Eric Jean

From Micro-Region to Empire: The Hittite Kingdom

Éric Jean

The project for which I was fortunate to get a Senior Fellowship at ANAMED for the 2022–2023 academic year was entitled: “Mersin-Yumuktepe during the 2^nd Millennium BC: A Reanalysis of its Middle and Late Bronze Age Levels.” The objective was the publication of the levels of the second millennium BCE resulting from the excavations undertaken between 1993 and 2021. To carry out this project, it was essential that I complete the study of the pottery material during the 2022 excavation season, but, for reasons beyond my control, this could not be done. I was therefore obliged to change the project and its title, which was done when I arrived at ANAMED with the agreement of its director, Chris Roosevelt, and Koç University. I thank them deeply. However, Yumuktepe was not be entirely left out, as I presented “The Place of Yumuktepe in the Exchange Network Between Cyprus and Cilicia at the End of the Late Bronze Age” at the conference Cyprus and the Anatolian South Coast from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age: Dynamics of Interaction in a Period of Transformation, held in Bern on May 6–8, 2023. In addition, Cilicia and Cyprus holds a peripheral but not negligible place in my new project.

The title of this new project is: “From Micro-Region to Empire: How to Consider the Historical Half-Millennium of the Hittite Kingdom?” The idea of working on the concept of the Hittite empire began to germinate while I was writing the closing speech for the Workshop “The Hittites: The Legacy of an Empire” (HİTİTLER: BİR İMPARATORLUĞUN MİRASI. Kızılırmak Kavsi İçerisindeki Arkeolojik Kazı ve Araştırmalar), which was held online on June 4–6, 2021. The preparation of the lecture entitled “Comment comprendre la longévité du royaume hittite?” that I was invited to give on February 9, 2022 at the French Institute of Turkey in Ankara convinced me to write on this subject when possible. The change of program at ANAMED gave me the opportunity, and my in-house presentation of October 19, 2022 forced me to immerse myself in it. In fact, my reflection followed two steps.

The first stage was defined by a global approach in my attempt to answer certain questions. Formed in the isolated northern micro-regions of the central Anatolian plateau, the Hittite kingdom dominated much of Anatolia and northern Syria in a history that spanned more than 450 years, from the seventeenth to the beginning of the twelfth century BCE. The most common terminology designating the different periods of Hittite history uses the word “empire” for the last centuries of this history. However, archaeological as well as recent philological research suggest that an imperial-type expansion existed from the formation of the Hittite state.[1] On what grounds, then, is it possible to speak of a Hittite empire? Moreover, the location and environment of its capital Ḫattuša (Boğazköy) could appear unfavorable and contradictory with an imperialist undertaking. How then to explain the choice of this site and region, as well as the conditions that allowed this imperialist policy and its duration over time? In other words, how was the Hittite empire built and how did it last almost half a millennium from an a priori unfavorable space? Another apparent contradiction is due to the scarcity of exports attested by archaeology, often interpreted as a withdrawal of the kingdom on itself. How then to interpret this supposed isolation and the development of the kingdom into an empire? Finally, the levels of destruction or abandonment indicating the end of the Late Bronze Age in most cities belonging to the Hittite sphere of influence are generally associated with the end of the kingdom during the reign of Šuppiluliama II, around 1200–1180 BCE; however, it appears that a certain number of destructions and abandonments preceded the fall of the Ḫatti by about a century or more. This is the case, for example, at Porsuk-Zeyve Höyük, the destruction of which dates back perhaps to the end or even the middle of the fourteenth century BCE. At Tell Atchana/Alalakh, the occupation in the thirteenth century BCE is, it seems, reduced to worship activities linked to the temple of Ishtar. Shouldn’t we therefore rethink the most intense and best-documented imperial period, that of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BCE?

Trying to answer these questions, I was able to take advantage of very recent publications that deal with Hittite imperialism. These include The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia: Hittite Sovereign Practice, Resistance, and Negotiation by Claudia Glatz published in 2020[2] and the book edited by Stefano de Martino in 2022, Handbook Hittite Empire: Power Structures.[3] I first delimited the conceptual and spatio-temporal framework. I have provisionally defined imperialism as the expansionism of centralized administration through the direct or indirect establishment of decision-making power or influence over one or more states, by force or diplomacy,[4] which underlies a dynamic of negotiation between the actors and affirms the multicultural character of the empire. From the examples of Porsuk and Malatya-Arslantepe, in particular, I demonstrated the precocity of Hittite imperialism, while showing that it was not a question of a continuous evolution, history not being linear. Then, I questioned the geographical choice of north-central Anatolia. For this, after having defined the “unfavorable” geographical conditions, I highlighted the richness of the region, both in terms of its natural assets and that of its past, which strongly contributed to the formation of the Hittite culture. For this, I was strongly inspired by Andreas Schachner, who was able to underline the role of geography in understanding the mechanisms of formation of the Hittite kingdom.[5] I also looked for other explanatory elements in the organization of the kingdom in political, diplomatic, economic, societal, and religious matters, as well as in its ability to adapt to the realities of the different territories and to know how to delegate. If religious ideology appears as the basis of all royal action, the exercise of authority was not formatted, but responded to a concern for efficiency; the Hittites were, above all, practical people. The scale of the work, and my various other commitments, which for some had been postponed due to the pandemic, recently led me to reassess my project.

