Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire

A.H. Sayce was one of the foremost experts on the Near East during the late 19th century and early 20th century, authoring many books on the region. The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire is a wonderful history of the Hittite civilization. The Hittites are an ancient people who remain somewhat enigmatic, and perhaps little known to most people, but their influence on the ancient Near East is undeniable. From high on their capital of Hattusa in central Anatolia, the Hittites were able to conquer and control a kingdom that roughly comprised the area of the modern nation-states of Turkey, Syria, and parts of Iraq and Lebanon through a combination of brute military force and shrewd diplomatic machinations. Compared to some of their contemporaries - including the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians - the Hittites were somewhat distant both culturally and geographically. The Hittites were an Indo-European speaking in an ocean of Afro-Asiatic and Semitic groups, their homeland was to the north of Mesopotamia, and it contained no major river like the Nile, Tigris, or Euphrates Rivers. The Hittite empire was also far less enduring than its neighbors, as it only existed from about 1800-1200 BCE (van de Mieroop 2007, 156), which was considerably shorter than most of the other major kingdoms of the Near East.