Talk:Hittites/Archive 1

message: Ugh. This debate has gone on long enough, & I think I have found the necessary information to settle the matter. I have learned that the Assyrians called the lands west of the Euphrates river "the Hatti land", an area that covers modern Syria & can be made to cover modern Lebanon, Israel & Jordan. They took up this usage apparently because the Hittites once controlled part of the region -- not because the land was settled by Caucasian/Eberite/Hatti peoples. (The Assyrians also called the northern kingdom of Israel "the sons of Omri"; should we then decide that Kings/Crhonicles is wrong in saying that Jeroboam founded the kingdom of Israel?)
After the fall of Troy, The Barbarians(AKA sea nations) continued till todays Palastine burning cities one after another also Hattusa was burned down by old rival Barbarians Kashka after their defeat Hittite(Nesan) nobles formed a new state in Syria (which was a part of empire before) today we call it Hittites of Syria which survived till 8th century BC though it was relatively weak and formed by city-states. 
My source is, mostly, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. I can cite pages, if need be, but the usage is consistent.
That being the case, & seeing how the Assyrians were the dominant power or culture when the Pentateuch was first assembled, it's easily believable that some inhabitants of the area would refer to themselves as "Hittites". It's no more incongruous than the occasional practice of early African American pioneers stating that they were the "first white folk in these parts" -- opposing "white" to "Indian", that is. -- llywrch 00:37, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Then "Hatti" is the Assyrian name for "Hittite" who called their language "Nesili" because that's where it was spoken (as we speak "English")?   And Syria looked like the Hatti power-center, simply from the POV of people living well to the south and southeast of the rediscovered power center-- at the modern village of Boguskoy. Isn't that it? Is it really any more complicated than that?  Hoping you'll work the information into the entry, Llywrch, with as much source as you can summon. (Does ANE Texts give a better reference than Easton's Dictionary for the references to "inscriptions" noted at Philistines too-- I hope?) Wetman 08:57, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: "Heth" is an allusion, not to the Hittites of the second millennium and their homeland, but ot the states of Syria collectively called Khatte by the Assyrians and Babylonians from the ninth to the sixth centuries B.C."
The examples I have found (a dozen from ANET, & one from Luckenbill's Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia) date from the reign of Tilgath-Pileser I (early 11th century BC) to Esarhaddon. While some could be understood as referring to the Anatolian homelands of the Hittites, most of them either clearly place the "Hattusa land" in what is modern-day northern Syria, or use the term so loosely as to apply to the entire Near East west of the Euphrates.
As for the implied confusion over Nesili/Hittite, it's no more confusing than asking why U.S. citizens, whose families have lived in the state of New Mexico for centuries, are speaking a language called Spanish. -- llywrch 01:05, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Hatti land in Syria 

message: Isn't this article rather dramatically weak on the subject of the neo-Hittite kingdoms of the 1200-700 BC period?  Carchemish, for instance, is only mentioned in the article once, and that is in context of its initial conquest by the Hittites, with no mention of the long-lived neo-Hittite kingdom there.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure I know enough about the subject to write a section on it, but there clearly should be one. john k 05:20, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neo-Hittite Kingdoms 

