tenth centuryAD,‘Anatolia’is still often used for modern Turkey,
particularly the western two-thirds of it (peninsular Turkey), and
sometimes refers more specifically to Turkey’scentralhighlands.
‘Anadolu’istheTurkishformofthename.OneofAnatolia’s
most distinctive features is its highland plateau which rises
1,000 m above sea level. The core territory of Hatti, kingdom of
the Hittites, lay in the north-central part of the plateau. We now
call it the Hittite homeland. On the north the plateau is bounded
by the Pontic mountains, on the south by the Taurus ranges and
in the east it merges into the Armenian mountains. These ranges
sharply differentiate the plateau from the rest of the Anatolian
region. In the west, the plateau slopes down more gently to the
Aegean coast.
Syria will alsofigure prominently in our story of the Hittites, for
it provided the key to international dominance in the Late Bronze
Age Near Eastern world. This was because it spread over the
crossroads of this world, between Anatolia to the northwest,
Mesopotamia to the east, Arabia to the south and Egypt to the
southwest. Many international routes of communication, used for
both peaceful and military purposes, passed through it. In a Bronze
Age context, we shall use the term‘Syria’to refer to the large expanse
of territory lying between the Euphrates river and the eastern
Mediterranean Sea. (Of course, the modern political state Syria
extends well beyond the Euphrates.) In many periods of Near
Eastern history, from the Bronze Age to the present day, the great
powers of the age have sought control over the region, and often
fought one another to achieve it. As you’ll see, Syria was very closely
connected with both the rise and the fall of the Hittite kingdom, and
also with the gradual rediscovery of this kingdom in the modern era.
Wherever possible, we should allow the Hittites to speak for
themselves as we seek to reconstruct the world in which they lived.
Their most important texts are now fairly readily available in English
translations. I’ve asterisked these in the general bibliography as well
as in the Endnotes.
One of my most challenging tasks in writing this book has been
to present as comprehensive an account as possible of the Hittites
while sticking to the publisher’s limit of 85,000 words.‘Concise’in
INTRODUCTION 5