Creation History

The Bible mentions a tribe called the Hittites who were the sons of Heth the son of Canaan.  In the 19th century skeptics claimed that no such tribe as the Hittites ever existed.  However, the discovery of the ancient city of Hattusa in central Turkey in the late 19th century turned that skepticism on its head.

They discovered the capital city of a formerly unknown civilization with tens of thousands of clay tablets.  Some of the tablets were written in Akkadian, which was the language of ancient Babylon. Others were written in a different kind of hieroglyphics.  These later turned out to be written in Luwian, the language of ancient Lydia, as well as Hattic, the old tribal language of the region of central Anatolia.  Most of the tablets were written in Hittite, the language of the land of Hatti, as the inhabitants called it.

The Anatolian kingdom known to historians as the Hittite Empire is in a somewhat different location than the Hittites of the Levant described in Scripture.  It was centered on the city of Hattusa in central Anatolia. While the name Hatti is equated with Kheta to arrive at “Hittite,” their relationship to the Biblical descendants of Heth is not straightforward.

The city of Hattusa was located on a high plateau North of the Halys River of Anatolia in a region that was until Roman times, the territory of Tubal.

The kings of Hattusa claimed “the Hatti land,” Northwest Syria, as one of their territorial possessions, despite the fact that Hattusa lay 350 kilometers Northwest of that region, with one country, Cilicia, in between.  Like all empires, people of all the subject ethnicities would tend to migrate to the capital city.  Therefore, we can be fairly certain that at its height of glory, the city of Hattusa had a significant Hittite population, even if the city itself was founded and ruled by the sons of Tubal.

Scholars divide the rulers of Hattusa into five eras: The Hattic Era, Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom, and Neo-Hittites.  Of these, the middle three are claimed to have lived from 1700 to 1200 BC, based on Egyptian chronology. The “Neo-Hittites” are thought to have been contemporaries of Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III in the eighth and ninth centuries BC. 

At its greatest extent the Hittite empire overlapped with the Syrian territory of the Biblical Hittites, however the eras in which they flourished were different.  The Biblical Hittites were finally subjugated under King Solomon at the very time that the Hittite Kingdom of Anatolia was just beginning its rise to glory.  The Bible appears to mention the Anatolian Hittites using the same word Kheta, twice. (II Chronicles 1:17, II Kings 7:6)

Figure 1. Map Showing Greatest Extent of Neo-Hittite Empire

After more than a century of excavation and study, we now realize that the people who lived in the region called “Hatti Land” or “Kheta” in Anatolia and Syria spoke several languages and used Akkadian cuneiform script for business and loans, as well as their own hieroglyphic script for ceremonial purposes.   

While they are still called the Hittites in scholarly literature, as the nineteenth century archaeologists named them, no scholar today actually believes the Hittites of Anatolia were called “Hittites” by themselves or their neighbors.  Their city was called Hattusa and one of their territories was “the Hatti Land.”  

Unlike Egypt and Assyria, we do not have a king list for the Hittites that includes years of reign. Their history and chronology has to be pieced together from inscriptions and interactions with their neighbors such as Assyria, Egypt, Babylon, Mitanni, Lydia, and Phrygia.

Now the question becomes who were the people of Hattusa and when exactly did they live?  Why do we not find them mentioned in the histories of the Greek, Assyrian, and Babylonian chroniclers?  

It turns out that the chroniclers did mention them, but under a different set of names.  Like every other ancient culture of the near east, the chronology of Hattusa has been shifted back by six to twelve centuries in order to make it compatible with the erroneous conventional chronology of Egypt.   However, there is now a substantial body of evidence that both phases of the Kingdom of Hatti flourished from the ninth to sixth centuries before Christ, and that their culture was finally absorbed by the Cimmerians and Medes before petering out during the Persian War with the Greek states in the fifth century BC.

Most of the research in this area by revisionists is unpublished.  We are grateful to Barry Curnock, John Crowe, and Brock Heathcotte of The SIS Review for sharing their research with us.  The chronology that follows is largely based on their work, though they wouldn’t necessarily agree with the details of our revision.

What the Bible Says About Hittites
Before looking at the Anatolian Kingdom of Hatti, let’s look at what the Bible says about the Canaanite tribe called the Hittites.  Heth, the second-born of Canaan, is first named as the father of the Hittites in Genesis 10.  His name is two characters in Hebrew, chet and tav, making “chth”.

A few chapters later in Genesis 15, we see the Hittites referred to as a people, the “chthi”.

Later still in Genesis we see the Hittites living near Mamre, which is now called the city of Hebron.  Abraham was allied to Mamre the Amorite, and he bought land from Ephron the Hittite to bury his dead.  Apparently the Amorites and Hittites lived together in that part of Canaan at that early date.  The names of Abraham’s Hittites sound Semitic.