message: :With all respect due to Tommiks for his hard work, I don't feel it was necessary or advisable to split this beautiful article up like this into three articles.  It just doesn't seem to make real good sense to have separate articles chopped out of this one, on Hatti and the Neo-Hittites.  This should be the one-stop page on Hittite history, the vast bulk of which occurred well in-between Hatti and the Neo-Hittites, and doesn't fit well on either side of this arbitrary division.  We already had a separate page for Biblical Hittites, now there is not much left on this page.  Somewhere along the line, we lost one pic completely.  But most of all, such a drastic structural change should never have been effected without even so much as a word of discussion or consensus beforehand here on this talk page.  The change needs to be discussed now, and my .02 is that we immediately return to the "full Hittites" version, ASAP.  Comments? Codex Sinaiticus 06:34, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have read the text. It might be better to develop a top and bottom menu and devide the story into three chuncks. I'm not going to change the main article, so if you do not like it we can easily revert it, however if you fallow the menu you can 
find the individual sections. Hope this will make it  better.--tommiks 07:15, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it's been over a month now since the history sections were chopped out of this page by Tommiks without any discussion beforehand, but it still bothers me.  Noone else has voiced any support for doing it this way; the chopped-out articles are in some cases only a paragraph or two.  I would much rather see at a minimum, the three articles History of Hattians and Hittites, History of the New Kingdom (a very bad and vague title for an Encyclopedia entry), and History of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms (only one paragraph, not even a cat) all be merged into one "History of the Hittites" page; then if you really want to fill a sidebar with "History of the Hittites Series", we can easily find some goodies to go along with Hittite military oath by looking in :Category:Hittite Empire.  So, in light of the discussion and consensus so far, I intend to do something like this in the very near future.  Regards, ፈቃደ 15:44, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

text: LOL... very good point; being a template it should be easy to move to the correct spelling, but other corrections are also needed, 2500 is definitely way too early!!! ፈቃደ 16:26, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: likewise, the New Kingdom is too early. It should be ca. 1450 - 1200. dab (ᛏ) 21:18, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  These changes were not good ones 

message: - Were Amazons (of Greek mythology) the mutation of Hittites?
 
- Was Hippolyte, queen of Amazons, the mutation of Suppiluliuma I, king of Hittites?
- Was Myrine, queen of Amazons, the mutation of Mursili II, king of Hittites?
- Was Antiope, queen of Amazons, the mutation of Hantili, king of Hittites?
- Was Mytilene, princess of Amazons, the mutation of Muwatalli, king of Hittites?
Take account this note: 
1) There was a town Amasia or Amaseia in Pontus in Eastern Anatolia.
2) The Amazons were supposed to be daughters of god Ares (in Greek mythology).
However, there was an river Iris or Thermodon, in their land.
--Ionn-Korr 18:27, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Hittites]] and [[Amazons]] 

message: In:
"Hittites or more recently, Hethites is also the common English name of a Biblical people (חתי or HTY in the consonant-only Hebrew script), who are also called Children of Heth (בני-חת, BNY HT)"
It is true that the Hebrew script does not usually indicate vowels (except for the niqqud); however this system of transliteration is archaic and ambiguous. חתי = ḥeti (or ḥethy), and בני–חת = beni-ḥet (or beny-ḥeth) would be better possible alternatives. It looks just as ridiculous to me as if محمد (Muḥammad) were written MHMD. Just my humble opinion. Khirad 02:45, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hebrew Transliteration 

message: I enjoyed reading your article though I do have one thing to say.  According to your article Hittite is a non-Indo-European langauge.  However, I had googled this and had discovered that Hattic is, however, Indo-European.  It is considered a branch that is differentiated from most of the other Indo-European languages but is the link between the Tocharian branch and the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language.  Therefore Hattic must be an Indo-European language.
I appreciated the fact that you had read this and I hope you can rewrite the section of your article that says that Hattic is non-Indo-European unless you would like to oppose me with some more facts.  If you are right then I shall no longer complain.  Thank you.  Pleurgon 02:08, 27 January 2006 (PIE)
:Presumably you mean Hattic, not Hittite, as this article quite correctly states that Hittite IS an Indo-European language.  Hattic does not appear to be; see Hattic language and especially the discussion at Talk:Hattic language... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 19:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hattic is Indo-European 

message: Just a few notes here, because I happen to have looked into this subject. As the article notes, in Assyrian inscriptions the Syro-Palestinian area is frequently referred to as "Hatti Land". We also see this in Babylonian inscriptions. Also Seleucid inscription from then time, when the Seleucids reigned from Babylon use the term "Hatti Land". At least two Assyrian inscriptions refers to local people as "Hittites", when these depose a king and put a commoner on the throne. It is possible that people east of the Euphrates called the natives west of Euphrates "Hittites" for a very long period, and therefore the word does not refer to any specific people, but simply to native peoples west of the Euphrates. Note that in Genesis 23, Abraham is a foreigner, and therefore the local people are Hittites, maybe?
--FreezBee 12:09, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: Biblical Hittites  

