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Hittites

The early history of the Hittite kingdom

19th Century BC
Anatolia

The early history of the Hittite kingdom is known through tablets that may first have been written in the 19th - 18th century BC, in Hittite; but most of the tablets survived only as Akkadian copies made in the 14th and 13th centuries BC. These reveal a rivalry within two branches of the royal family up to the Middle Kingdom; a northern branch first based in Zalpuwa and secondarily Hattusa, and a southern branch based in Kussara (still not found) and the former Assyrian colony of Kanesh. These are distinguishable by their names; the northerners retained language isolate Hattian names, and the southerners adopted Indo-European Hittite and Luwian names.


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