Unearthed: The Humble Origins Of World Diplomacy (Hittites)

Independent (UK) ^ | 1-19-2003 | David Keys

[blam]

Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy

By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent
19 January 2003

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago.

Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years.

Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to reduce Egyptian power in neighbouring Palestine and played a key part in creating biblical-era Israel. The invasion also led, in effect, to the invention of the concept of the international treaty.

The clay tablets – discovered at the site of the ancient city of Qatna, 200km north of Damascus – appear to tell the whole story of the Hittite conquest of the region. What seems to be one of the first letters in the sequence – probably from a diplomatic or intelligence officer in northern Syria – describes how the Hittites invaded with a large army and great numbers of chariots and destroyed many towns, including one 100km north of Qatna. The diplomat implores the King of Qatna – a ruler called Idanda – to reinforce his defences.

Another letter – from a fellow king, also somewhere in northern Syria – described to Idanda how the Hittite general was on the march again, laden with war booty, presumably from the sacked cities.

The clay tablets then go on to record Idanda's reaction. One text is an instruction to make 40,000 mud bricks, perhaps to strengthen the city wall. Another orders workshops to make 18,600 swords, while yet another names the 25 military captains who are to receive the weapons.

Apparently the Hittite army arrived and captured Qatna, despite the defenders' new weapons. The palace, and probably the town too, were destroyed. But the destruction, ironically, preserved the library. For when the Hittites set fire to the palace, the wooden floors collapsed and the library's clay tablets fell four metres into a basement corridor and were buried in rubble.

As well as diplomatic letters and intelligence documents, the library included reports and instructions on economic and legal matters. One tablet reveals, for instance, that a lady of the palace, called Napshi-Abi, was very rich and owned 200 gold-hilted knives, ebony chairs and knives inlaid with lapis lazuli.

The letters and reports are unique, not only for their subject matter but also because they are written in a previously unknown language, a mixture of Akkadian (the Semitic lingua franca of the ancient world) and Hurrian (which originated in what is now eastern Turkey and the Caucasus).

Also buried for 33 centuries were the tombs of Qatna's royal family, containing ivory, royal insignia, alabaster vases, gold and silver bowls and gold rosettes. So far archaeologists have found a funerary complex (complete with entrance statues) that served up to 15 generations of royalty.

[Verginius Rufus]

I did not intend my comment that Will Durant was not an expert on this area to be an attack, but it's just that no one can be an expert on everything and when it comes to a topic like the ancient Hittites Durant was relying on information he had garnered from others.

The ancient Near East is a difficult field of history because of the complicated writing systems (cuneiform, hieroglyphics, etc.) and the many different languages involved (several languages besides what we call Hittite were being spoken and written in the area of the Hittite Empire alone). I once heard an Israeli scholar who was a specialist in the ancient Near East say that he didn't think there was anyone who had learned all of the ancient languages of the area which are preserved in writing. I would prefer to rely on those scholars who can read the Hittite texts.

The fall of the Hittite Empire is usually put about 1200 B.C., about the same time as the attacks on Egypt by the so-called Sea Peoples and the destruction of the "Palace of Nestor" in Pylos, Greece.

One of the older standard books on the Hittites is by O. R. Gurney, The Hittites (Pelican paperback); there is a newer book by Trevor Bryce, The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford University Press). The Blue Guide to Turkey: The Aegean and Anatolian Coasts has a historical section with 10 or 12 pages devoted to the Hittites.

[Little Bill]

They actually had two periods of dominance the old Empire which underwent a contraction and then after an interregnum a new Empire. The way that the language was written also changed. The kingdom ended about the same time as the Dorian invasions in Greece.

[blam]

"They actually had two periods of dominance the old Empire which underwent a contraction and then after an interregnum a new Empire. "

Give me some dates.

[Poohbah]

Actually, "diplomacy" comes to us from the Hittite "D'eep'lomo."

The Hittite word translates as "the art of saying 'nice doggie' while discreetly searching for a big rock."

[Just mythoughts]

Great map, and an interesting find. Wonder who and where they are today. I wonder what else they will find in Syria.

[Little Bill]

The Hittites Empire stretched from Mesopotamia to Syria and Palestine. Their invasion spelled the end of the Old Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia. The Hittite civilization dominated Mesopotamia from 1600 BC to 1200 BC.

Their civilization ended abrupted just as it had started. Hittite cities and territories thrived independently until they were finally conquered most likely by the Assyrians.(770 BC +/- for the rump kingdoms. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[blam]

"Their civilization ended abrupted just as it had started. Hittite cities and territories thrived independently until they were finally conquered most likely by the Assyrians.(770 BC +/- for the rump kingdoms. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------"

I don't have another catastrophy until 209BC...Oh, well.

[mikegi]

Great map, and an interesting find. Wonder who and where they are today. I wonder what else they will find in Syria.

Archaeologists digging in Syria these days better be wearing NBC suits and carrying Gieger counters!

[Just mythoughts]

Syria does seem always to be the lead trouble maker but I don't ever recall any bombs landing on them. Why only fighting in Lebanon never in Syria proper?

[Little Bill]

But the first two dates fall along your time line more or less. To p*ss off the Assyrians was to invite a catastrophy.

[Light Speed]

Its known now that impactors skip off our atmosphere each month..and dissapear into space.
How many Tunguska incidents have occured ..we just haven't located the signs left afterward.
A Documentary was aired last week with a team entering the Brazilian rain forest to find a multiple impact site.
A sizeable Tunguska event was discovered recently in Australia...the surrounding desert scooped out like a kids sand box.

