The northern boundary of Babylonia was normally Gebel Hamrin, the Red Mountain. Beyond this mountain ridge another state, Assyria, emerged at the beginning of the second millennium bc. Ashur was set on a limestone cliff and given natural protection by the Tigris flowing round it. There was fertile land nearby and easy access to a trade route through the Zagros mountains into Iran. The early prosperity of Ashur rested on its success as a trading centre whose tentacles reached into Anatolia for silver, into Babylonia for textiles, and perhaps as far east as Afghanistan for its tin. The early Assyrian kings appear to have made Ashur a centre that the merchants of the cities of southern Mesopotamia could visit to buy supplies of precious metals. They paid in fine textiles that were then taken north to Anatolia by donkey caravan to exchange for more metals. Although the Assyrian kings of this period were important ceremonial figures (described in formal texts as vice-regents of the god Ashur) day-to-day administration of Ashur was apparently in the hands of a committee of the heads of the merchant families. Anything to do with prosperity of the city, from taxation to relations with neighbouring states, was under their control. The Assyrian merchants had their own quarters in the cities of northern Syria and Anatolia and their rights here were negotiated by the Ashur committee with the local Anatolian princes. The records, in cuneiform, of one of these communities, found at Kanesh in central Anatolia and dated to between 1900 and 1830 bc, illustrate the sophistication of the traders and include calculations of their prices, profits, and turnover, and even arrangements for credit. A common practice was for the merchant to be based in Anatolia while his wife stayed in Ashur supervising the collection and production of cloth. It was accepted that while abroad the merchant could acquire a local wife so long as both his wives were supported, and back in Ashur many of the wives seem to have retained the profit from their own activities.
In the early eighteenth century Bc this network of Anatolian trade was disrupted by power struggles between rival Anatolian princes. An important moment seems to have been the overthrow of Kanesh by another principality, Kussara. The dynasty of Kussara then appears, about 1830, to have taken over the ruined city of Hattusas and transferred their archives here. This was the genesis of what became the empire of the Hittites, or the ‘people of the Land of Hatti’ as they called themselves. The word Hittite is that used in the Bible, but only of a period when the Hittites had been reduced to a tribal people after the collapse of their civilization in 1200. It was only in the late nineteenth century that it was realized that the predecessors of the biblical Hittites had controlled a great empire in the second half of the second millennium. Much about the Hittites remains obscure and the history of the empire is continually being rethought, especially as much new material is being discovered in excavations at Hattusas. (The expert on the Hittites is Trevor Bryce who has written a number of accessible introductions such as The Kingdom of the Hittites, new edition, Oxford, 2005, and Life and Society in the Hittite World, Oxford, 2004.)
One classification of the Hittite empire defines two phases, the first 1600-1400 BC, the Old Kingdom, the second from 1400 to 1200 BC, the New Kingdom, when the Hittites became a major player in the Ancient Near East, but this risks ignoring the continuities between two phases and the survival of the kingship throughout both. The Hittite capital remained Hattusas (the modern Boghazkoy) in north central Anatolia throughout the period. It was a rocky and easily defended site with one of the few good sources of water in what is an arid region. The records of the Old Kingdom show intense rivalries between branches of the royal family interspersed with, and often linked to, periods of military triumph or disaster. The tenacity of the Hittite kings was one the most remarkable features of their rule. They seldom had enough manpower to launch major campaigns while their vassal states were often restless and they were jostled continuously by rival states on their borders. Their survival depended on the adept use of diplomacy and compromise rather than aggression.
The Hittites emerged at the same time as a number of stable and powerful states in the Ancient Near East. A dynasty of the kings of the little-known Kassites held Babylonia between 1595 and 1155. In the fifteenth century the Hurrians united in the state of Mitanni in northern Syria. In western Asia Mitanni was equalled in strength only by New Kingdom Egypt although its capital has not yet been found. Mitanni was the first casualty of a successful expansion of Hittite power that begins in the reign of Tudhaliya I at the end of the fifteenth century. Tudhaliya controlled the rich copper deposits of Isuwa that had traditionally been subject to Mitanni, and the Hittites soon appear as players on the wider diplomatic scene. There was more to be done to consolidate the state. It was only under the rule of Suppiluliuma I (c.1380-1345) that the Hittites fully overcame Mitanni and installed a puppet ruler there, using the state as a buffer between themselves and Assyria, which by now had revived and become the most powerful nation of northern Iraq. They also subdued large tracts of Anatolia and it is possible that one of the peoples they came into contact with, the Ahbijawa, were the Mycenaean Greeks (see Chapter 8). As the Hittites expanded southwards into Syria towards the Euphrates they met the Egyptians. The two states clashed at the major Battle of Qadesh (1275 bc, see p. 74). The outcome was the consolidation of a border between Egypt and the Hittites in southern Syria.
