king Kashtiliash IV, Tukulti-Ninurta may have taken the view that he should secure
his southern boundaries before venturing upon a major campaign across the Euphrates.
Though he won a decisive victory over the Babylonians, and followed it up by
incorporating Babylonian territory into his own, his subsequent attempts to hold his
expanded empire together severely overtaxed his resources. His armies suffered several
defeats, and he himself eventually fell victim to assassination. For the remaining years
of its existence, Hatti and its subject territories were no longer threatened by the
Assyrian menace, thanks largely to Tukulti-Ninurta’s decision to follow up his victory
against the Hittites at Nihriya by invading his southern neighbour, the kingdom of
Babylon, rather than his western neighbour, the kingdom of Hatti.
While, in a strategic sense, Hatti may have occasionally benefited from its diplomatic
links with Babylon, the benefits which it derived from cultural contacts with Babylonian
civilisation were far more lasting and pervasive. These contacts extended back to the
seventeenth century, the first century of the Hittite kingdom. After literacy in Anatolia
disappeared with the Assyrian merchants at the end of the Assyrian Colony period
(mid-eighteenth century), the cuneiform script was introduced afresh into the early
Hittite kingdom, probably by Babylonian scribes hired or abducted in the course of
Hittite campaigns in Syria and western Mesopotamia. These campaigns culminated
in the destruction of Babylon by Mursili. Almost certainly, scribes would have been
among the booty-people transported back to Hatti in the wake of Mursili’s conquest.
They, or earlier immigrant scribes from Babylonia, may well have been responsible
for establishing a local scribal profession in Hattusa, setting up training institutions
along the lines of the Old Babylonian model – though we have no direct evidence
of such institutions in the Hittite world.
As part of their training, at least some of the home-grown Hittite scribes would
have been required to learn the Akkadian language, the international lingua franca
of the age, and, to a lesser extent, the Sumerian language. These languages opened
up to the Hittites the whole world of Mesopotamian literature. Scribal training
provided a means for the introduction of great Mesopotamian literary compositions
into the Hittite world, since mastery of the complex cuneiform script involved the
trainee scribe in the task of copying and recopying the texts which recorded these
compositions. Very likely it was via the scribal schools that the Babylonian epic of
Gilgamesh became established in Hittite literary tradition. Fragments of Hittite,
Akkadian, and Hurrian versions of the epic have all been found in the archives of
the Hittite capital. No doubt Mesopotamian legal traditions were transmitted to the
Hittite world in a similar way. The collection of 200 Hittite laws owes much in
form, content and expression to a number of its Mesopotamian predecessors. But its
most direct model and source of inspiration was undoubtedly the laws of Hammurabi.
There are many similarities between Hittite and Hammurabic law. But there are also
major differences, reflecting different moral values and concepts of justice. One of
the most significant differences is the shift in Hittite law away from blood revenge
to a more pragmatically based principle – that of punishing an offender by making
him directly responsible for compensating in full, and in a very practical way, the
victim of his offence.
Hittite religious belief and practice also drew heavily on Babylonian precedents.
The omens of a celestial or astronomical nature which figure prominently in the
Hittite collection of omen texts are virtually all of Babylonian origin. Hittite archives
— Trevor Bryce —