[You may have read this info allready]

November 26,1997 Web posted at: 5:39 p.m. EST (2239 GMT) SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- An asteroid that tumbled through space for eons blasted into the sea off Antarctica more than 2 million years ago with the force of "a cosmic bomb," a multinational team of scientists said in a research paper published Wednesday. Striking the Bellingshausen Sea with the explosive power of 100 billion tons of TNT, the asteroid Eltanin blew a column of water 5 kilometers (3 miles) high and punched a temporary "oceanic crater" in the sea, according to the paper, which appeared in the British science journal Nature. The researchers estimate the asteroid was at least 1 kilometer (six-tenths of a mile) and possibly up to 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) in diameter. The blast in the ocean did not leave a crater on the seabed, but a similar strike on land would have left a hole 15 to 40 kilometers (9 to 25 miles) across. 'Devastating mega-tsunamis' Eltanin, the only asteroid ever known to have hit water, triggered waves 20 to 40 meters (65 to 130 feet) high, "devastating mega-tsunamis" that swamped the coasts of South America and Antarctica. "The tsunami ... destroys enormous, large areas. ... In the Pacific Rim there are signs of such things," one of the lead researchers, Rainer Gersonde of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday. Sediment spread up to 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) away and dust, vapor and salts wafted around the world. Enough debris and hot vapors were emitted to possibly damage the Earth's ozone layer, the researchers said. "The dust and vapor probably caused a major change in climate, but whether that persisted or was for just a few years, we just don't know," said Karsten Gohl, a geologist from Macquarie University in Sydney who worked on the project. There is no evidence that the climatic change caused the extinction of any species. New seismic and deep-sea surveys conducted in 1995 by the German research ship Polarstem enabled the scientists to accurately date the blast to the late Pliocene period, 2.15 million years ago, and to gauge its effects. An enigma solved? The blast was well after the Northern Hemisphere's Ice Age began but "close to one of the strongest cooling events in this time period," the researchers'paper said. "It might be that this strong cooling was related to the impact," Gersonde told AP. The fallout from the blast may explain the "Sirius enigma," the puzzle of why marine fossils are found high above sea level in the Transantarctic Mountains. The researchers believe fallout from the stearn and vapor cloud dropped micro-fossils directly on the mountains, an idea that geologist Peter Barrett at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, called "reasonably plausible." David Harwood at the University of Nebraska, an expert on the Sirius fossils, conceded that the fallout theory "has potential" but said some Sirius deposits do not fit the model. He is among those who feel moving ice sheets may have scoured fossil deposits and redeposited them in unexpected sites. The Eltanin impact was a medium blast, as asteroids go. About 65 million years ago, an asteroid about IO kilometers (6 miles) in diameter struck off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and is widely believed to have killed off the dinosaurs by blotting out the sun with the dust it kicked up. But rocks far smaller than Eltanin can cause massive damage: A meteorite only 45 meters (150 feet) across created Arizona's Meteor Crater, 1,220 meters (4,000 feet) across and 180 meters (600 feet) deep. First known ocean strike Eltanin is the only asteroid known to have struck the ocean, compared with about 140 known to have hit land -- even though the Earth's surface is 70 percent water, Jan Smits of the Research School of Sedimentary Geology at Amsterdams Vrije University noted in a commentary on the research in Nature. Besides Gersonde, in Germany, researchers on the project included Frank Kyte at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA and scientists from the Department of Geology at the University of Salamanca in Spain; Macquarie University's School of Earth Sciences in Sydney; and the U.S. Naval Research Lab in Washington. Eltanin is named for the U.S. research ship that brought up deep sea samples in 1965 that later were formed to contain iridium, an element in asteroids.

[blam]

Very good, thanks.

[Billthedrill]

Not sure about Velikovsky on that one - the Egyptians certainly thought the Hittites existed, Ramses II having fought an epochal battle (Kadesh) with them about 1299 BC. There are extensive diplomatic correspondences involving a relationship between them, the Egyptian empire, Assyria, and Babylon that were found in Egypt in the 19th century - the El Amarna letters.

The Hittite empire was certainly ephemeral, though, ranking in importance and obscurity with the Hurrian/Mitanni and the Lydians. It'd be nice to be able to dig more information up without the danger of being shot, but it doesn't look like that area's going to be stable enough for scholarly research for a very long time to come.

[ml/nj]

Not sure about Velikovsky on that one - the Egyptians certainly thought the Hittites existed, Ramses II having fought an epochal battle (Kadesh) with them about 1299 BC. There are extensive diplomatic correspondences involving a relationship between them, the Egyptian empire, Assyria, and Babylon that were found in Egypt in the 19th century - the El Amarna letters.

Velikovsky hardly ignores the El Amarna Letters. He devotes 114 out of 340 pages in his Ages in Chaos to the subject. His interpretation of them differs from the conventional interpretation because his chronology is different from the conventional chronology (which is the point of the book) This conventional chronology has the letters referring to a period when the Israelites were still supposed to be slaves in Egypt. As I understand it, Velikovsky thinks the they refer to the time when the Israelites were conquering Canaan, and says that much of the scholarship associated with the letters is an attempt to identify people and places that they refer to. But if the Habiru (of the letters) who threatened the land from east of the Jorden cannot be the Hebrews, then much of that scholarship is going to be in error if Velikovsy is correct about his redating of the history in that area.

ML/NJ

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, I'd not seen that particular thing on the Eltanin impact.

"It might be that this strong cooling was related to the impact,"

to which I would reply, "yeah, no ****." ;')

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks blam, adding this older topic to the keywords.

New Ice-Core Evidence Challenges the 1620s age for the Santorini (Minoan) Eruption
Posted by SunkenCiv
07/29/2004
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1180724/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Just updating the GGG information, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic was posted 1/18/2003.

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