This was typical of Hittite strategy. Once territory had been won, the empire was sustained by a series of treaties between the king, whose semi-divine status was emphasized by a great ceremonial complex constructed in Hattusas (which had been strongly fortified by Suppiluliuma I), and his defeated rivals. The territory of each was strictly defined and the supremacy of the ‘Great King’ was underlined by recounting how fortunate the subject king was to enjoy his mercy. Each had to come in person to Hattusas once a year with his tribute, supply troops when needed, and report any disturbances in his region. The Great King cemented his own relationships with his people through frequent travel in central Anatolia where he would preside at major festivals to emphasize his own close relationship with the gods. While alive he was their representative, on death he became a god himself.
The Hittites were also remarkably open to neighbouring cultures. In the royal archives of their capital Hattusas there are texts in eight different languages. This was a truly multilingual empire (although an Indo-European language known as Nesite, usually referred to as Hittite, was the language of imperial administration) and it was also multicultural in that it seems to have borrowed freely from the other cultures around it and it may have in its turn transmitted its borrowings to the eastern Mediterranean. The Hittites adopted cuneiform writing for their language, and their concept of law may have been influenced by law codes from Babylon and elsewhere. Some of their religious beliefs—the worship of a powerful sun goddess, for instance— also show Mesopotamian influence. The Epic of Gilgamesh has been found at Hattusas in Akkadian, Hurrian, and Hittite versions. The Hurrians were a particularly strong influence. The most important Hittite epic, that of Kumarbi, is borrowed directly from the Hurrians. (Kumarbi was a Hurrian god.) The epic is remarkable for describing sets of gods following on from each other in generations: Anu (heaven) is overthrown by his son Kumarbi, the father of the gods, who becomes a king and is overthrown in his turn by Teshub, a weather god. A similar story of conflict between gods is found in the Theogony of the eighth-century Greek writer Hesiod (see p. 139). In both cases a father god is castrated by his son, and it is assumed that the Kumarbi epic is yet another of the Near Eastern myths which filtered westwards into Greece.
Despite the varying fortunes of these states, they had much in common. All were centred on opulent palace capitals that controlled, or attempted to control surrounding territory. In this the Egyptian capitals of El-Amarna and Per-Ramesse (see Chapter 4) were typical and the same model might be seen in the Mediterranean in the palace-citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns. Even a small state such as Ugarit had an impressive palace complex and like the other cities of the period an extensive archive. Another common feature of these city-states was the adoption of chariots. Chariots were expensive and horses were not always easy to find so they become the military weapon of the elite, later the chosen means of the Homeric heroes entering battle. Yet it was precisely this common culture that seems to have led to restraint, the drawing of boundaries after the Battle of Qadesh, for instance (see below, p. 74). There is extensive evidence of gift exchange between rival kings and commerce over far-flung trading networks.
Just how extensive these were at the time of Hittite power can be seen from one of the most exciting underwater finds of the past, a shipwreck from this period from Uluburun, near Kas in southern Turkey, which dates from the late fourteenth century bc. (Dendrochronoloy and radiocarbon datings reinforce each other to suggest a sinking in c.1304 bc.) The wreck is of a cargo ship which may have started its journey in the Levant and engaged in a circular voyage which took it northwards up the coast of the Levant, across to Cyprus, along the southern Anatolian coast, possibly on to Mycenaean Greece before taking advantage of the prevailing winds to head south to Crete, across to Egypt, and then back to the Levant. This time disaster struck on the Anatolian coast. The ship carried an extraordinary variety of goods. The cargo included ivory, glass (first invented about 1600 bc but still a precious commodity), cylinder seals, and pottery that came from throughout the Near East. Alongside these were copper ingots from Cyprus, ebony from south of Egypt, and bronze tools of Egyptian, Levantine, and even Mycenaean Greek design. The quantity of copper was matched by that of tin in the combination needed to form bronze. This is trade conducted at a sophisticated level with commercial acumen and mature systems of credit. (There is a good survey of the shipwreck in Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology, 6th edition, London, 2012, pp. 370-1.)
Yet a hundred years later this complex network of trade and traders was disrupted. The end of the thirteenth century bc saw a cataclysmic collapse of the societies of the eastern Mediterranean. The fortified cities of Mycenaean Greece were destroyed as were settlements on Cyprus. About 1200 Hattusas itself was burned. Although Hittite principalities remained in Syria, the capital was abandoned and parts of the Anatolian plain deserted. So Hittite civilization disintegrated. The Egyptians appear to have been forewarned of the unrest and successfully fought off a collection of invaders, Libyans, ‘northerners coming from all lands, and the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’ who attacked the Delta. In the dislocation that followed Egypt withdrew to its heartland in the Nile valley. The economic networks of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East were broken up so comprehensively that a so-called ‘Dark Age’ set in.
The Egyptian texts that describe the invasions imply that the ‘Sea Peoples’ were some kind of invading force. More careful analysis of the evidence suggests that these wandering bands may have been the result of the breakdown of order rather than its instigators. Others may have been mercenaries fighting for Egypt’s neighbours, the Libyans and others. Scholars are now exploring the possibility that the intricate trading relationships between the peoples of the region had become overextended, that taxation had alienated rural peoples on whose produce the civilizations ultimately depended and that this was a collapse of a whole system of interlocking cultures. Whatever the cause, the world that emerged from the ‘Dark Age’ that followed would be very different. (See Chapters 6 and 9 especially.)
World History
