While the name may evoke images of skin-clad barbarians, the Hittites, like the Phrygians, were actually a sophisticated people who commanded a vast Middle Eastern empire, conquered Babylon and challenged the Egyptian pharaohs over 3000 years ago. Apart from a few written references in the Bible and Egyptian chronicles, there were few clues to their existence until 1834 when a French traveller, Charles Texier, stumbled on the ruins of the Hittite capital of Hattuşa, next to Boğazkale.
It may be a bare hill now, but Hattuşa was once a busy and impressive city, defended by stone walls over 6km in length. Today the ruins consist mostly of reconstructed foundations, walls and a few rock carvings, but there are several interesting features preserved in situ, including a tunnel and some fine hieroglyphic inscriptions. Coach tours do pass through here, and weathered souvenir sellers pop up seemingly from nowhere, but often enough you'll be on your own. The rugged isolation somehow makes the site more atmospheric.
In 1905 excavations turned up notable works of art, most of them now in Ankara's Museum of Anatolian Civilisations. Also brought to light were the Hittite state archives, written in cuneiform on thousands of clay tablets. From these tablets, historians and archaeologists were able to construct a history of the Hittite Empire.
The original Indo-European Hittites swept into Anatolia around 2000 BC, conquering the local Hatti, from whom they borrowed their culture and name. They established themselves at Hattuşa, the Hatti capital, and in the course of a millennium enlarged and beautified the city. From about 1375 to 1200 BC Hattuşa was the capital of a Hittite empire that, at its height, even incorporated parts of Syria.
Never ones to skimp on religion, the Hittites worshipped over a thousand different deities; the most important were Teshub, the storm or weather god, and Hepatu, the sun goddess. The cuneiform tablets revealed a well-ordered society with more than 200 laws. The death sentence was prescribed for bestiality, while thieves got off more lightly provided they paid their victims compensation.
From about 1250 BC the Hittite Empire seems to have gone into a decline, its demise hastened by the arrival of the Phrygians. Only the city-states of Syria survived until they, too, were swallowed by the Assyrians.
