Pontus had been an independent kingdom

Pontus had been an independent kingdom since the rule of Mithridates when the threat of Macedon had been removed. Despite several attempts by the Seleucid Empire to defeatPontus, independence was maintained. When Rome became involved in Anatolian affairs under Pharnaces I, an alliance was formed that guaranteed protection for the kingdom. Sony VAIO PCG-31112M battery

The other major kingdom in Anatolia, Bithynia, established byNicomedes I at Nicomedia, always maintained good relations with Rome. Even under the hated Prusias II of Bithynia when that relationship was strained it did not cause much trouble.^[29]

The rule of Rome in Anatolia was unlike any other part of their empire because of their light hand with regards to government and organization. Sony VAIO PCG-31113M battery

Controlling unstable elements within the region was made simpler by the bequeathal of Pergamon to the Romans by its last king,Attalus III in 133 BCE. The new territory was named the province of Asia by Roman consul Aquillius Manius the Elder.

The Mithridatic Wars were precluded by infighting that drew Rome into a war against Italian rebels known as the Social War in 90 BCE. Sony VAIO PCG-31114M battery

Mithridates VI of Pontus decided that it was time to strike in Anatolia while Rome was occupied, overrunning Bithynia. Though he withdrew when this was demanded of him by Rome he did not agree to all Romes demands. As a result, Rome encouraged Bithynia to attack Pontus but Bithynia was defeated.^[35] Sony VAIO PCG-31111V battery

Mithridates then marched into the Roman province of Asia, where he persuaded Greeks to slaughter as many Italians as possible (the Asiatic Vespers). Despite a power struggle within Rome itself, consul Cornelius Sulla went to Anatolia to defeat the Pontian king. Sulladefeated him thoroughly in and left Mithridates with only Pontus in the Treaty of Dardanos.^[11] Sony VAIO PCG-31112V battery

In 74 BCE, another Anatolian kingdom passed under Roman control as Nicomedes IV of Bithynia instructed it to be done after his death. Making Bithynia a Roman province soon after roused Mithridates VI to once again go after more territory, and he invaded it in the same year. Rome this time sent consul Lucius Licinius Lucullus to take back control of the province. The expedition proved to be very positive as Mithridates was driven back into the mountains.^[11] Sony VAIO PCG-31113V battery

The failure of Lucius Licinius Lucullus to rid Rome once and for all of Mithridates brought a lot of opposition back at home, some fueled by the great Roman consul Pompey. A threat by pirates on the Roman food supply in the Aegean Sea brought Pompey once again to the forefront of Roman politics, and he drove them back to Cilicia. Sony VAIO PCG-31114V battery

The powers granted Pompey after this success allowed him to not only throw back Mithridates all the way to the Bosphorus, but made neighboringArmenia a client kingdom. In the end, Mithridates committed suicide in 63 BCE, and therefore allowed Rome to add Pontus as a protectorate along with Cilicia as a Roman province.^[11] Sony VAIO PCG-GRS100 battery

This left only Galatia, Pisidia and Cappadocia, all ruled by Amyntas in whole, as the last remaining kingdom not under a protectorate or provincial status. However, in 25 BCE, Amyntas died while pursuing enemies in the Taurus mountains, and Rome claimed his lands as a province, leaving Anatolia completely in Roman hands. Sony VAIO PCG-41111M battery

Jewish influences in Anatolia were changing the religious makeup of the region as Rome consolidated its power. In about 210 BCE, Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire relocated 2,000 families of Jews from Babylonia to Lydia and Phrygia, and this kind of migration continued throughout the remainder of the Empire's existence. Sony VAIO PCG-41112M battery

Additional clues to the size of the Jewish influence in the area were provided by Cicero, who noted that a fellow Roman governor had halted the tribute sent to Jerusalem by Jews in 66 BCE, and the record of Ephesus, where the people urged Agrippina to expel Jews because they were not active in their religious activities.^[37] Sony VAIO PCG-41111V battery

The blossoming religious following of Christianity was evident in Anatolia during the beginning of the 1st century. The letters of St. Paul in the New Testamentreflect this growth, particularly in his home province of Asia. From his home in Ephesus from 54 AD to 56 AD he noted that "all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word" and verified the existence of a church in Colossae as well as Troas. Sony VAIO PCG-NV100 battery

Later he received letters from Magnesia and Tralleis, both of which already had churches, bishops, and official representatives who supported Ignatius of Syria^[。 After the references to these institutions by St. Paul,Revelation of the Bible mentions the Seven Churches of Asia: (Ephesus, Magnesia, Thyatira, Smyrna, Philadelphia, Pergamon, and Laodicea).^[37] Sony VAIO PCG-V505 battery

Even other non-Christians started to take notice of the new religion. In 112 the Roman governor in Bithynia writes to the Roman emperor Trajan that so many different people are flocking to Christianity, leaving the temples vacated.

