The Hittites
An Anatolian power fights Egypt to a standstill and is then forgotten for three thousand years.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 450 years
- Known to
- ± 30 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
The Hittites establish a kingdom at Hattusa from around 1650 BCE and grow into one of the great powers of the Late Bronze Age, sacking Babylon, destroying Mitanni and confronting Egypt at Kadesh. Their archive, excavated from 1906, revealed a legal system notably lighter on capital punishment than its neighbours, and a language that turned out to be Indo-European — the earliest attested member of the family, which reshaped historical linguistics.