What happened to Hattusas and the Hittites?

 
     In what is now Turkey, about 95 miles east of Ankara, near the current city of Boğazköy, lies the site of Hattusas (or Hattusa, or Hattusha).  Hattusas was the capital city of a people called the Hittites, who built an empire starting around 1650 B. C.  You may remember the name "Hittites" from the Bible.

Aerial view of the ruins of Hattusas

     The Hittites had a pivotal role in ancient history, far greater than they are given credit for in modern history books.  We hear much about the Egyptians from ancient history, and rightly so.  However, at a time when the Egyptian Empire was at it's highest point under the famous Pharaoh, Ramses the Great, (around 1285 B. C.) and Egypt was one of the two or three superpowers of the ancient world, the Hittites were every bit their equal.

Partial excavations of the ruins of Hattusas

     We know this because we have records, etched in stone,  describing how they fought the mighty Egyptian Empire to a standstill, nearly killing Ramses himself, in the pivotal Battle of Kadesh.  The Egyptians confirmed this by doing something that they never did when they had the upper hand.  They made a peace treaty with the Hittites and Ramses married a Hittite princess to seal the deal.  

The remnants of The Lion Gate at Hattusas.

     The power of the Hittite empire eventually spread over a large part of what we now call the Middle East.  There were several reasons for the success of the Hittites.  

     Firstly, the Hittites were not one people, but an amalgamation of several peoples, which allowed them to combine the strengths and skills of all of them, somewhat like the United States.  As the Hittites met other peoples, they adopted from those cultures whatever technology, skills or customs that were superior to their own, much as the Romans did in later years.

Carving of a Hittite priest and priestess making offerings

     The Hittites possessed the most superior technology, in their day, for the production and use of iron.  They were the acknowledged masters in the world in the use of horses, for war and industry.  They had developed the lightest and fastest chariots in the world.  Although they had an extremely authoritarian system of government, they had an efficient and fair legal system.  They developed good relations with the peoples that they conquered, so there was little political unrest.

Relief carving of a Hittite priest or noble

     The capital of this empire, Hattusas, was as impressive and as impregnable as the Hittites could make it.  It was protected by a stone wall 3.75 miles around, built of stones as large as 26 feet long and 20 feet thick, which would make each stone hundreds of tons in weight.  (There's that use of mega-stones among ancient peoples again.)

A relief carving of  Hittite troops

     Our modern day evaluation of the Hittites would probably lead us to think that these people were safe from all threat and able to outmatch all comers.  In spite of all this, however, someone (we don't know who) invaded and destroyed the Hittite Empire, almost overnight.  They destroyed every vestige of this gargantuan civilization so completely that scholars, until fairly recent times, regarded all references to the Hittites in the Old Testament as allegorical.  Researchers could find no evidence of them.

A modern full-scale reconstruction of a section of the wall surrounding Hattusas

     Mighty Hattusas itself, as you can see from the photos, was leveled to the ground.  Who could have destroyed a militaristic empire, firmly entrenched behind impenetrable stone walls, supported by a powerful and experienced standing army?  The entire Hittite Empire was literally erased off the face of the map by someone, not in a long struggle like you would expect, but with ease.

A model reconstructing Hattusas at its height

     Here's the scary part.  Today, if you visit Hattusas, you can see for yourself that all the stone and brick, in the remnants of buildings, have had their surfaces vitrified, or melted to a glass-like consistency.  None of the surrounding rocky outcroppings,and none of the ground shows any evidence of this vitrification phenomenon. 

     We have talked about such vitrification of stone and brick in previous posts regarding the buildings in Mohenjo-Daro of the Indus River Valley people in what is now Pakistan, the fields of Nubian glass in Egypt and the stone forts of Scotland.  

     It takes a sustained temperature of 1,300 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit to melt stone (depending on the kind of stone and it's structure).  Granted, the Hittites themselves could produce furnaces that could have produced that temperature, but who could have built one that could have systematically melted the exterior of every building in an entire city?  During an attack, no less!

An artist's vision of ancient Hattusas in all its glory

     What happened?  Short version - we don't know.  

     We will most certainly never find out from our politically correct, evolutionist archaeological friends.  They have no explanations - at least, none that match their carefully crafted myths to explain the time line according to their presuppositions!

WARNING!!

This blog has been written with the sole purpose of using the ample evidence available to verify and support the biblical record, while refuting the copious propaganda that is shoved down our throats daily by materialistic uniformitarians.

It is my contention that the Bible describes God's original creation of people with extraordinary capabilities who subsequently built an advanced civilization that exceeds our own. That civilization was destroyed in the Great Flood and we have spent the last 5,000 years trying to re-build that civilization. I contend that science supports all this in multiple disciplines, but this information is ignored or suppressed by various people who have an opposing agenda.

Nothing that you see on this blog is original. Any fact that you see here is obtainable on a dozen different websites and books. I use these facts and photos, without violating their copyrights, under the legal principle of fair use practice. That is, I use them one time, for educational purposes only.

The point is, nothing here is made up. The only thing that I do (or need to do) is assemble this information in a discernible pattern.

You might want to read through the first entry posted on this blog (Past Remembering: Thoughts toward a coherent view of our ancient past, our present and our future) in order to understand my theoretical and theological underpinnings more clearly.

The truth is there. You just have to see it.

 

 

Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 (NASB)

That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.

So there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one might say,

“See this, it is new”?

Already it has existed for ages

Which were before us.