The Achievements of the Hittites in Technology and Legal Reform - Essay Example

The Achievements of the Hittites in Technology and Legal Reform by Abdullah Al Zubair The Hittites were vital contributors, if little known ones, to ancient Mesopotamian culture. Their empire was vast, and through their reach, the Hittites transmitted a powerful influence on societies all around the Mediterranean, including the civilizations bordering the banks of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. Egypt and Greece both benefited from trade and commerce with the Hittites, and the Hebrews, who migrated to Canaan under Moses, were influenced by the philosophical explorations of Hittite culture as well. The Hittites' most memorable - and most underappreciated - achievements included the discovery and development of iron, setting the stage for the Iron Age; and, the implementation of a law code, establishing new ethical norms and codes of conduct throughout the ancient world. The Indo-European-speaking Hittites probably began arriving peacefully in northwestern Anatolia from the Balkans about 2500 B.C., traveling from the Kurgan pit-grave culture of the Eurasian steppe. They settled in northwestern Anatolia, across the west and south of the peninsula about 2300 B.C., although many more may have immigrated from the south over the next three centuries. A northeastern route, through the Caucasus has also been suggested, but that seems linguistically and archaeologically less likely. In any event, when Assyrian traders reached central Anatolia around 1900 B.C., they found an Indo-European-speaking people firmly established, who had harmoniously integrated with the indigenous Hattian population of the local city-states. By 1650, the ruler Hattusilis I founded the Hittite Kingdom when he established the capital of Hattusas. The ensuing two centuries constitute the period known as the Hittite Empire's Old Kingdom. Hattusilis recognized that controlling trade routes and metal sources were fundamental to the early empire's prosperity, and he and his successor, Mursilis, began tracing the commercial route running along the Euphrates to northern Syria. Hattusilis failed to subjugate the northern end of the Euphrates from Aleppo, but Mursilis not only conquered Aleppo, he rashly advanced on Babylon, which he captured in 1595 B.C. Holding the city proved untenable, and when Mursilis returned to Hattusas, he was assassinated. The Hittite kingdom was rocked by a period of instability, known as the Middle Kingdom, lasting for a 70-year period from 1500-1430 B.C. Yet the seeds for the Hittites' emerging cultural prosperity and military dominance had been sewn. Hattusili's early and original contribution in legal thought, one that lays the groundwork for a crude form of democratic government, was the "pankus." The pankus was a council of nobles. It was not a popularly elected legislative body, however, but did serve as a check and balance to the actions of the king. The pankus was officially charged to "advise" the king, but its powers could extend so far as to execute the Hittite leader if he overstepped his moral authority. It's also clear, during Hattusili's reign, that the movement and trade of metals was a stimulus to the Hittite economy. Assyrian merchants had traditionally ventured into Anatolia in search of tin, silver, and gold, commodities that were essential to the outside world. But there were other valuable commodities as well, and Hittite miners and metal workers were intent on exploring them (James D. Muhly, Mining and Metalwork in Ancient Western Asia, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. J. M. Sasson et al., New York: Scribner, 1995). Among merchant colonies and urban communities, the Hittites began acquiring a reputation as a people skilled in metallurgy. They were also recognized as fierce warriors, and the products their craftsmen forged - particularly in the area of weaponry - reflected their kings' strong imperialistic ambitions. Fortified double-walls with deep gorges between them made Hattusas impenetrable to invaders, and it was in the capital city that modern blast furnaces were conceived. An initial question, in contemplating Hittite technology, is whether these furnaces could have reached and sustained the melting point of iron. Evidence suggests that, in fact, the Hittites regularly produced iron. And in the centuries that followed, this achievement proved extremely significant in guaranteeing the empire's military hegemony. About 1450 B.C., a date which historians generally recognize as the dawn of the Hittites' New Kingdom, Tudhaliyas I regained control of northern Syria, pushed into western and northwestern Anatolia; and in the east, conquered Isuwa, where the richest copper mines in the Middle East were located. About 1380, the Hittite armies of Suppiluliumas, one of the most famous Hittite kings, would stun the Egyptians at