The 'Neo-Hittite' kingdoms

The 'Neo-Hittite' kingdoms

Who were the destroyers? The answer to this question has yet to be found. Khattusas was rebuilt, but when it again became important, it was a Phrygian city. There were no more cuneiform tablets. No Phrygians are named among the pirate adventurers who attacked Egypt, but the same migratory movement which impelled these raiders may have been responsible for the destruction at Boghazkoi. Certainly the years immediately after 1200 BC saw great upheavals in Asia Minor and the Levant, and when the dust of conflict cleared away, the political map was strangely altered.

Jugglers and acrobats play and perform their
tricks in a relief from the city wall of Alaca Hϋyϋk.
Despite their crudeness and the flat relief,
the works are very beautiful.

But the Hittites did not disappear altogether. Driven eastwards by their conquerors, perhaps, many subjects of the erstwhile empire contrived to preserve their language and script and probably their ancient traditions in alien surroundings. Centuries after the fall of Khattusas, there were small states in southeastern Anatolia and in north Syria between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Euphrates bend, whose rulers still wrote inscriptions in the Hittite hieroglyphic script. Some of these bore names similar to those of the ancient kings.

These small but prosperous 'Neo-Hittite' kingdoms had a significant part to play in the history of the centuries after 1100 BC. The Assyrians, striking southwards in their search for sources of metal.and the need for a Mediterranean outlet for their commerce found that their advance was now opposed by the kings of Khatti – in particular by the kings of Carchemish. Even after the Neo-Hittite dynasties had been overthrown and Aramaean nomads had moved in from the Arabian deserts to take over political control, Hittites contributed a considerable element to the population. The sculpture which adorned the palaces of the kings of Sam'al and Carchemish, Hamath, Malatya and Karatepe, preserved to a late period some of the very finest artistic traditions of the great days of the mighty Hittite Empire.