Near Eastern Historystriking features of the document (although it has seldom been
remarked) is the absence of any ethnic animosity by the upstart
Great King, or any ethnic support for him. Hattusilis's con-
cern in his annals is to tell the world that he not only made all
of Hatti subject to himself, but also conducted long-distance
raids into Arzawa (somewhere on the coast) and Syria, plun-
dering cities far and wide and impressing upon them the maj-
esty of his name and therefore of the gods whose steward he
was. The tradition of imperial kingship begun by Hattusilis I
endured (although with several changes of dynasty) until ca.
1190 B.C., when Hattusas was sacked and the reigning king,
Suppiluliumas II, was killed.
The great kingdom at Hattusas was Hittite in the sense that
the Hittite language was the primary language of the palace
and its provincial administrators. This linguistic preference
suggests that Hattusilis I and his close associates were Hittite
speakers. That, however, was the extent of the Hittite charac-
ter of the kingdom. The throne names of Hattusilis I and all
his successors were not Hittite, but Hattic, and the newly dis-
covered annals of Hattusilis give not the slightest hint that he
regarded himself as a Hittite in our sense of the word, or as
anything other than the lord of all Hatti. In their inscriptions
and annals, the Hittite kings are tireless in proclaiming their
piety toward the sun goddess of Arinna, the weather god, and
the other traditional deities of Hatti. The Hittite kingdom
demonstrates quite clearly that ethnic consciousness was not
much of a factor in second-millennium history.
The kingdom of Hattusilis and his successors was not a "na-
tional state," such as those familiar in European history, and
was not an expression of "the Hittite nation." On the contrary,
the closest approximation to a Hittite nation may have arisen
as a result of Hattusilis's achievement. When the imperial
kingship began, some years after 1650 B.C. , some of the people
in Hatti may still have been speaking Hattic. By the end of the
Old Kingdom (ca. 1470 B.C.), Hittite and Luwian seem to
have been the only languages spoken in Hatti; and it is certain