About four centuries later, in the book of Exodus, we find the Hittites listed as the second main tribe of the land, after the Canaanites. When the Israelites were still in the wilderness waiting to invade Canaan, the Hittites and Amorites were listed as living in the mountains of the Levant (Numbers 13:29) while the Canaanites lived along the coast.

By the time of Deuteronomy 7:1 just before the Israelite invasion, we find the Hittites are listed as the first of the seven nations of Canaan which the Israelites are told to dispossess.

In Joshua 1:4, around 1451 BC, we are given a description of Hittite territory much further North. “From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory.”   

Here the Hittites are depicted as living in what is today Syria, from the mountains of Lebanon to the Euphrates River.  This is the first Biblical description in which the Hittite territory overlaps the territory known from archaeology as The Hittite Empire.  

Four and a half centuries after Joshua, King David had Uriah the Hittite in his royal bodyguard of 30 mighty men. In the time of Solomon (1015-975 BC) we find Hittites living both within the borders of Israel which Solomon put under forced labor (I Kings 9:20-21), and Hittite kings living North of Israel to whom Solomon exported chariots that he imported from Egypt. (1 Kings 10:29)  Solomon also is listed as marrying Hittite women, among others, who were probably treaty brides.  Hittite treaty brides would be the daughters of the Hittite kings to whom he sold chariots.  

The last chronological mention of the Hittites as a nation in Scripture is in the reign of Jehoram, the son of Ahab, whom we place just before the death of Amenhotep III, around 890 BC.   By this time the reference probably means the Hittites of Tabal rather than the Canaanite Hittites.  And specifically, it is probably a reference to Suppiluliumas A, the Hittite king whose letter to Akhenaten is found in the EA Letters. (EA 41) The army of Ben Hadad of Syria was besieging Samaria when they were overcome by fear that Egyptians and Hittite armies might be allied against them. 

For the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear the noise of chariots and the noise of horses—the noise of a great army; so they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians to attack us!” (II Kings 7:6)

This event tells us that in the reign of Jehoram the Arameans (Syrians) in Damascus feared that Samaria was allied with both Egypt and the Hittites. Jones dates Jehoram’s reign from 897 to 887 BC, which falls at the end of the reign of Amenhotep III, when Tushratta was king of Mitanni and Mitanni had reached its greatest expansion.  We see that in the Bible Mitanni is referred to as “the Syrians across the river” in King David’s time.  Damascus and its line of kings named “Ben Hadad” were vassals of Mitanni, while Israel and Judah were vassals of Egypt.  The Kingdom of Yamhad was also vassal to Mitanni both before and after the reign of King Solomon.

The intrigues of Mitanni, Egypt, and Hattusa (the Hittites) competing for control of the Levant are recorded in the Amarna Letters.

When Jeroboam II conducted his campaign to the North about seventy years after the death of Amenhotep III, Damascus collapsed and he regained 600 kilometers of territory all the way to Hamath which had been lost to Israel for two centuries.   The campaign of Jeroboam II should correspond roughly with the fall of Mitanni and the rise of the Hittites, Assyrians, and Shoshenq I of Egyptian Dynasty 22 to fill the power vacuum left by the fall of Mitanni and Damascus.

The region where Hattusa sits, North of the Halys River, was called Tabal and Mushki by the Assyrians, and Tubal and Meschech by Ezekiel.  

Later the Greeks called Meshech by the name “Phrygia,” which name they derived from the theory that a tribe called the Bryges had crossed over into Anatolia from Macedonia.  Ezekiel, prophesying in 585 BC, is clear in naming the tribes of Anatolia from West to East as: Javan (Ionia), Ludd (Lydia), Meshech (Phrygia), Tabal (Hattusa), and Togarma (Tegarama).

Barry Curnock and John Crowe have proposed that the Old and Middle Hittite Kingdoms were the Kings of Tabal. (Curnock & Crowe, 2006)  We find that the Middle Hittite Kingdom was conquered by Tiglath Pileser III who installed a “Khulli” or Tudhaliya, as his puppet king there. Tabal was conquered again by the Kingdom of Urartu, just before the Cimmerian invasion in 705 BC.

Heathcotte (2017) proposes that after the Scythian and Cimmerian invasion of Anatolia from 705 to 690 BC, the Cimmerians rebuilt Hattusa as their capital.  This began the New Kingdom Hittite Empire, which also appears to be a facet of the Median Empire.