message: You don't seem to appreciate that Hittite was probably just a written language by 1200, and that "Luwian" dialects were spoken all over southern Anatolia. If Lydian is really descended from Hittite rather than Luwian (I don't know how certain this is at all), it would be rather a matter of being descended from an "upper class" cultivated dialect vs. a vernacular, than a question of "geographical irony" whatever that is. After all, we know nothing about population movements in the 12th to 11th centuries. Is it "ironical" that Phrygian, a Balkans language, suddenly turns up in Phrygia, and comes to be named after an Anatolian rather than a Balkanese region? I would say it's a simple case of population movement in the wake of the collapsed Empire. dab (ᛏ) 11:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're quite correct that Luwian dialects were spread all over Anatolia by 1200 or soon thereafter; but the situation a few centuries before that was quite different.  Luwian definitely had a "homeland", Hittite scholars think it was in the region they called "Arzawa", in the extreme West or Southwest of Anatolia.  This is also where the oldest hieroglyphics spread out from. I suggest you get some good books about Hittite history.  All the ones I've read say that Lydian is a descendant of Hittite and not Luwian.  This is plainly ironic, because the Lydians were living in the old Luwian area on the West coast, while the Luwians moved into the old Hittite area.  THey swopped places.  But maybe there is a better word than ironic if that word is proving too much of a stumbling block.  ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 13:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, I'll look it up. I am not looking for a dispute with you, but seeing that the Lydian language only arises after 1000, I don't see why it is relevant that before 1200 the distribution of Luwian had been different. Let's just say "remarkable" or something instead of "ironic", ok? dab (ᛏ) 14:01, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text:  You should make some new contributions to the Luwian language article instead, which currently has a clean-up status.--JFK 16:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Luwian homeland

message: Is possible that Nysa, the birth-city of Dionysus was the city Kanesh or Nesa in Eastern Anatolia?
Is possible that the etymology of name "Dionysus" is "Deus (the) Nesian"
i.e "God the Hittite"?
Note: The real name of the indoeuropean Hittites was "Nesites" or Nesians.
:Many Greeks were sure that the cult of Dionysus arrived in Greece from Anatolia, but Greek concepts of where Nysa was, whether set in Anatolia, or in Libya ('away in the west beside a great ocean'), Ethiopia (Herodotus), or Arabia (Diodorus Siculus), are variable enough to suggest that a magical distant land was intended, perhaps named 'Nysa' to explain the God's unreadable name, as the 'god of Nysa.' Apollodorus seems to be following Pherecydes, who relates how the infant Dionysus, god of the grapevine, was nursed by the rain-nymphs, the Hyades at Nysa. The Anatolian Hittites' name for themselves in their own language ("Nesili") was "Nesi," however.  
:  From site: 
: http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/dionysus
--IonnKorr 17:11, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: an interesting idea. All I can say is that there are early dialectal forms reading dien(n)usos, taken seriously as lectio difficilior (dio- would indeed be after dios, by popular etymology), and that Peters (1989) reconstructs *dih1e-snuh2-tyo-. Mycenaean, however, has still earlier di-wo-nu-so. Janda (1998) etymologizes a bahuvrihi "impeller of streams", "who makes the waters flow" (diemai "impel", *sneuh "flow") resulting in a striking parallel to Indra (who is compared to Dionysos already because for obvious reasons of inebriety). This should really all be added properly to the  Dionysus article (Janda concludes that Dionysos is really directly cognate to Indra). Your idea seems plausible at first glance, but I think that the theonym is far too archaic (considering its dialectal variants) for such a transparent explanation. The Mycaenean form speaks in your favour, though, and Janda has to spirit it away by assuming an already Mycenaean popular etymology. dab (ᛏ) 18:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hittites and [[Dionysus]]