CHAPTER 3

The Dawn of the

Hittite Era

L

et’s now start building ourselves a picture of the Hittite
world.^1 We’ve already noted that the official language of the
Hittite kingdom was an Indo-European one. It’sstillnot
certain where the speakers of this language came from, or when. But
most scholars believe they were one branch of a much larger Indo-
European family originating from somewhere north of the Black Sea,
maybe the steppes of Russia. Perhaps some time during the Early
Bronze Age, they arrived in northern Anatolia, along with two other
Indo-European groups whom, for reasons we’ll come to soon, we call
the Palaians and the Luwians. Some scholars believe that Indo-
European speakers were always present in Anatolia, and would not
have been a clearly identifiable group by the second millennium.
Be that as it may, early in the millennium, during the period we
now call the Middle Bronze Age, personal names which we can
identify as Indo-European make theirfirst appearance in Anatolia.
They do so in texts written by foreigners–Assyrian merchants who
established a string of trading colonies between Assyria and the cities
and kingdoms of north-central Anatolia. Their headquarters was a
place called Kanesh or Nesa (modern Kültepe), sometimes written
Nesha, just south of the KızılIrmakriver(‘Red River’). Known as the
Marassantiya in Hittite texts, the ancient Greeks and Romans called
it the Halys (‘Salt’) river.
At this time, the region within the river’s confines was occupied
predominantly by a people we call the Hattians, whose settlement