The Urge to Conquer the Motherland

We see a possible explanation for a city in Anatolia struggling to control the lands between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, as well as the Levant.  As we will demonstrate in Chapters 17 and 19, the Ark landing site and Tower of Babel both appear to have been located in the region of Subartu, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  

We see down through history a consistent theme of each rising kingdom or empire attempting to reconquer the “homeland” where their ancestors had come from.  After the Dispersion, Ninus conquered from Nineveh to Phrygia. Egypt under Sesostris III, Thutmose III, and Rameses II conquered all the way to “Naharin,” the land between the rivers.   

Sargon of Akkad and his successor Naram Sin both campaigned in upper Mesopotamia into Anatolia.  Solomon conquered Hamath-Zobah, which included this region also.  

Even the Greeks colonized Ionia in Anatolia, and later under Alexander, they too conquered the motherland where all mankind began.  And, finally the Romans conquered as far East as Amida and Armenia, claiming the same sacred ground where mankind began.

Thus, the fact that Hattusa, the capital city of Tabal, claimed the West Bank of the Euphrates and the Hatti land of North Syria as their ancestral lands matches the larger pattern.

The Conventional Chronology of Hattusa

Conventional chronology recognizes five eras of the kings of Hattusa.  

Hattic Era
The oldest is the “Hattic” era, in which the city of Kanesh/Nesa was an Assyrian trade colony.  The first known king of Hattusa, named Pamba, was mentioned by Naram Sin of Akkad along with the cities of Hattusa and Kanesh.  Five or six kings are known from this era, but the later ones are probably centuries after Pamba.  Many trade and loan documents were excavated there on cuneiform tablets written in Akkadian.  A later king of Kanesh named Anitta usurped the throne from his brother in law and destroyed the city of Hattusa, sowing it with salt and curses.

Kings of the Hattic Period
Reigned
Lineage and Key events
Comment
Pamba
early 22nd century BC
King of Hatti
Pithana
17th century BC
King of Kussara, conqueror of Neša
Piyusti
17th century BC
King of Hatti, defeated by Anitta
Anitta
17th century BC 
King of Kussara, destroyer of Hattusa
Tudhaliya

Great-grandfather of Hattusili I
PU-Sarruma
Contested existence
Son of Tudhaliya

Two generations after Anitta the Old Kingdom of Hattusa began, which was followed by the Middle, and Neo Hittite Eras.

Old Kingdom of Hattusa

Old Kingdom of Hattusa
Throne Name
Estimated Dates
Comments
Labarna I

Traditional founder of the Old Kingdom; existence questioned by some scholars
Hattusili I a.k.a. Labarna II
1586–1556 BC
Nephew/grandson(?) of Labarna; perhaps the first ruler to reoccupy Hattusa
Mursili I
1556–1526 BC 
Grandson of Hattusili I; sacked Babylon
Hantili I
1526–1496 BC 
Brother-in-law of Mursili I; assassinated Mursili I
Zidanta I
1496–1486 BC 
Son-in-law of Hantili I; assassinated son/heir of Hantili I
Ammuna
1486–1466 BC 
Son of Zidanta I; assassinated his father
Huzziya I
1466–1461 BC 
Son of Ammuna?
Telipinus
1460 BC
Brother-in-law of Huzziya I; usurped the throne from Huzziya

Middle Kingdom of Hattusa
Middle Kingdom Hittite Rulers
Throne Name
Estimated Dates
Comments
Alluwamna
ca. mid 15th century BC
Son-in-law of Telipinus
Hantili II
ca. 1500-1450 B.C.
Son of Alluwamna
Tahurwaili

Usurper. Ruled sometime between Telipinu and Zidanta II, but otherwise time is uncertain.
Zidanta II

Son of Hantili II
Huzziya II

Son of Zidanta II
Muwatalli I
ca. 1400 BC
Usurper; assassinated Huzziya II
New Kingdom Hittites
New Kingdom Hittites
Throne Name
Estimated Dates
Comments
Tudhaliya I
ca. early 14th century BC (short)
Lineage is uncertain; perhaps a grandson of Zidanta II. Became king after Muwatalli I was killed.
Arnuwanda I

Son-in-law of Tudhaliya I
Hattusili II (?)

The existence, lineage and time of his reign is disputed
Tudhaliya II
1360? – 1344 BC 
Son of Arnuwanda (or Hattusili II?)
Tudhaliya III "the Younger"

Son of Tudhaliya II; assassinated upon his father's death; he may not have ruled at all.
Suppiluliuma I
1344–1322 BC 
Son of Tudhaliya II (or Hattusili II?); expanded the empire; mentioned in the Amarna letters
Arnuwanda II
1322–1321 BC 
Son of Suppiluliuma
Mursili II
1321–1295 BC 
Son of Suppiluliuma, conquered Arzawa and Epapa (Ephesus)
Muwatalli II
1295–1272 BC 
Son of Mursili II; Battle of Kadesh, ca. 1274
Mursili III alias Urhi-Teshub
1272–1267 BC 
Son of Muwatalli II
Hattusili III
1267–1237 BC 
Son of Mursili II; treaty with Egypt ca. 1258
Tudhaliya IV
1237–1209 BC 
Son of Hattusili III; Battle of Nihriya
Kurunta
1228–1227 BC 
Son of Muwatalli II; his reign is uncertain; may have ruled for a very brief time in the middle of Tudhaliya's reign.
Arnuwanda III
1209–1207 BC 
Son of Tudhaliya IV
Suppiluliuma II
1207–1178 BC 
Son of Tudhaliya IV; fall of Hattusa, ca. 1178

One of the key synchronisms of the conventional Hittite chronology is the letter from Suppiluliumas I to Akhenaten in the EA letters. (EA 41)   There is also an Aziru in the EA letters, and the archives at Hattusa yielded a series of treaties between Suppiluliumas I and his descendants with an Aziru and his descendants.  Therefore, it has been assumed by scholars that these are the same people, and therefore Suppiluliuma I was contemporary with Akhenaten, and his sons and grandsons Mursilis II, Muwatalis II, and Hattusilis III must have lived during and immediately after the Amarna Era.  

However, as we demonstrated in Chapters 9 and 15, it is impossible to place Seti of Dynasty 19 immediately after the end of the Amarna Era.  Multiple lines of evidence show that at least 225 years passed from the accession of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten to the death of Amenophis/Taharqa in 664 BC.  

These include:

Manetho lists 6-8 kings of Dynasty 18 between Orus/Akhenaten and Seti.
The 400 Year Stele places four centuries between year 18 of Ahmose I (1063 BC) and Seti’s conquest of Thebes. (663 BC)
Josephus gives 393 years from the first expulsion of the Hyksos to the arrival of Sethos (670 BC)
The 22nd Dynasty clearly ascends 120 years above the reign of Shoshenq III, putting its beginning between 841 and 811 BC.
The Biblical text gives 390 years from the death of Solomon to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, which is confirmed by the king list of Judah.  We’ve shown this occurred in year 37 of Rameses II.  This requires roughly four centuries between Thutmose III and Rameses II.

For the reasons above, it is impossible for the Suppiluliumas who wrote EA41 to Akhenaten to have been the grandfather of Hattusilis III who made the Treaty of Kadesh with Rameses II. Therefore the Suppiluliumas who corresponded with Akhenaten and Shatti-waza cannot be the same man as Suppiluliumas I.

The conventional chronology places these four eras of the city of Hattusa from 2,200 to 1,178 BC.  Early excavations of Hattusa led archaeologists to believe that this civilization flourished in the 9th to 6th centuries BC.  However, the discovery of the Treaty of Kadesh between Hattusilis III and Rameses II caused them to move the Hittites into the second millennium, because that is when they believed Rameses II lived.  Thus the normal means of archaeology suggested a much more recent date for the Hittites; but, the chronology of Egypt trumped what their eyes were telling them.

Revising the Hittites - The Strong Synchronisms

As with all other kingdoms whose chronology was calibrated to Egypt, we find the chronology of Hattusa has been shifted back in time by six to twelve centuries.

We find twelve strong synchronisms between the kings of Hattusa and the Egyptian and Biblical kings.   These are sufficient to give us the general layout of Hittite history, though we may still be a bit squishy on the details in between.  The synchronisms are as follows:

#1. Pamba of Hattusa ca. 1530 BC
An inscription of Naram Sin of Akkad names Pamba of Hattusa and another king of Kanesh in Anatolia.  Naram Sin is confidently dated as a contemporary of Moses, and died in 1516 BC.  This defines the beginning of the so-called “Hattic Period.”

#2. The Defeat of Yamhad and Sack of Babylon by Mursilis I
The defeat of Yarim-Lim III of  Yamhad and the sack of Babylon by Mursilis I had to have occured not many generations after Solomon’s death.  However, the precise year is unknown because the histories of both Babylon and Yamhad are sketchy for this period.   

The king list that has been estimated for the First Amorite Dynasty of Babylon gives 155 years maximum from the death of Hammurabi to the death of Samsu-ditana, during whose reign the sack of Babylon occurred.  

However, this list almost certainly includes co-regencies, and we are not certain that Samsu-ditana was killed in the sack of Babylon.  It may have occurred earlier in his reign.  

Thus the sack of Babylon may have occurred 60 to 155 years after the death of Hammurabi in 988 BC, which would be a range between 928 and 833 BC.  This creates a collision with the next synchronism #3 with Suppiluliumas A.

#3 Suppiluliumas A - Shatti-waza Treaty 887 BC 
Suppiluliumas A, whom we separated out from Suppiluliumas I in Chapter 15, and who corresponded with Akhenaten in EA41, made his treaty with Shatti-waza/Hazael in the year 887 BC. This is a triangulated date using both Egyptian and Biblical data. The previous synchronism #2 of Mursilis I and the sack of Babylon had to have occurred within a generation before or after Suppiluliumas A put Shatti-waza/Hazael on the throne of Mitanni.

The question is where Suppiluliumas A fits into the chronology of the Old Kingdom of the Hittites.  There is no king by that name mentioned in the Edict of Telipinu.

We find a second clue in EA170 where the subjects of Aziru/Hazael in Damascus wrote to who? Tut? while he was visiting Egypt:

“Moreover, troops of Hatti under Lupakku have captured cities of Amqu, and with the cities they captured Aadduni. May our lord know this.

Moreover, we have heard the following: Zitana has come and there are 90,000 infantrymen that have come with him. We have, however, not confirmed the report, whether they are really there and have arrived in Nuhasse.” (EA170)

The letter names two Hittite generals, Lupakku and Zitana.  Zidanta I is known to have assisted his brother-in-law Hantili I in the assassination of Mursili I.  He later took the throne of Hattusa himself by assassinating the heir of Hantili.  

Barry Curnock (2006) had argued that the man we identify as Suppiluliumas A was in fact Mursilis I, though his position may have changed since then. We take the position that Suppiluliumas A could have been Labarna I, Mursilis I, or Hantili I. Sup A was a vassal king of Labarna and Hattusilis I.

Returning to the seige in the days of Jehoram we can now see some perspective on the fear of the Syrians beseiging Samaria:

“Look, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians to attack us!” (II Kings 7:6)

A century and a half earlier, Shamshi-Adad, the Amorite, could be described as a Mitannian warlord who made himself king of Assyria.  In the days of King David, Yamhad had briefly been vassal to Hadadezer/Shamshi-Adad until David liberated it.   Yamhad was then allied with Bin Yaminah/Israel until the death of Solomon.   After Solomon’s death the next king of Mitanni, Shaushtatar, made Yamhad his vassal.  Thus in the early Amarna Era Yamhad would have been a vassal of his grandson, Tushratta/Ben Hadad I.

Mursilis I conquered Yamhad, sacked Babylon, and “all the Hurrian lands”.  Suppiluliumas A could make the same claim, having taken Syria, and put Shatti-waza on the throne of Mitanni/Hurria, and campaigned in Sinhar.  

#4 Tudhaliya, Tukulti Ninurta, Tiglath Pileser III, ca. 735 BC
In conventional history, Tudhaliya IV lost the battle of Nirhiya to Tukulti Ninurta around 1,200 BC.  In the Neo-Assyrian Era, Tiglath Pileser III put a “son of a nobody” named “Khulli” on the throne of Tabal.  Sargon later gave his daughter in marriage to Khuli’s son, Ambaridu, but later sacked Ambaridu, leaving Sargon’s daughter on the throne.  Then the Cimmerian invasion in 705 BC  ended Sargon’s life and the Assyrian control of Hattusa/Tabal.

In Hittite history there were as many as six or seven kings using the throne name “Tudhaliya.”  The assumption that Tudhaliya IV was the man who fought and lost the battle to Tukulti Ninurta was derived by placing the Assyrian and Hittite chronologies side by side. 

Tudhaliya IV succeeded Hattusilis III on the throne of Hattusa. This is the same Hattusilis who made the Treaty of Kadesh with Rameses II of Egypt in 589 BC. 

His successor Tudhaliya IV could not have come to the throne before 585 BC, and probably a decade later still. 

Tudhaliya I, II, and III reigned early or late in the lifetime of Tiglath-Pileser III. 

Tudhaliya IV was Astyages and the “King of Assyria” was Kurunta II, also known as Cyrus the Great.

#5 King Midas and the Kaska Invasion 710-690 BC

#6  Suppiluliumas I Letter from Dakamun 664 BC.
Suppiluliumas I received a letter from Dakamun of Egypt saying her husband had died and proposing he send a prince to be her husband.  This matches the events around the death of Taharqa whose chief wife was named Tabakenamun.  We explored this in detail in Chapter 10.

#7 Sack of Sardis & Ephesus by Mursilis II / Tugdamme 652 BC
Mursilis II has been certainly identified as Tugdamme the Cimmerian due to the “Boss of Tarkondemos,” which identifies him under both names. (Heathcotte, 2017)  

The Boss of Tarkondemos

The seal was discovered by Sayce in 1890 from an antiquities dealer in Istanbul.  The outer inscription is in 8th century Akkadian, saying, “Tarkon-dimme, king of the land of Urme.”

“The language on the seal has been read as tar-qu-u-tim-me sar-ur-me or tar-qu-u-tim-me sar-mi-ur. Some wish to read the last three syllables as two words, sar ur-me, King of Erme or Urme (the root form of Armenia). Modern consensus follows Hawkins’ reading of two words as well but as, sar mi-ur, and pronounced King of Mira.” (Heathcotte, 2017, ch. 1)

The last three syllables can also be translated as “Me-ur-sar”, which is to say, “Mursili.”  “Maur-sar” is the form used in the Egyptian Treaty of Kadesh to describe the father of Hattusilis, suggesting that the actual name translated “Mursilis” in English was originally pronounced Maursar.  (Heathcotte, 2017)

Both Tugdamme and Mursilis II campaigned in Lydia. The date of the conquest of Sardis was 652 BC.   In the Hittite version of Mursilis II we learn that prior to the battle a meteorite fell on the city and wounded king Ukka-zitis in the legs.   He died shortly afterwards in Apasa, though he was not killed in battle.

The meteorite that fall on Epapa/Ephesus appears to have been the original “image of Diana that fell from Heaven” that the Ephesians worshipped in the days of Saint Paul.

Comparisons of Cimmerian and Hittite Sardis Campaigns

Hittite
Cimmerian
Comment
Mursili II
Tugdamme
Invading king. Boss of Tarkondemos has both names, one in Akkadian, the other in Hittite
Ukka-zitis dies from meteorite
Gyges / Guka / Kuka dies
Defending king. “Kuka” means “grandfather” in Hittite
Arzawa Attacked
Lydia & Ionia Attacked

City of Apasa 
Sardis and Ephesus sacked

Ukka-zitis dies from meteorite
Gyges / Guka / Kuka dies
“Kuka” means “grandfather” in Hittite
Later, suffered a stroke 
Died from a stroke-like paralysis
The only two kings in history recorded to have died from a stroke.

#8 Battle of Carchemish & Battle of Kadesh 605 BC.
Muwattalis II was the commander of the Hittite forces in the Battle of Kadesh against Rameses II. We concur with Velikovsky that this was probably the same event as the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC.  Muwattalis II was the Scythian king Madys, son of the Scythian king, Partatua, whom we identify as Suppiluliumas I.

Critics dispute the details of Velikovsky’s identification of Kadesh as Carchemish.  The rest of the history fits together well enough that we are confident that if Kadesh and Carchemish were not the same battle, they both occurred in the same two year period between 606 and 605 BC.

#9  Treaty of Kadesh 589/588 BC
As we’ve shown in a previous chapter, Hattusilis III made the treaty of Kadesh with Ramses II in 589/588 BC and gave his daughter in marriage to Ramses II in 576 BC.  We follow Brock Heathcotte in identifying Hattusilis III as Cyaxares the Mede who is named in the treaty itself as “Kheta-sar.”  Heathcotte suggests that Kheta-sar is the original title that Herodotus transliterated into “Cyaxares.”

The reason that Rameses II made the treaty of Kadesh with Cyaxares instead of Nebuchadnezzar appears to be that he considered the Medes to be the stronger partner in the Medo-Babylonian coalition that conquered Assyria thirty years earlier.  In a letter between Rameses II and Puduhepa, the wife of Hattusilis/Cyaxares, Rameses declares that the king of Babylon is not a Great King like us.  Puduhepa, who was the sister-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar, wrote back and said that if you knew him, you would know that he is a Great King.   In those days the term “Great King” meant emperor, a king who ruled over other kings.

#10 Battle of Halys River 585 BC
Battle of the Halys River in 585 BC.  A solar eclipse interrupted the battle, which was taken as a bad omen by both sides. Alyattes of Lydia made a covenant with Cyaxares of Media, where Astayages married the daughter of Alyattes, making Astyages and Croesus brothers-in-law.  We would view this as a battle and subsequent treaty between the Hattusilis III and the king of Arzawa (Lydia).

#12 Defeat of Croesus by Cyrus the Great 546 BC.

Detailed Analysis

The identification of Hattusilis III was a point where Velikovsky ran into trouble, seeing as he identified him as Nebuchadnezzar II.   Since Velikovsky’s day, letters from Hattusilis to “Kadashman Enlil” of Karduniash (Babylon) have been translated.  Therefore, it is unlikely that Hattusilis III was Nebuchadnezzar, as Nebuchadnezzar would not write letters to himself.  

Cyaxares was the brother-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar, and about a half generation older.  The letters from Hattusilis III to Kadashman Enlil II are written in a brotherly tone to a younger king. Curnock identifies Kadashman Enlil II as the Kassite name of Nebuchadnezzar.

