(d) the Hittite empire datednot to the Iron Age (late second
millennium onwards) but to the preceding Bronze Age, the Late
Bronze Age in particular (from the seventeenth to the twelfth
century).How could Sayce have been so right and yet so wrong at the same
time?
THEHITTITE LANGUAGE DECIPHERED
To answer this question, we need to move forward to the early
years of the twentieth century. In 1906, a German Assyriologist
called Hugo Winckler (a rather unpleasant man, to judge from
accounts of the time) and his Turkish colleague Theodor Makridi,
began thefirst major excavations in the city that had so mystified
Charles Texier seven decades earlier. We should, however,
acknowledge that thefirst official excavations of the site were
conducted in the years 1893–4 by the archaeologist Ernest
Chantre. The site’s modern name was Boghazköy, today called
Boghazkale. Right from the beginning, clay tablets in great
quantities started coming to light. There was little doubt that this
site was part of the great Hittite empire, as Chantre’s excavations
ten years earlier had already suggested. And Winckler could read
quite a few of the tablets since they were written in the Akkadian
language (Assyrian and Babylonian were its two main versions).
This had been deciphered many decades earlier, and was widely
used in its own time as an international lingua franca. But the
majority of the tablets were written in a strange, unknown
language. This must have been the language of the Hittites
themselves.
From the texts thatcouldbe read it became clear, already in the
first year of the excavations, that the ancient name of the site was
Hattusa. There could be no doubt from these excavations that
Hattusa was a very important city of the Hittite world. But it was to
prove more than that! As Winckler perused the basketloads of
tablets and tablet-fragments brought to him each day, he came
across one in particular that caused him great excitement. It was a
12 WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA