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European Journal of Archaeology. — 2015. — No 18 (1) — pp. 90–110.
The Hittite state was founded c. 1650 BC and developed thereafter. The Hittites were able to establish their rule in Anatolia’s hostile landscape and overcome the difficulties it presented to create an empire—an objective that they achieved with the aid of their remarkable organizational skills. Despite the frequent occurrence of geographical names in the state archives, only a small number of them can be safely localized and, although Hittitology is a 100-year-old field, the regional names have only recently been determined. This article serves as a general introduction to the Hittites as well as a review of the problem of geographical names, revealing the complexity it presents.
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European Journal of Archaeology 18 (1) 2015, 90–110
The Hittites and their Geography: Problems of Hittite Historical Geography METIN ALPARSLAN
AND
MELTEM DOĞAN-ALPARSLAN
Department of Hittitology, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey
The Hittite state was founded c. 1650 BC and developed thereafter. The Hittites were able to establish their rule in Anatolia’s hostile landscape and overcome the difficulties it presented to create an empire—an objective that they achieved with the aid of their remarkable organizational skills. Despite the frequent occurrence of geographical names in the state archives, only a small number of them can be safely localized and, although Hittitology is a 100-year-old field, the regional names have only recently been determined. This article serves as a general introduction to the Hittites as well as a review of the problem of geographical names, revealing the complexity it presents. Keywords: Hittite, historical geography, Indo-European, second millennium Hattuša
INTRODUCTION The Hittites are identified as an Indo-European people according to their language, the most important indicator of ethnicity. The Indo-European language family covers an area stretching from the Indian Ocean coastline to the Atlantic, and includes most of the languages in this wide landscape, with the exception of Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish, Basque, and the Semitic and Caucasian languages. Hittite, the oldest known member, belongs to the branch known as ‘Anatolian languages’, all of which are dead languages. Its relatives in the second millennium BC were Luwian and Palaic and in the first millennium, local Pamphylian languages, such as Lycian, Lydian, and Sidetic. Other dead relatives of Hittite, albeit not included in the Anatolian
© European Association of Archaeologists 2015 Manuscript received 8 April 2014, accepted 23 August 2014, revised 2 July 2014
BC,
Anatolia,
language branch, are Latin and ancient Greek. (For the languages which were used in Anatolia, see Streck, 2006; Popko, 2008.) It is assumed that the Hittites migrated to Anatolia in the late third to early second millennium BC. At that time, there was an organization of markets (kārum) and posts in Anatolia founded by the Assyrian merchants, who were trading with the local Anatolian chiefdoms. From the personal names and technical terms on the cuneiform tablets that these merchants used, we learnt that these Indo-Europeans were living in Anatolia long enough to find small chiefdoms. In pre-Hittite times, Anatolia was settled by the Hattians, who lent their name to the region. The Hattic language and the Hurrian language, which were spoken in the south-eastern Anatolia and north Syria, bear close resemblance to
DOI 10.1179/1461957114Y.0000000075
Alparslan and Doğan-Alparslan – The Hittites and their Geography
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Figure 1A. Aerial photo from the temple district of Boğazköy/Hattuša. Boğazköy Excavation Archive
modern Caucasian languages. Naturally, ther