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First rate description of a significant Bronze age civilisation.
Why Should You Care About The Hittites?
Excellent book on the Hittites
Good book, made better by prolific use of primary sources.
The Kingdom of the Hittites

The Kingdom of the Hittites
Trevor Bryce
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Hittite Diplomatic Texts, Second edition
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ASIN: 0199281327

Book Description

In the 14th century BC the Hittites became the supreme political and military power in the Near East. How did they achieve their supremacy? How successful were they in maintaining it? What brought about their collapse and disappearance? This comprehensive history of the Hittite kingdom seeks to answer these questions. It takes account of important recent advances in Hittite scholarship, including some major archaeological discoveries made in the last few years. It also features numerous translations from the original texts, so that on many issues the ancient Hittites are given the opportunity to speak to the modern reader for themselves. The revised edition contains a substantial amount of new material, as well as numerous other revisions to the first edition.

Customer Reviews:

First rate description of a significant Bronze age civilisation........2006-11-10

This book is a first class description of the Hitties.

Why Should You Care About The Hittites?.......2002-11-19

For starters, these are not the Hittites of the Bible (who are later, located in Syria and/or Canaan and are only to an unclear extent influenced by the earlier Hittites). No, these are the Indo-European speaking Hittites of second millennium B.C. (1700 to 1200) Anatolia. So if you're not a budding Hittitologist yourself, you can be forgiven for wondering why you should care.

Well, here's why: context. The Hittites were a superpower, and without knowing something about them, you can't get a clear picture of any of their neighbors. The history recounted in _The Kingdom of the Hittites_ interacts with and impacts upon the death of pharaoh Tutankhamen, the Trojan War and the migration of the Sea Peoples, for instance and just for starters.

Beyond that, their history is interesting reading in its own right. The sources available reveal an astonishing wealth of detail, and Bryce is able to recount all kinds of bloody family squabbles and intrigue, quoting from contemporary records and correspondence. Different Hittite monarchs emerge with clearly distinct personalities and character, and the book is an entertaining read.

I can't give it five stars, though, because I think a few small additions would immensely improve it. The book needs more maps. Some illustrations would also be useful. Bryce himself suggests that "a comprehenive, up-to-date treatment of Hittite civilization and society might well provide a valuable complement to the present work." Fair enough: Bryce is writing a history, not an anthropological treatise. Nevertheless, the history would be more accessible and sometimes more interesting if preceded by an introductory chapter on Hittite culture -- marriage patterns, for instance, and religion, are points that recur in the history but are never thoroughly explained.

Excellent book on the Hittites.......2002-09-15

Trevor Bryce's book is the best English language book that one can find on the Ancient Hittites. Bryce gives a comprehensive update on the Hittite kingdom and the historical context for the reattribution of certain important Hittite texts and documents to certain Hittite kings. Bryce notes new evidence which shows that the Assyrian conquest of Hanigalbat must be dated to the reign of the Hittite king Urhi-Teshub--who is called Mursilis III in the historical texts. This event significantly undermined his authority as king and helped to partly bring about his eventual downfall. The author also documents the plotting and mass paranoia that afflicted the Hittite Empire where brothers and uncles competed violently with each other for the throne. Even a great Hittite ruler such as Mursilis I--who destroyed the Babylonian kingdom of Hammurabi's ancestors by seizing Babylon--was eventually assassinated in a palace coup while Suppiluliuma I, who established Hatti as the greatest Empire in the Ancient Near East through his 2 Syrian wars against Mitanni and Carchemish, murdered his older brother Tudhaliya the Younger in order to assume the throne after being passed over in the succession by Tudhaliya III, his father. Hattusilis III, who made peace with Ramses II, was forced to depose his nephew Urhi-Teshub after the latter tried to seize his own domestic bases of support in the Hittite Empire. The result of this turbulent political culture was that few Hittite kings dared to leave their capital of Boghazkoy for fear of a palace coup being hatched in their abscence. In addition, few Hittite vassals kings placed much weight upon the promises of a weak ruler who might be deposed in the blink of an eye. It took strong leadership, years of unrelenting military campaigns and often cruel reprisals by strong Hittite kings such as Suppiluliuma I, Mursilis II and Hattusilis III against rebellions waged by, for instance, the Kaska tribes of central Anatolia who fought a guerilla war against Hittite authority in order to preserved the Empire's unity.

