Who were the Hittites? Why did their empire collapse only a century after their victory at Kadesh? Why was there no sucessor state?
Who were the Sea Peoples? Why could no land stand before their arms? How did Egypt manage to repel them?
Lost Cities of the Ancients 3 The Dark Lords of Hattusha (BBC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7U-b2rdtwQ
Secrets of the Aegean Apocalypse (History Channel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQykroaMGx8
Timeline
1274 BC Battle of Kadesh
1200? BC Iron Smelting Begins
1178 BC Hittite Empire Collapses
1178 BC Sea Peoples invade Egypt
1175 BC Battle of the Nile, Sea Peoples defeated
>"The foreign countries (i.e. Sea Peoples) made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms: from Hatti, Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa and Alashiya on, being cut off (i.e. destroyed) at one time. A camp was set up in Amurru. They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation was the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the land as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting: 'Our plans will succeed!' " - Inscription from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III in Medinet Habu
I am monitoring this thread
>>3014
I always believed that the Sea Peoples were more than one group of people. They're too widespread and powerful to be a single nomadic group.
>>3164
Thanks
>>3379
That makes sense. For the people being raided the Vikings all seemed to be one group of people. The Norse saw themselves as many different clans.
I suppose considering the level of trade going on in the Bronze Age Mediterranean it's very much possible for cultures from different stocks to look increasingly similar.
>>3379
They were more than one group, you can find various different named groups.
Jewish tribe of Dan that will bare the Antichrist
Based on the ruins they left behind we know that the Hittites were as capable in monumental construction as their Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian and Mycenaean contemporaries.
>>3379
No historical work has ever alleged it was one group of people. That's just bullshit you read in total war general and other dumb places.
Its a common term for displaced people who adapted to the bronze age collapse by raiding, often via the sea. There's nothing mysterious about it. But it does make for some juicy ancient alien drama.
>>4250
Why wouldn't they?
>>4394
I'm just laying out some basic information to keep the thread bumped. This board is moving rather fast at the moment.
>>3379
of course it was multiple peoples. sea "peoples", that's plural
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-near-eastern-world/the-last-days-of-hattusa/
This article has some information on the fall of the Hittites. Very likely the dynasty collapsed under the weight of attacks from all directions: from Kaskians in the northeast, Assyrians invading the southeast and Arzawa marching in from western Anatolia. The Sea Peoples may well have been pirates taking advantage of Hittite weakness to raid coastal settlements.
>This provides the context for the Hittite military operations around the island of Cyprus during the reigns of Tudhaliya and his son Suppiluliuma II. The operations were almost certainly aimed at destroying enemy forces that were disrupting grain supplies. These enemies were probably seaborne marauders who had invaded Cyprus to use its harbors as bases for their attacks on shipping in the region. Dramatic evidence of the dangers they posed is provided by a letter from the last king of Ugarit, Ammurapi, to the king of Cyprus, who had earlier asked Ammurapi for assistance:
>My father, behold, the enemy’s ships came (here); my cities(?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in the Land of Hatti, and all my ships are in the Land of Lukka? … Thus the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: The seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us.5
>>5596
This list may interest some of you. There's some books on the sea people and the hittites.
>>3014
>Kadesh
>Hittite victory
Shiggity
>>6184
"Victory" is hard to define ancient settings. There were many times where both sides declared victory, and there was no way to confirm with the other side. Even the exact number of casualties and kills was probably hard to confirm.
>>3164
>Tel Tayinat
ayyy
[spoiler]I've been taught by several people involved in that dig.[/spoiler]