The Hittites were a people who, although mentioned in the Bible, were virtually unknown until the late 19th and early 20th century.

Early in the 20th century, German archeologists came upon an imposing site called Boghazkoy, on central Turkey’s Anatolian plateau, in the bend of the Halys River. It has been continuously excavated ever since, with minor interruptions during the two world wars.

We now know that the major phases of Hittite power occurred in the second millennium BCE during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, and were divided into the Old and New Hittite Kingdoms. The Old Hittite Kingdom flourished in the first half of the second millennium, while the New Kingdom was a major power in the Near East from 1420 until 1200 BCE during the Late Bronze Age.

We first hear of the Hittites from documents found in the Old Assyrian trading colony of Kanesh, modern Kultepe, in southeastern Turkey, circa 1750 BCE. They quickly rose to become a major power in the region, and one of their kings, Mursilis I, sacked Babylon in a lightning raid, either in 1590 or 1550 BCE (depending on which chronology one uses), bringing to an end the city’s first dynasty, made famous by the well-known Hammurabi. There seems to be evidence that Mursilis himself was murdered upon his return home. It was an act that plunged the Hittite kingdom into almost two centuries of chaos.

It was during the next phase of their history, New Kingdom, that the Hittites would become major players in the history of the Ancient Near East. This was the period that the renowned American Egyptologist, James Henry Breasted, called the First International Age. It’s represented by the large cache of tablets found at the court and capital of the heretic Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten. These documents are known as the Amarna tablets, named after the modern Egyptian site, Tell el Amarna, where they were discovered.

One of the Hittite princes almost became pharaoh of Egypt when the widow of the famous Tutankhamun (Akhenaten’s successor), Ankhesenamun, asked the Hittite king to send her one of his sons to marry. However, there seems to be evidence that he was murdered on his way to Egypt.

The Hittites would have a chance for revenge at the Battle of Kadesh, circa 1274 BCE, when they fought Ramses II. It’s the only ancient battle for which we have two accounts, both the Egyptian and the Hittite. Each side claimed a victory, but it would seem that the Hittites did better since Egypt virtually withdrew from Syria after the battle.

Afterward, both sides drew up a peace treaty, of which we also have two copies. It would be one of the last bouts of glory for the two empires, as they were about to be engulfed by the mass migrations and population displacements at the end of the Bronze Age, circa 1200-1150 BCE. It was these upheavals that would bring Israel to the former Egyptian province of Canaan.