Hittien

Hittien is the Dutch designation for the Hittites, an ancient Anatolian people who formed a major civilization on the central plateau of Asia Minor during the second millennium BCE. The Hittite state emerged around 1600 BCE with its capital at Hattusa (near modern Bogazkale, Turkey). At its height the empire controlled parts of Anatolia, northern Syria, and the southern Levant, supported by a centralized administration, a standing army, and extensive diplomatic networks.

The Hittites spoke Hittite, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian branch, preserved in cuneiform tablets written in an adapted Mesopotamian script. Their corpus includes legal, administrative, and treaty texts. The most famous diplomatic achievement is the Treaty of Kadesh (c. 1259 BCE) with Egypt after the Battle of Kadesh, illustrating early international diplomacy.

Religious life was polytheistic and syncretic, drawing on Mesopotamian and local Anatolian deities. Architecturally, Hittites built fortified cities, temples, and monumental gates, and they were notable for chariot warfare and organizational capacity in administration and logistics.

The empire declined in the late 13th and 12th centuries BCE, collapsing during the Bronze Age collapse around 1178–1190 BCE. Surviving Hittite communities persisted as Neo-Hittite city-states in the Near East for several centuries.

Archaeology and scholarship: Hattusa was excavated in the early 20th century, and the Hittite language was deciphered by Bedřich Hrozný in 1917, establishing Hittite as a distinct branch of Indo-European. Today, Hittite sources illuminate Bronze Age diplomacy, law, and administration, and remain essential to the study of ancient Anatolia.