Just over a week after my presentation at ANAMED, the V^th International Cilician Archaeology Symposium was held online on October 27–28, 2022, at which I presented a paper entitled “Between Forest and Coast: Timber Floating in Hittite Cilicia.” On November 11–13, 2022, the Nostoi II conference, Journey to the Eastern Mediterranean + Inland Routes from Early Bronze to the End of the First Iron Age, was held in Athens; I presented a paper entitled “A Navy for a Non-Marine People? The Hittites and the Control of the Seas.” I resumed the same subject in a longer Turkish version for a lecture given at Istanbul University on December 5, 2022 at the invitation of Metin Alparslan, head of the department of Hittitology. The first two papers have become articles, the first already sent and the second soon to be sent for publication. On May 4, I presented online the paper “Between Space and Power—Was there a territory of Ura?” at the conference Integrated Approaches to the Political Geography of Southern Anatolia, ca 1650–550 BCE, held May 4–7, 2023 at Bilkent University. In the frame of the workshop Materialized Politics and Embodied Symbols: Foundation and Re-Foundation in Hittite Anatolia, organized on April 18, 2023 at ANAMED by the small group of fellows working on the Bronze and Iron Age, which we have formed and exotically labelled the BAIA Group, the presentations of our guests, Aygül Süel and Alfonso Archi, as well as the discussions that followed, acted as an excellent stimulus for my research. Admittedly, all these subjects enrich my reflection on the Hittite empire; they oblige me, however, to tighten my initial subject, a reduction that corresponds to the second stage.

I have almost finished writing an article entitled “De microrégion en empire: Réflexions préliminaires sur la manière de considérer la longévité du royaume Hittite,” which is a synthesis of the answers provided in the context of the project. On the other hand, the book initially planned is chronologically reduced to the period rarely considered “imperial,” which precedes the reign of Šuppiluliama I and extends from the seventeenth to the first half of the fourteenth century BCE. There is little time left, but the production of this book, even partially, will be indebted to the exceptional framework provided by ANAMED, the availability of its staff, and the diversity and support of its fellows.

Bibliography

de Martino, Stefano, ed. Handbook Hittite Empire: Power Structures. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2022.

Gerçek, İlgi. “Approaches to Hittite Imperialism: A View from the ‘Old Kingdom’ and ‘Early Empire’ Periods (c. 1650–1350 BCE).” In Innovation versus Beharrung: Was macht den Unterschied des hethitischen Reichs im Anatolien des 2. Jahrtausends v. chr.?, edited by Andreas Schachner, 21–38. BYZAS 23. Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2017.

Glatz, Claudia. The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia: Hittite Sovereign Practice, Resistance, and Negotiation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Schachner, Andreas. “The Power of Geography. Criteria for Selecting the Location of Hattusa, the Capital City of the Hittite Empire.” In talugaeš witteš. Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Stefano de Martino on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, edited by Michele Cammarosano, Elena Devecchi, and Maurizio Viano, 399–420. Münster: Zaphon, 2020.

Schachner, Andreas. “Geographical Prerequisites versus Human Behavior: Settlement Geography, Rural Economy, and Ideological Aspects of Anthropogenic Relations with the Natural Environment during the Second Millennium BC in Central Anatolia.” In Handbook Hittite Empire: Power Structures, edited by Stefano de Martino, 159–202. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2022.

[1] E.g. İlgi Gerçek, “Approaches to Hittite Imperialism: A View from the ‘Old Kingdom’ and ‘Early Empire’ Periods (c. 1650–1350 BCE),” in Innovation versus Beharrung: Was macht den Unterschied des hethitischen Reichs im Anatolien des 2. Jahrtausends v. chr.?, ed. Andreas Schachner, BYZAS 23 (Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2017), 21–38.

[2] Claudia Glatz, The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia: Hittite Sovereign Practice, Resistance, and Negotiation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

[3] Stefano de Martino, ed., Handbook Hittite Empire: Power Structures (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2022).

[4] Gerçek, “Hittite Imperialism.”

[5] Andreas Schachner, “The Power of Geography. Criteria for Selecting the Location of Hattusa, the Capital City of the Hittite Empire,” in talugaeš witteš. Ancient Near Eastern Studies Presented to Stefano de Martino on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, eds. Michele Cammarosano, Elena Devecchi, and Maurizio Viano (Münster: Zaphon, 2020), 399–420; Andreas Schachner, “Geographical Prerequisites versus Human Behavior: Settlement Geography, Rural Economy, and Ideological Aspects of Anthropogenic Relations with the Natural Environment during the Second Millennium BC in Central Anatolia,” in Handbook Hittite Empire: Power Structures, ed. Stefano de Martino (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2022), 159–202.