From the rule of Augustus onwards up until that of Constantine I, Anatolia enjoyed relative peace that allowed itself to grow as a region. Sony VAIO PCG-Z1A battery

The emperor Augustus removed all debts owed to the Roman Empire by the provinces and protectorates there, making advanced progress possible. Roads were built to connect the larger cities in order to improve trade and transportation, and the abundance of high outputs in agricultural pursuits made more money for everyone involved. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ battery

Settlement was encouraged, and local governors did not place a heavy burden upon the people with regards to taxation. The wealth gained from the peace and prosperity prevented great tragedy as powerful earthquakes tore through the region, and help was given from the Roman government and other parties. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ11S battery

Through it all was produced some of the most respected scientific men of that period- the philosopher Dio of Bithynia, the medical mind of Galen from Pergamon, and the historians Memnon of Heraclea and Cassius Dio ofNicaea.^[39]

By the middle of the 3rd century, everything that had been built by peace was being threatened by a new enemy, the Goths. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ15T battery

As the inroads to central Europe through Macedonia, Italy, and Germania were all defended successfully by the Romans, the Goths found Anatolia to be irresistible due to its wealth and deteriorating defenses. Using a captured fleet of ships from the Bosphorus and flat-bottomed boats to cross the Black Sea, Sony VAIO VGN-FZ15G battery

they sailed in 256 around the eastern shores, landing in the coastal city of Trebizond. What ensued was a huge embarrassment for Pontus- the wealth of the city was absconded, a larger amount of ships was confiscated, and they entered the interior without much to turn them back. A second invasion of Anatolia through Bithynia brought even more terror inland and wanton destruction. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ4000 battery

The Goths entered Chalcedon and used it as a base by which to expand their operations, sacking Nicomedia, Prusa, Apamea, Cius, and Nicein turn. Only the turn of the weather during a fall season kept them from doing any more harm to those outside the realm of the province. The Goths managed a third attack upon not only the coastline of western Anatolia, Sony VAIO VGN-FZ460E battery

but in Greece and Italy as well. Despite the Romans under their emperor Valerian finally turning them away, it did not stop the Goths from first destroying the Temple of Diana in Ephesus and the city itself in 263.

The constant instability of the Roman Empire as a whole gradually made it more and more difficult to control. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ440N battery

Upon the ascension of the emperor Constantine in 330, he made a bold decision by removing himself from Rome and into a new capital. Located in the old city of Byzantium, now known as Constantinople after the emperor, it was strengthened and improved in order to assure more than adequate defense of the whole region. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ440E battery

What added to the prestige of the city was Constantine's favor of Christianity. He allowed bishops and other religious figures to aid in the government of the empire, and he personally intervened in the First Council of Nicaea to prove his sincerity.

Over the course of the next forty years after the death of Constantine in 337 saw a power struggle amongst his descendants for control of the empire. Sony VAIO PCG-3C1M battery

His three sons, Constantine, Constans, and Constantius were unable to coexist peacefully under a joint rule, and they eventually resorted to violent means to end the arrangement. A short time after taking power, a purge of a majority of their relations began and the blood of Constantine's progeny flowed. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ430E battery

Eventually Constans came after and killed Constantine II near Aquileia, but was soon removed and himself murdered by his own army. This left Constantius II as the sole emperor of the Byzantines, but even this would not last. Despite supporting his cousin Julian as commander of the armies inGaul, Sony VAIO VGN-FZ280E battery

events soon forced Julian to ignore Constantine's orders to move eastward with his armies and to head straight for Constantinople to claim the imperial purple. The death of Constantius II in Tarsus resulted in a bloodless transfer of power in 361. Julian did not survive but a scant year and a half thanks to a Persian spear, Sony VAIO VGN-FZ190 battery

but during that time he tried to revert what progress Christianity had made after the founding of the empire. Even on his deathbed he was supposed to have said "Thou hast conquered, Galilean.", a reference to Christianity besting him.

The threat of barbarian invasion and its effects upon the Roman Empire in the west carried over into the east. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ150E battery

After a short rule by the emperor Jovian and a joint rule of both empires by Valentinian II in the west and Valens in the east, the young emperor Gratian made what was to be a very fortunate decision. He chose the favored general Theodosius I to rule with his as a co-emperor, granting him authority over all of the domains of the Byzantine empire in 379. Sony VAIO PCG-3F1M battery

This proved to be a wise decision with regards to the survival of his newly obtained dominion, for he immediately set about healing the religious rifts that had emerged during the insecurity of past years. The practice of Arianism and pagan rites were abolished, and the standards set by Constantinein Nicaea were restored by law. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ160 battery

By 395, the year in which the Roman Empire was officially divided in half and the aptly named Theodosius the Great died, the east was so strong that it could now be considered an equal.