In the Hittite archives were found an exchange of letters between Rameses II and Puduhepa, the wife of Hattusilis III.   In his letter, Rameses II said that the king of Babylon did not deserve to be called a Great King, like the kings of Hatti and Egypt. Puduhepa corrected him by saying that if you knew him, you would know that the King of Babylon is a Great King.

We have identified the Treaty of Kadesh as being signed by Ramses II and Cyaxares the Mede in the year 589/588 BC, which allowed the allied Babylonian and Median forces to begin the final siege of Jerusalem without interference from the Egyptians.   One of the questions for revisionists chronologists has been, why would the King of Egypt sign a treaty with the King of the Hittites so that Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon could besiege Jerusalem?  Why not sign the treaty with the Babylonians directly?

The answer is now seen.  Egypt had been corresponding with the Hittites as the other empire with a Great King for 250 years prior to the Treaty of Kadesh.  During the Assyrian Era of the century prior to the Treaty of Kadesh, Babylon was a subject city.   When Nabopolassar conquered and destroyed Calah and Nineveh in 612 BC, he did so with the help of Cyaxares the Mede.  The arms of the Medes were so vital that it might be said that the Medes were actually the ones who conquered Assyria.  Therefore Rameses viewed the Medes as the senior partner in their partnership with Babylon.  

How did the Medes become the Hittites? In order to understand how the Medes came to be styling themselves as the Great Kings of Hattusa, we need to look at the events 100 years earlier in the time of Sargon II and Shalmaneser.

The Scythian and Cimmerian Invasion

In the era of Tiglath Pileser, Shalmaneser, and Sargon, we begin to see the rise of a people called the “Kaska” on the Northeast frontier of the Hititte lands in Anatolia.  The Kaska appear to have been the Scythians, or Saka.  The Assyrians called them the Umman Manda.  However, Umman Manda was a term that meant nomadic horsemen of the North.  The first recorded use of this term was by Naram Sin of Akkad around 1530 BC, speaking of the Tabalites and Armenians of the North.  

The Umman Manda of Sargon’s day have been identified with the Cimmerians, whose name is derived from the Assyrians who called them “Khumry” and “Gimera”   “Bit Khumry” was the Assyrian name for the nation of Israel, which means literally, “the House of Omri.”

While we do not subscribe to the core thesis of British Israelism, that all twelve tribes of the Israelites ended up migrating to Britain, we do find that the British Israelite historians such as Gen. Fasken and Raymond Capt have done a good job of documenting the connection between the deportations of Israel by Assyria and the rise of the Scythians and Cimmerians in the region of the Black Sea and the Massagetae and Nepthalites to the East of the Caspian Sea.

The apocryphal Book of Esdras recounts how the captive Israelites who had been placed on the borders of Assyria took the opportunity of the Assyrian Civil War and Median Revolt around 705 BC to break free and flee Northward through Dariel Pass of the Caucasus Mountains into the steppes of modern Russian and Ukraine.  Their new homeland was called “Arsareth,” where they worshiped Yahweh without idolatry.  “Ar Sereth” in Hebrew means “Valley of Seret”.  The Seret River is still called by this name in Ukraine today. 

Not long after this, the Scythians and Cimmerians invaded Anatolia from the North shore of the Black Sea and joined together with the Medes to form the group called the “Umman Manda” by the Assyrians.   They attempted unsuccessfully to invade Anshan in Persia.  But on the Northwest, they succeeded in conquering Midas of Phrygia, such that he committed suicide around 695 BC.

In Hittite temple archives were found a series of devotions and prayers offered by Tudhaliya I to the gods because the enemy Kaska coming from the North were destroying temples and did not care for the gods at all.  This sounds like the behavior of iconoclasts.

Reconstructing what happened, we believe that the Saka/Scythians were the larger body of Israelite colonies along the Black Sea, perhaps dating back to the time of the Judges in the second millennium, and augmented by refugees whenever Israel suffered famine or war.  

The closely related Cimmerians were the Israelite tribes deported by Tiglath Pileser and Shalmaneser in the 8th century.  They multiplied on the frontiers of the Assyrian Empire, and then went feral, conquering Anatolia in the West and as far as Afghanistan in the East.

We are told that the Scythians under their king Bartatua allied with Assyria against the Medes, and then conquered and gained rule over them.  And then Bartatua made a marriage alliance with Esarhaddon.   

The Cimmerians and the Medes appear to have formed a confederacy, becoming the new Umman Manda.  And having conquered the countries of Tabal/Hattusa and Mushki/Phrygia, Bartatua the Cimmerian did what every barbarian tribe did after conquering a higher civilization.  He took the scribes and priests of Hattusa into his retinue, declared himself the Great King of the Hatti Land, and started worshipping their gods.   

