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HISTORY · OPEN COLLECTION

Hittites

The Hittite kingdom emerged within a multilingual Anatolian world of towns and merchant quarters. Trading networks and the conquests of rulers from Kussara helped reshape the region before the Old Kingdom.

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Hittites

Before you begin · Hittites

Anatolia Before the Hittite Kingdom

Hittite power formed in a region with a long history of agricultural villages, cities and trade routes.

  1. c. 7400–6200 BCE

    Neolithic Çatalhöyük

    Houses, crops and symbolic practices document settled communities very anterior to any Hittite kingdom.

  2. Beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE

    Kanesh and its Merchants

    The routes between Anatolia and Mesopotamia leave archives of contracts, letters and family life.

  3. II millennium BCE

    Hattusa, Capital

    The city heads a power that transforms the political relations of Anatolia and Syria.

Read the introduction

Prehistoric origins

In Anatolia, Neolithic settlements such as Çatalhöyük document agricultural life thousands of years before the Hittites. Between approximately 7400 and 6200 BCE, its inhabitants built attached houses, paintings and reliefs, and organised domestic and ritual activities. This past helps to understand the historical depth of the region; it does not identify those communities as Hittite nor establish a direct descent.

The earliest cultures

During the Bronze Age, Anatolia brought together cities and principalities with distinct languages and cults. At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE, Assyrian and Anatolian merchants coexisted in Kanesh. Their clay archives record business, debts and family matters. The routes linked Anatolia with Mesopotamia long before Hattusa headed an empire; the preserved writing comes here, above all, from private relations.

How this history is formed

The conquests of rulers of Kussara altered the balance between cities. During the 2nd millennium BCE, Hattusa became the capital of a kingdom that extended its influence over Anatolia and northern Syria. Its organisation combined regional traditions and external contacts. Temples, fortifications, treaties and archives allow studying how that plural world came to sustain a great power.

From the past to the museum you are about to explore

The museum pieces show how commerce, laws, war and ritual participated in the construction of Hittite power.

Interpreting these traces. The Neolithic villages and the Assyrian merchants are regional antecedents, not phases of a single Hittite identity.

Sources for further exploration
Explore the earliest cultures

Hittite

≈1650 BCE · WESTERN ASIA

Access to the museum brings together the atlas and the background of the Hittites. Then, seven areas organise the historical context, culture, architecture, figures and society, treasures and equipment, beliefs and curiosities, and four historical doors to other museums. Each file preserves narrative layers, cautions and differentiated sources.

The room combines a specific visual catalog with an audited thematic dossier. Separates facts, interpretations and cautions; the 3D volumes continue to be replaceable markers until models with provenance and license are incorporated.

Central Anatolia, with focus on Kültepe-Kanesh, Kussara and Hattusa

The crisis of the mercantile quarters and the conquests of the kings of Kussara reordered an urban and multilingual world from which the Old Hittite Kingdom emerged.

The merchants were largely Assyrian and the Anatolian populations spoke several languages; the Kanesh archive must not be presented as a Hittite state administration.

Read the background and its sources →

EXPLORE THE COLLECTION

The museum, section by section

Follow the museum’s curated order or go straight to a section. Every record includes its full public documentation and sources.

01 · COLLECTION

Museum Access

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Consult the maps and initial context sheets to situate this museum in time and territory; then choose the areas that interest you most.

02 · COLLECTION

Origins and context

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The first stop reconstructs the area before the Hittites; afterwards, places and processes allow entry into their history without reducing it to a start date or an inevitable destiny.

03 · COLLECTION

Culture, music and words

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These stops distinguish instruments, ritual actions, orality or writing and visual culture. Where there is no theatre, score or certain meaning, the museum preserves the limit.

04 · COLLECTION

Architecture and places

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These architectures explain how materials, water, work and memory organized the territory without converting an elevation reconstruction into certainty.

05 · COLLECTION

People and their stories

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Known people, reconstructed voices and collective footprints. From oldest to most recent according to life, reign or scene. The periods may overlap; The voices without a determinable date close the journey.

06 · COLLECTION

Treasures and evidence

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Concrete pieces to understand materials, decisions and knowledge systems, with separate evidence and interpretation.

07 · COLLECTION

Beliefs and curiosities

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These cards separate what is documented from what is interpreted and recover practices, questions and details capable of changing our image of this culture.

08 · COLLECTION

Connected cultures

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Each door explains why the link exists, when it occurred, and what limits prevent contact from being converted into shared identity.

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books

El juramento bajo la tormenta

Discover the connected fiction project. The available Prehistory reader is in Spanish; other volumes are not presented as finished products for sale.

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Play through history

Try the available Prehistory browser alpha. Campaigns for the other cultures are still in development.

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Visit the real places

Use each record’s institution and heritage links to continue your research. Country-by-country historical travel guides are planned, not yet published.

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Objects with a story

Discover artistic designs inspired by the collections and check each product’s availability. Museum access remains free.

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