Who were the Hittites and where did they come from?
The Hittites were an ancient group of Indo-Europeans who moved into Asian Minor and formed an empire at Hattusa in Anatolia (modern Turkey) around 1600 BCE. The Hittite Empire reached great heights during the mid-1300s BCE, when it spread across Asia Minor, into the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
What were the Phoenicians originally called?
Canaanites are a group of ancient Semitic-speaking peoples that emerged in the Levant in at least the third millennium BC. Phoenicians did not refer themselves as such but rather are thought to have referred to themselves as “Kenaʿani”, meaning Canaanites.
Are Armenians Hittites?
Armenia. Modern DNA research indicates that many people who today call themselves Armenian descend from the most ancient peoples of Anatolia. The Biblical Hittite Empire (seventeenth to twelfth centuries BC) and the kingdom of Urartu (Ararat, ninth to the sixth centuries BC) were among those that ruled the area.
How are the Hittites and the Phoenicians related?
Phoenicia lies just south of Anatolia. In fact, modern-day Lebanon (the descendant of Phoenicia) shares a border with Anatolia. They’re neighbors. Under the Hittite empire, both Anatolia AND the land that would later be Phoenicia were under the same flag, and enjoyed the same cultural influences.
Where did the Hittites come from and where did they live?
The Hittites came from a land full of mountains to the northwest of Mesopotamia. The area is sometimes called Anatolia or Asia Minor. The Hittite Kingdom covered most of the area that now makes up the countries of Turkey and Syria. Image by Própria, via Wikimedia Commons, was released into the public domain.
What kind of language did the Hittites use?
The Hittites had a written language that was a combination of the Sumerians’ cuneiform and the Egyptians’ hieroglyphics. They were skilled farmers, traders, and artists. They also had a code of law like the Sumerians.
Why did the Hittites call themselves The Khatti?
Why this is interesting is that the reason we call the people in Anatolia “Hittites” is because they called themselves Khatti. Since English does not possess certain sounds, the term is transliterated in several different ways—such as the Jewish celebration of Hannukah, which is sometimes spelled Channukah.