Kadesh, deliver Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, from Syrian control, and overwhelm the defenses of Babylon. The Hittites would seemingly materialize out of nowhere, strike decisively, and then, vanish. Their success seemed only explainable in the historically mythical terms of a warrior ethos, seemingly unrelated to superior technology, but the resurgence of Hittite power underscores the fact that that their achievement in creating iron gave their weapons a decisive edge. Their adversaries' bronze weapons simply snapped against the iron blades wielded by Hittite warriors.The story of an advanced society, with advanced technology, reinforced the special status conferred the Hittites in the Old Testament. While the saviors of the Israelites were seen as human agents of a Divine plan, the true secret of the Hittites' success was the invention and development of iron technology. In some ways the basic technology of iron making, though industrialized and refined, has changed little since the time of the Hittites.The modern blast furnace may generate hotter temperatures and better iron, but the basic principals of heat generation and temperature were incorporated in the Hittites' ancient ovens.The Hittites produced an iron that could be reheated and wrought into a raw form similar to carbon steel.Charcoal was layered with the iron ore inside shallow hearths, and the temperatures were high enough to remove oxygen and produce an incredibly hard metal. The Hittite ironworkers may also have used limestone, to remove impurities, before they hammered the iron into their remarkably lethal weapons. The key question is whether the Hittites deserve exclusive credit for the discovery and creation of iron, an unparalleled achievement setting the stage for the Iron Age, or, did they duplicate a technology that other engineers or metallurgists had previously guarded as a trade secret. It's far more likely the reverse is true. That is, having developed a smelting process, the Hittites would have been reluctant to share their secret with the outside world. In the end, most historians award credit to the Hittites. In Ancient Times: a History of the Early World, (London: Ginn, 1935), the historian James Henry Breasted writes: "One of the most important things we should remember about the Hittites is the fact that they began working the iron mines along the Black Sea. A clay-tablet written by one of the Hittite kings tells us that he was about to send a shipment of 'pure iron' to Ramses II, who had asked for it, and that meantime a sword of iron was being sent to the Egyptian king as a gift (thirteenth century B.C.). We shall soon see the Iron Age beginning in the Aegean, and it was from the Hittite iron mines that the metal first became common in the Eastern Mediterranean" (244). Mursilis II, who reigned from about 1345 to 1310, annexed western Anatolia. Arzawa, too, became a Hittite vassal, with a trading route leading to northwestern Anatolia and the tin mines of central Europe. Throughout the Hittite Empire, Mursilis maintained firm military control, a state of vigilance necessitated by the renewal of Egyptian interest in northern Syria. Mursilis II confederated peoples, towns, and vassal states, including Hamath, Aleppo, Carchemish, Marash, Malatia. This was the period of the empire's zenith, and it is probable that the regions of Cilicia, Lycaonia, Phrygia, and Lydia acknowledged the hegemony of their all-powerful Hittite soldier-king as well. While the Hittites' technological inventiveness explains much about their empire's ascendancy, their achievements in legal thinking, social organization, and the administration of justice were of equal if not greater rank. Hittite rulers devised entirely new principals for guiding and governing their constituents, ones that broke with the notorious law codes of the Babylonian kings. For the Hittites, the most fundamental of human rights was the ability of all subjects to seek legal redress for offences committed against them or their property. The Hittites rarely resorted to the death penalty, or physical mutilation, a characteristic that was prevalent among other ancient Middle East civilizations. Rather than retribution or vengeance, the Hittites saw restitution as a guiding legal principal. Trevor Bryce writes, in Life and Society In the Hittite World, (London: Oxford University Press, 2004), fair compensation constituted the key component to the legal way of thinking: "In contrast to Hammurabic law, the emphasis in Hittite law is not so much on retributive justice or vengeance for its own sake, which is rarely of any material benefit to the victim, as on compensatory justice. An offender will have satisfied the demands of justice and paid his penalty once he has discharged his legal obligations to his victim" (33). Our awareness of Hittite law is based on a range of sources, largely recorded by ancient Greek and Assyrian historians. They