The Hittites

In Our Time: History

BBC

History

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2021

⏱️ ? minutes

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Summary

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.

With

Claudia Glatz Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow

Ilgi Gercek Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and History at Bilkent University

And

Christoph Bachhuber Lecturer in Archaeology at St John’s College, University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.7	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.2	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our programs
0:11.3	if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time.
0:14.6	I hope you enjoyed the programs.
0:16.4	Hello, around 1274BC, those are mighty charred battles at Cadetsch in modern Syria.
0:22.8	To be followed by most often called the first known piece treaty, The Treaty of Cadetsch.
0:28.4	The Egyptians were one part of the treaty, but the identitably other remained a mystery
0:33.1	until the 20th century when there were identifiably hitites from what is now Turkey.
0:39.0	And in the last century, more and more discoveries, the interest in these hitites of the late Bronze Age has snowballed.
0:44.6	Not least, for the light they throw on life on the Asian coast, where the contemporaries,
0:49.1	the Maesanese, reputedly fought the Trojan War.
0:52.6	We need to discuss the hitites of Claudia Glatz, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow.
0:58.4	Ilgi Gercek, Assistant Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Languages in History at Bill Kent University in Turkey.
1:04.9	And Christophe Backhuber, lecturer in Archaeology at St John's College University of Oxford.
1:10.3	Christophe, what reason did anyone in the late 19th century have to think that their hitites have ever existed?
1:18.2	We need to travel back down to the mid to late 19th century.
1:24.6	As you suggested in your introduction, there was already in the mid to late 19th century intense interest in the ancient world.
1:31.8	And this interest was really driven by two historical traditions.
1:36.4	On the one hand, you have the classical tradition, and this ancient chronicler is like Herodotus,
1:42.6	who wrote extensively in colorfully on the contemporary civilizations, this would be about the 5th century BC,
1:50.2	so the Egyptians, the Babylonians, etc.
	...

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