IV.

Early Records and Translations

The primary sources of information about the Hittites came from Egyptian records, notably those of the 19th Dynasty, and from certain passages in the Bible. The earliest of these passages, calling the Hittites “Sons of Heth,” possibly refers to the period of the Hittite Kingdom. Later passages allude to the Syro-Hittites.

In 1906 the royal archives of the Hittites themselves were discovered in excavations at Boğazkale. These discoveries cast doubt on many items of information gathered from Egyptian sources. For example, certain military engagements were mentioned as victories for the Hittites, whereas the Egyptian records identify the engagements as Hittite defeats. The importance of the discovery is that the archives made it possible to decipher the Hittite language, thus revealing information about previously unknown aspects of the culture, such as political organization, legislation, religion, and literature.

Most of the texts found in the archives were written in the Hittite language, but treaties and state letters were written in Akkadian, the international language of the period. Other texts were written in the Hurrian language of southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia, a language unrelated to any known linguistic group. The Hittites used the cuneiform system of writing taken from the Babylonians, but they also employed a system of hieroglyphs to inscribe a language closely related to Hittite, possibly a Luwian dialect. Although the hieroglyphs were used during the period of the empire, most inscriptions belong to the period after its downfall. The literature of the Hittites was highly developed, particularly in the form of historical records and stories.