Chapter 15 - The End and Looking Back

Summary

How the Hittite kingdom broke up still eludes us. Current archaeological thinking envisions a deliberate abandonment of the capital Hattusa by its elite. Evidence of migrations pushing eastwards from the west, recent interpretations of the Sea People’s movements in a similar direction, and the emergence of three Great Kings in Hittite fashion after 1200 in inscriptions from the eastern Konya plain (Kızıldağ, Karadağ), at KarahÖyÜk near Elbistan, and several inscriptions from the Malatya area further east may hint at where they went. Did they try to settle down and continue at Tarhuntassa, Karkamish, or elsewhere in that region? Using the fall of Ugarit around 1190 or, as some claim, the end of Emar in the late 1180s as termini post quos for the end of the kingdom one might argue for an awareness of a still existing Hittite kingdom into the early twelfth century bc but we do not know whether that was at Hattusa or already elsewhere.