It is not surprising that three generations after Bartatua embraced the gods of Tabal, that Ezekiel prophesied against the Hittites that they would be destroyed, but the Israelites in their midst would be brought home to their land. (Ezekiel 38-39)  How fitting that Cyrus the Persian defeated the kingdoms of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, which were Urartu, Phrygia and Hattusa.  Then in 536 BC he issued the decree to allow the Jews and Israelites to return to Palestine and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple.

Thus the Cimmerians became the Medes who became the Hittites.   But it is only modern academia that calls them Hittites.  In Biblical terms the deported Israelites formed a confederacy with Tubal, Meshech, Rosh, Togarmah, Urartu, and Madai known as the Median Empire.   

According to Herodotus, who himself was from Lydia in Anatolia only three centuries after these events, the Cimmerians became the great Median Empire.   150 years later, the “Cimmerians” of Anatolia were conquered by Croesus, the last King of Lydia.  When one understands that the territory of the Cimmerian Medes stretched from Anatolia all the way to Iran, it is quite clear that Croesus did nothing more than conquer the western capitol of the Cimmerian Medes.  Croesus himself was in turn conquered by Cyrus, the King of the Persians and the Medes.   Under Cyrus the Great, the Lydians, Cimmerians, Medes, and Persians were melded together into the Achaemenid Empire.

Comparison of King Lists from Different Sources

Medes via Greeks
Saka/Cimmerian
Hittite
Persian
Assyrian
Dieoces
Ishpaka
Tudhaliya III, Usapa the Kulamean
Tiespes
Teushpa/Ishkallu 
Phraortes
Partatua/Bartatua
Suppiluliumas I

Mugallu
Tugdamme
Tugdamme
Mursilis II

Turku-dimme, Son of Mugallu
Madius/Madys
Um-akistar
Muwatallis II

Cyaxares
Sandakshatru
Hattusilis III
Khetasar
Hattu-shar
Astyages
Ishtevegu
Tudhaliya IV
Ishtu-vegu

Objections and Difficulties
The revision of Assyria and the Hittites has been by far the most difficult portion of this book.  The reason is that unlike Egypt we have very few reliable durations.  Instead we have a jumble of kings with inscriptions describing their interactions with other kings using non-standardized spelling, and multiple languages.  It is like a gigantic matrix problem from Algebra II.

The Old Kingdom of Hattusa
In Chapter 14 we demonstrated that the first king of Yamhad/Hamath, Sumuh Epuh, was the same man as Toi, King of Hamath, who became an ally of King David, and sent his son Joram/Yarim Lim to David to establish an alliance against Hadadezer/Shamshi-Adad of what was then Amurru + Assyria, with his capital at Shubat Enlil / Zobah.  

The Old Kingdom of the Hittites is known from the Edict of Telepinu who was the eighth and final king of the Old Hittite Era.  Telepinu’s edict proclaims rules of succession of the kingship and forbids assassination as a route to the throne.  The edict recites the history of the previous seven kings of Hattusa of which four, including himself, had usurped the throne, three by assassination of their predecessors.

From this edict we learn of the deeds of Mursilis I, the third king in the Dynasty, who conquered Hammurabi III of Yamhad, and then sacked Babylon.   When he arrived home in Hattusa for his victory parade he was assassinated by his brother in law.

The sack of Babylon is an important synchronism for establishing the dates for the Old Kingdom of Hattusa.   Hammurabi III was the 10th king of Yamhad.  We also have two Babylonian sources which record that the people of Hatti attacked Akkad [Babylon] in the reign of Samsuditana, the last king of the first Amorite Dynasty of Babylon.

While we do not have a king list giving the reigns of the kings of the First Amorite Dynasty of Babylon, a large quantity of loan tablets were excavated which gave years of the king.  From these documents we have two lists of the First Dynasty of Babylon which both agree that Samsuditana died about 155 years after the death of Hammurabi of Babylon.

We synchronized Hammurabi’s sack of Mari in his year 36 to Solomon’s conquest of Hamath-Zobah in his year 20, and therefore Hammurabi died in 988 BC.  The data for the remainder of his dynasty gives 150 or 138 years.  If we accept those reigns as sole-reigns then we must date the sack of Babylon by Mursilis I between 850 and 838 BC.

Since Mursilis I did not have a long reign due to his assassination, we might suppose that Labarna I, who founded the Old Kingdom of Hattusa came to the throne about 40 years earlier, which would be 890 to 878 BC.  This is important because we are going to see that we have a “collision” with the king Supiluliumas in the EA Letters.

We really do not have enough information to be certain where exactly Suppiluliumas A fits into the Hittite Old Kingdom. He could be the first Labarna, or Mursilis I, or Hantili I.  We leave this question open to further research and debate.