The Hittites

In Genesis 15:20, when God first mentions the Hittites in His covenant with Abraham, they numbered among the ten tribes that occupied Canaan. Before the turn of the twentieth century, though, skeptical scholars pointed to this passage and other Hittite references to prove the Bible’s inaccuracy. After all, they had no proof that these tribes ever existed. Therefore, they reasoned, the Bible must not be true.

Just because something isn’t proven yet doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future. The Hittites’ story illustrates this.

1871

In this year, the first evidence of their existence was uncovered at Carchemish, in Syria, on the Euphrates River.

1887

An Egyptian peasant woman, while digging for mud which she used as fertilizer, stumbled upon some clay tablets bearing cuneiform writing. They became the famous Armana letters, ancient letters written by monarchs and princes, some of them Hittite. In the picture above, we see an example of cuneiform writing.

1906-1911 & 1911-1912

Professor Hugo Winckler discovered some ten thousand clay tablets in Turkey that held cuneiform writing in several ancient languages. They provided a wealth of knowledge about these people. As it turned out, the professor had discovered a Hittite capital city, present-day Boghazkoy, Turkey, and its archives.

Before they became an empire, the Hittites scattered from Turkey and throughout Palestine. Joshua defeated the Palestinian Hittites during his conquest of Canaan (Joshua 9:1; 11:3).

The empire began around 1460 B.C. from Turkey all the way to Syria as far as the Euphrates River. Around 1200 B.C., it came to an end. As a major military power, they once overran Babylon and waged war against Egypt. Around 1286 B.C. troops under Pharaoh Ramses II clashed with Hittite soldiers at Kadesh, Syria. The battle was indecisive. Eventually, the two empires made peace when Ramses married the Hittite king’s daughter.

Sources

Gardner, Joseph L., ed. Reader’s Digest Atlas of the Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the Holy Land. Pleasantville, New York: Reader’s Digest Association, 1981.

Payne, J. Barton. “Hittites.” In The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, ed. Merrill C. Tenney. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1963.

Starr, Chester A. A History of the Ancient World. 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Unger, Merrill F. Archaeology and the Old Testament: A Companion Volume to Archaeology and the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1954.