 1160 BC, the political situation in Asia Minor looked vastly different from that of only 25 years earlier. Much of the Hittite Empire had been annexed by the Middle Assyrian Empire, with the remainder sacked by Phrygian newcomers to the region.

The Niğde Stele from the end of the 8th century BC is a Luwian monument from the Post-Hittite period, found in the modern Turkish city of Niğde.

Image source: Niğde Stele

English classicist Francis William Newman expressed a critical view common in the early 19th century that no Hittite king could have compared in power to the King of Judah, illustrating prevailing skepticism about the Hittites' historical significance among many scholars of his era.

French scholar Charles Texier found the first Hittite ruins in 1834 but did not identify them as such.

Image source: Charles Texier

As discoveries in the second half of the 19th century revealed the scale of the Anatolian Hittite kingdom, Archibald Sayce asserted that rather than being compared to Judah, the Anatolian civilization was worthy of comparison to the divided Kingdom of Egypt and infinitely more powerful than that of Judah. The modern name 'Hittites' stems from initial identification of the people of Hattusa with the Biblical Hittites.

Image source: Archibald Sayce

The script on a monument at Boğazkale by a 'People of Hattusas' discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo and Hama in Northern Syria.

Image source: William Wright (orientalist)

In 1887, excavations at Amarna in Egypt uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten.

Image source: Amarna letters

Sayce's identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century, and the name 'Hittite' became attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy. Modern interest in the Hittites increased further with the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.

During sporadic excavations at Boğazköy (Hattusa) that began in 1906, archaeologist Hugo Winckler found a royal archive with 10,000 tablets inscribed in cuneiform Akkadian and an unknown language matching the Egyptian letters from Kheta, confirming the identity of the two names.

Image source: Hugo Winckler

Under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute, excavations at Hattusa have been under way since 1907, with interruptions during the world wars.

Czech linguist Bedřich Hrozný announced his decipherment results in a lecture at the Near Eastern Society of Berlin on 24 November 1915. His book The Language of the Hittites was printed in Leipzig in 1917.

Image source: Bedřich Hrozný

Kültepe was successfully excavated by Professor Tahsin Özgüç from 1948 until his death in 2005.

Image source: Tahsin Özgüç

This theory has been increasingly contested in the 21st century, with the Late Bronze Age collapse, and subsequent Iron Age, seeing the slow, comparatively continuous spread of ironworking technology across the region.