In Hatti, the Land of Gods and Temples “Temples are secret books” and they live behind great doors, in the shadows of large halls, with their ceilings held aloft by columns. Immortality lives in the mountains and rivers of Anatolia, in the blue and innocence of the unique sky, in the graves scattered around the lands fertilized by the flash of the lightning of the “Storm God”. “My purpose was to find the location of the ancient city of Tavium. All of the clues indicated that the city should be located on a fertile land by the riverside of the ancient Halys (Kızılırmak). Although many things were missing, I moved my caravan again on July 28, 1834. … We were heading north. … I was filled with the thought of finding Tavium, from head to toe; in these ruins, I was hoping to see a Jupiter temple and the hospice by its side, as Strabo narrated… However after a while I felt the necessity to give up all these thoughts. There was no structure here, of the type that could fit into any of the Roman periods. … This unique and magnificent character of the ruins, caused me trouble when I tried to give the city its historical name…” 1834 - Charles Felix-Marie Texier (1802-1871) actualarchaeology/#/159 The ruins, although Texier did not yet know it, belonged to a city which once was a center of political power equivalent to Babylon and Teb, which was “Hattuša, the capital of Gods and Temples”, modern Boğazköy. Who were the “People of a Thousand Gods”? Where did the name “Hittite” come from? The oldest name in Anatolia in the 2nd millennium BC, which encompassed the area within the curve of the Kızılırmak (the Halys River), within the boundaries of modern Çorum, was Boğazköy “Hattuša”, the capital city of the Hittites. The lands of Anatolia as a whole were referred to as “the Land of Hatti”. These lands were referred to as “Hatti” in written sources for approximately 1000 years, until the period of the Neo-Hittite city states (including North Syria), which disappeared around 700 BC. In 1876, A.H. Sayce argued that the Luwian inscriptions with Anatolian hieroglyphic writing that had been found in Aleppo and Hama (North Syria) belonged to the Hittites, who were mentioned in Egyptian and Assyrian documents as well as the Torah. The name Hittite, the modern form, is seen in Hebrew in the Torah 48 times: ḥittî ( יִּתִח ) (Nisbe), derived from the root ḥēt. ( 1 :( תֵח . ḥittît תיִּתִח) ) (Feminine Plural) 2. ḥittîm ( יִּתִח ) (Masculine Plural), and 3. ḥittîyōt ( תֹּיִּתח ) (Feminine Plural) The forms χετταϊοι (Greek: khettaioi), Latin Hethaei, and the original root of the name Het, are based on ΧÉT, Heth. The version Hétéen, which is known from Old French, is close to its Greek and Latin forms. In contrast with the modern name “Hititler” in Turkish, the old version “Eti(ler)” was used with the mute “H” vocalization of Old French. Hittite, which is both the French and English term, and (H)ittito or eteo in Italian, preserve the Hebrew vocalization in the base syllable. In German, the discrepancy between the forms Chetiter and Hettiter has not been settled. The form Chethiter, which was more widely used, is based on the translation of Heth by J. Mentel in 1466, from Martin Luther’s Bible. The term Hittim is related to the Hebrew, calling the Hittites a population. Het is related to the Akkadian HATTI and the Hittite Hattuš(a) udne = Hattuš(a) KUR = “the Land of Hattuša” that occurs in the Boğazköy documents of the Hittites. The Hittites added an ‘–a’ to the word Hattuš when Hattuša became their capital in c. 1650 BC. This word was found in Old Assyrian documents, and in order to decline the name, it became Hattuša. The Hittites called themselves (Sumerian) DUMU/LÚMEŠ KUR (URU)HATTI, “People of the Land (City) of Hatti”, and they used an interesting name for the Anatolian lands, KUR URUKÙ.BABBAR-TI = “The Land of Silver/Hatti”. This name was used in the Ancient Near East and Egypt (Ht = Heta), generally as mat Hatti, “The Land of Hatti (and its people)” (Egypt 1550-1300 BC: hît, ht; Assyrian 13th century BC: Hattû; in Ugarit 14th century BC: htj, ht “Hittite”). Around 1180 BC, after the fall of the Hittite Empire, the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms and especially the Great Kingdom of Carchemish used thename Hatti in Mesopotamia and Syria, as HATTI (REGIO) “The Land of Hatti”. They used/spoke hieroglyphic Luwian, which is written using Anatolian hieroglyphs instead of Hittite cuneiform writing and the Hittite language. In Assyria, the ethnic definition Hattû or Hataya, meaning “Hittite”, distinguished the Luwian using/speaking population from the Aramaic population living in Syria in the 1st millennium BC. The name Hattû, mentioned in Assyrian sources in 13th and 12th centuries BC, indicated the same geographic area, which was also mentioned in the Torah, meaning Southeastern Anatolia and North Syria. However, the “Hittites” in the Torah referred to the Neo-Hittite States established in South-Southeastern Anatolia and North Syria after the fall of the empire in the 2nd millennium BC, and its peoples, which had also undergone a process of Aramaization. Savaş Özkan SAVAŞ Ankara University - Hittitology Department
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 19:44:06 +0000
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