By the year 2000 B.C.E., an illiterate, warlike, Indo-European people called Hittites had migrated on foot southward into Asia Minor, where they overran and conquered tribal, bronze-age farming communities. Like Sargon's warriors, the conquering Hittites made themselves aristocrats, a warrior elite living off the labors of those they had conquered. From those they overran they learned how to make bronze. And like Sargon and others before them, the Hittites saw their victories as willed by their gods and as proof of the righteousness of their conquests. Like others, the Hittites made deities of their dead kings, but they saw their living kings as human and expected them to obey their laws. Their neighbors considered them sexually lax. But the Hittites were less brutal than some: they disliked the mutilations of human bodies that they saw among other peoples, and they were less inclined to punish people by killing them.
Sometime after the coming of the Kassites to Mesopotamia, the Hittites acquired horses and chariots. With horses and light chariots, the well trained, highly disciplined Hittites launched a new conquest of neighboring peoples in Asia Minor. A horse pulling a man on a lightweight chariot was faster than a horse carrying a man on its back, and the Hittites were able to move rapidly, sometimes under the cover of darkness, and spring surprise assaults upon their adversaries. The Hittite king, Mursilis I, forced a loose federation of city-states into the first Hittite empire. A Hittite army crossed the Taurus Mountains into Mesopotamia, and, in 1593, they sacked Babylon, ending the dynasty that had been created there by Hammurabi. But Babylon was too distant for the Hittites to rule -- 1200 miles from their capital at Hattusas -- and the Hittites withdrew from Babylon.
The Hittites remained the leading power north of Egypt until 1590, when the brother-in-law of the Hittite king, Mursilis, assassinated him. More palace intrigues and murderous struggles for power followed -- among Hittite princes, priests, nobles, regents and ambitious widows. It was to be a recurring development at other royal palaces in the world, and for the Hittites it brought what it would often bring other ruling families: decline in power.
From the Zagros Mountains, an Indo-Iranian people called Hurrians poured into Mesopotamia and overran the Assyrians. The Hurrians settled down, gradually adopted civilized ways, and became dominant in such cities as Mari, on the upper Euphrates, and Nuzi, which became a thriving commercial center.
Return to the Theban Tribunal Sourcebook
Last modified: Thurs Dec 10, 1998