Bryce notes that the Hittite Empire--despite its inherently unstable political system--was the bedrock of stability in the heart of the Ancient Middle East. After its final destruction at the hands of the Sea Peoples in Year 8 of Pharaoh Ramses III (c.1175 BC), Canaan and the Levant was plunged into a state of upheaval by the appearance of local independent states such as the kingdoms of Edom, Moab, Philistia (ancient Gaza), Aram-Damascus and Ammon who competed among one another for control of various parts of this region.

The only major deficiency in Bryce's book is a lack of detailed maps of Turkey and Syria. This is why I give it only 4 stars. But it is certainly worth every penny and and I highly recommend it. Bryce's prose is superb: you manage to see a Hittite king's view of their world from his own vantage point. In my opinion, it is by far the best study of the Hittite Kingdom to date--and one of the most readable, too.

As an Aside, one should note that Bryce commits a small error in limiting king Urhi-Teshub's reign to just 5 years from 1272-1267 BC. (p.xiii) This king definitely ruled Hatti for 7 years and must be dated from 1272-1265 BC; consequently the chronology for all the following Hittite kings must be downdated by 2 years. (ie: Hatusilli at 1265-1235 BC rather than 1267-1237 BC--p.xxiii) As Hatusilli III explicitly states, he tolerated Urhi-Teshub's rule for 7 years until the latter started to seize control of the regions of Hakpissa, which was the seat of Hatusilli's power and Nerik, where he was the chief priest of the storm god (p.286) Once this event occured, Hatusillis rose up against Urhi-Teshub and succesfully overthrew the king claiming the throne in the process. Urhi-Teshub had seized these 2 Hittite regions in order to eliminate Hatusilli as a potential rival to his kingship but instead provoked the latter to rebel against him.

Good book, made better by prolific use of primary sources........2000-05-21

This book is an excellent read. It's principal strength lies in the use by the author of the ancient sources within the main body of the text, with good translations permitting the reader to see the evidence for the authors interpretations. This puts the reader in a better position to critically assess these interpretations and agree or disagree with them. Normally, access to any ancient sources other than Greek and Roman ones is difficult. In this book they are placed within the main text and so the reader does not even have to keep flipping forwards to appendices. Overall this is an excellent book on Hittite history.

The Kingdom of the Hittites.......2000-04-09

This is probably the most thorough treatment of Hittite history I've found, though I have not looked for this material for some time now. When I was working on my MA in history in the 1970s, I could locate few good texts on the subject, and most of those were in French. The advances in reading the Hittite texts have done much to fill in many of the gaps in their history over the past 3 decades, a good reason to keep current even in a subject that one feels one already knows. In Bryce's book the personalities of the Hittite kings are more defined and their accomplishments better documented. I found especially interesting the correspondence between Tutankhamon's widowed queen, Ankhesenamon, and the great Hittite king Suppiluliuma, documents that contribute to the understanding of the final years of the XVIII Dynasty in Egypt.

El Reino De Los Hititas / The Kingdom of the Hittites (Historia Serie Menor)

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El Reino De Los Hititas / The Kingdom of the Hittites (Historia Serie Menor)
Trevor Bryce
Manufacturer: Ediciones Catedra S.A.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Kingdom of the Hittites
Janet Mcdonald
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0965064107

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The Kingdom of the Hittites
Trevor Bryce
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OL22VU

The old Hittite kingdom,: A political history

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The old Hittite kingdom,: A political history
Robert Strong Hardy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007FNJ3I

The Tawananna in the Hittite kingdom (Texte der Hethiter)

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The Tawananna in the Hittite kingdom (Texte der Hethiter)
Shoshana R Bin-Nun
Manufacturer: Winter
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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ASIN: 3533024393

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The Kingdom of the Hittites
Trevor Bryce
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OL0TII

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KINGDOM OF THE HITTITES
TREVOR BRYCE
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OL7FB2

Authority and law in the Hittite kingdom

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Authority and law in the Hittite kingdom
Hans Gustav GuÌterbock
Manufacturer: s.n.]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007JMMFK

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