Lion Gate of Hattusa

Image here: By Bernard Gagnon - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37792370

For those who know their Old Testament, the Hittites may seem somewhat familiar. Didn’t Abraham purchase the Cave of Machpelah from a Hittite? Wasn’t Bathsheba, the object of King David’s desire, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? Well indeed!

In fact, there are dozens of references to Hittites in the bible, and yet there is little indication as to what specifically made them Hittites or whence they came. 

Not unreasonably, therefore, most scholars up to the end of the nineteenth century assumed they were a distinct, if mysterious, ethnic group living close to the ancient Israelites.  

It was the discovery of the Amarna Tablets, and similar cuneiform records at the dawn of the twentieth century which alerted archaeologists to the fact that the Hittites had once been a great empire in the Bronze Age, and that their power had even challenged that of the Pharoah of Egypt. 

Excavation and decipherment has since uncovered more of the glory of this ancient power of Anatolia, whose biblical era descendants were perhaps the refugees and remnants of this once-mighty state which had vanished at the end of the Bronze Age.

Come with us to discover more!

RJW F2433 Online (via Zoom)

A 5-hour short course, delivered via 2 x 2½-hour sessions on consecutive Saturdays (Saturday 2 & Saturday 9 November, 10.30-1.00).

£40 (individual registration); £72 (for two people sharing one screen).