reveal minutes of court proceedings transcribed as testimony between adversaries in litigation, instructions to state administrators assigned to judicial responsibilities by the king, and even lawsuits involving disputes princes and their own relatives. The Hittite legal system continued to sustain its effective curb on the king's power, although no longer in the form of the pankus. Hittite kings acknowledged the authority of the law, accepting limitations on their power, just as the scope of their rule was expanded.With a uniform system of laws, Hittite kings were unencumbered by any personal involvement in the everyday administration of different cities, and regional administrators were granted more leeway in managing them effectively.Military leaders enjoyed the same expansive freedoms. The universal legal code was implemented across entire regions of the empire, enforced through the presence of the commanders' troops. The fact that provisional garrison commanders participated in the rendering of judicial decisions reminded community leaders that Hittite authority would be decisively enforced with military might. In foreign policy, the cities conquered by the Hittites became vassal states, paying tribute to Hattusas. The vassal states were often given a large amount of autonomy, with the exception of Carchemish, captured in 1353 B.C. by Suppiluliuma. Carchemish's inhabitants were deported, resettled by Hittites, with Suppiluliuma's son, Piyasili, installed on the throne. The fortunes of the Hittites began to waver during the reign of Hattusilis III (1287-1265 B.C.). Hattusilis II witnessed the break away of Arzawa and the other western vassals, leaving the empire with only a few states along the crucial northwestern trade route. Under mounting pressure on both western and eastern borders, Egypt forced Hattusilis II into an inequitable alliance. Pressures continued to intensify under Tudhaliyas IV (1265-1240 B.C.), when the copper mines of Isuwa were lost to Assyria. Suppiluliumas III (1225-1200) affected a temporary resurgence, but it was short-lived, and did not save the empire. The next mortal blow came not from Assyria, but from the northwest. Whatever the origins of the mysterious and migratory "Sea People," who engulfed the Aegean and Mediterranean during this period, the Hittites' northwestern trade routes were suddenly severed and Arzawa overrun. The southeastern routes were cut by the Sea People as well. Without commercial lifelines, Hittite power faltered dramatically. Their traditional enemies, the barbarian Kaskas, descended from the northern hills, and attacked and razed Hattusas. The great Hittite Empire had finally and completely disintegrated. In trying to work out the story of the decline and fall of the Hittite power, modern historians are faced with the difficulty that most events connected with the Hittite Empire, and their frontier lands, were seen through the eyes of Assyrian and the Greek historians. In other words, due to a dearth of hard archeological evidence, records of Hittite history were eclipsed by the chroniclers attention to their own cultural and historical trajectories. For example, as John Garstang points out in The Land of the Hittites: An Account of Recent Explorations and Discoveries in Asia Minor (New York: Dutton, 1935), we fail to find in the Egyptian and Assyrian records any indication of the exact location of the Hittite capital of the fourteenth century at Boghaz-Keui. For more than seven hundred years, we are without any direct knowledge of its fortunes - until a chance reference by Herodotus in describing the affairs of Lydia, describing its final overthrow. Despite the paucity of archeological findings, the Hittites' legacy of achievement is unquestionable. The Hittites found a replacement for bronze, and in the centuries that followed, iron replaced bronze as the principal material for tools and weapons. Not only did this create radical changes in the waging of war, many aspects of everyday life were also dramatically affected. Moreover, in the fields of political legislation and the administration of justice, the Hittites pioneered a legal code that was far more progressive than those that characterized the ancient Middle East. By resting justice on the principal of restitution rather than vengeance, the Hittites planted the philosophical seeds for ethical reasoning that would later flower in Greek civilization of Mycenae. Bibliography: Breasted, James, H. Ancient Times: a History of the Early World. London: Ginn, 1935. Bryce, Trevor. Life and Society in the Hittite World. London: Oxford University Press, 2004. Garstang, John. The Land of the Hittites: An Account of Recent Explorations and Discoveries in Asia Minor. New York: Dutton, 1935. Muhly, James, D. Sasson, J. M. et al., Eds. Mining and Metalwork in Ancient Western Asia, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, New York: Scribner, 1995. Read More