Hittite mythology

The Hittites were an ancient group of Indo-Europeans who settled in Asia Minor and formed an empire in Hattusa in Anatolia (modern Turkey) circa 1600 BCE.

The Hittite Empire reached great heights in the mid-1300s BCE, when it spread across Asia Minor, into the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.

Like many Indo-Europeans, the Hittites were able to travel long distances and migrate to other lands through the domestication of horses. The spread of technologies such as the wheel and the chariot, which were also used in ancient Mesopotamia and other ancient civilizations in the region, also helped pastoralists and agrarian civilizations.

After about 1180 BCE, the empire came to an end and split into several independent Neo-Hittite – New Hittite – city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BCE.

The Hattis are an extinct people, having inhabited central Anatolia. They must be distinguished from the Hittite people, a contemporary people who submitted the Hatti people.

The Hatti people remain very poorly known. It is generally considered that they have occupied Anatolia for longer than certain Indo-European populations, in the first place the Hittites but also the Palaites, because they borrowed part of their vocabulary, their gods and their religion. .