| The Hittites occupied the region of Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey) prior to 1700 BCE, developed a culture apparently from the indigenous Hatti (and possibly the Hurrian) people, and expanded their territories into an empire which rivaled, and threatened, the established nation of Egypt. They are repeatedly mentioned throughout the Hebrew Tanakh (also known as the Christian Old Testament) as the adversaries of the Israelites and their god. According to Genesis 10, they were the descendants of Heth, son of Canaan, who was the son of Ham, born of Noah (Genesis 10: 1-6). The name they are known by today, therefore, comes from the Bible and from the Amarna Letters of Egypt which reference a "Kingdom of Kheta" identified today as the `Kingdom of Hatti' (the designation the land of the Hittites was known by) but their own documents refer to them as Nesili, as do others of the time. Their control of the region is divided by modern-day scholars into two periods: The Old Kingdom (1700-1500 BCE), and the New Kingdom, also known as the Hittite Empire (1400-1200 BCE). There is an interregnum between these two which, to those who accept that version of history, is known as the Middle Kingdom. The discrepancy between those scholars who recognize a Middle Kingdom and those who do not arises from the fact that there was no discontinuity between the Old Kingdom and the New, merely a `dark age’ of less than 100 years about which little is known. The Hittite Empire reached its peak between under the reign of King Suppiluliuma I (c.1344-1322 BCE) and his son Mursilli II (c.1321-1295 BCE) after which it declined and, after repeated attacks by the Sea Peoples and the Kaska tribe, fell to the Assyrians. |
exracted from https://www.ancient.eu/hittite/