Before the Turkic settlement, the local population of Anatolia had reached an estimated level of 12 to 14 million people during the late Roman Period.Sony VAIO VGN-FZ260E battery

The migration of Turks to the country of modern Turkey occurred during the main Turkic migration across most of Central Asia and into Europe and the Middle Eastwhich was between the 6th and 11th centuries. Mainly Turkic people living in the Seljuk Empire arrived in Turkey during the eleventh century. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ140E battery

The Seljuks proceeded to gradually conquer the Anatolian part of the Byzantine Empire. In the following centuries, the local population began to be assimilated into the Turkish people. More Turkic migrants began to intermingle with the local inhabitants over years, thus the Turkish-speaking population was bolstered. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ11L battery

However the majority of the DNA of the inhabitants of modern Turkey has been found to have been from the native Anatolian population rather than central Asian Turkic tribes.

The House of Seljuk was a branch of the Kınık Oğuz Turks who resided on the periphery of the Muslim world, north of the Caspian and Aral Seas in the Yabghu Khaganate of the Oğuz confederacy^[45] Sony VAIO VGN-FZ11Z battery

in the 10th century. In the 11th century, the Turkic people living in the Seljuk Empire started migrating from their ancestral homelands towards the eastern regions of Anatolia, which eventually became a new homeland of Oğuz Turkic tribes following the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071.

The victory of the Seljuks gave rise to the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, Sony VAIO PCG-3H1M battery

a separate branch of the larger Seljuk Empire^[46] and to some Turkish principalities (beyliks), mostly situated towards the Eastern Anatolia which were vassals of or at war with Seljuk Sultanate of Rum.

On June 26, 1243, the Seljuk armies were defeated by the Mongols in the Battle of Kosedag, and the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm became a vassal of the Mongols.^[47] Sony VAIO VGN-FZ11M battery

This caused the Seljuks to lose their power. Hulegu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khanfounded the Ilkhanate in the southwestern part of the Mongol Empire. The Ilkhanate ruled Anatolia through Mongol military governors. The last Seljuk sultan Mesud II, died in 1308. The Mongol invasion of Transoxiana, Iran, Azerbaijan and Anatolia caused Turkomens to move to Western Anatolia.^[48] Sony VAIO VGN-FZ18M battery

The Turkomens founded some Anatolian principalities (beyliks) under the Mongol dominion in Turkey.^[49] The most powerful beyliks were the Karamanids and the Germiyanids in the central area. Along the Aegean coast, from north to south, stretched Karasids, Sarukhanids, Aydinids, Menteşe and Teke principalities. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ18 battery

TheJandarids (later called Isfendiyarids) controlled the Black Sea region round Kastamonu and Sinop.^[50] The Beylik of theOttoman Dynasty was situated in the northwest of Anatolia, around Söğüt, and it was a small and insignificant state at that time. The Ottoman beylik would, however, evolve into the Ottoman Empire over the next 200 years, expanding throughout theBalkans, Anatolia. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ210CE battery

The Ottoman beylik's first capital was located in Bursa in 1326. Edirne which was conquered in 1361^[52] was the next capital city. After largely expanding to Europe and Anatolia, in 1453, the Ottomans nearly completed the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by capturing its capital, Constantinople during the reign of Mehmed II. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ31S battery

This city has become the capital city of the Empire following Edirne. The Ottoman Empire would continue to expand into the Eastern Anatolia, Central Europe, the Caucasus, North and East Africa, the islands in the Mediterranean, Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, and the Arabian peninsula in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ31Z battery

The Ottoman Empire's power and prestige peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The empire was often at odds with the Holy Roman Empire in its steady advance towards Central Europe through the Balkans and the southern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.^[53] Sony VAIO VGN-FZ31E battery

In addition, the Ottomans were often at war with Persia over territorial disputes. At sea, the empire contended with the Holy Leagues, composed of Habsburg Spain, the Republic of Venice and the Knights of St. John, for control of the Mediterranean. In the Indian Ocean, the Ottoman navy frequently confronted Portuguese fleets in order to defend its traditional monopoly over the maritime trade routes between East Asia and Western Europe; Sony VAIO VGN-FZ31J battery

these routes faced new competition with the Portuguese discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488.

The Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 marked the beginning of the Ottoman decline; some territories were lost by the treaty: Austria received all of Hungary and Transylvania except the Banat; Venice obtained most of Dalmatia along with the Morea (the Peloponnesus peninsula in southern Greece); Sony VAIO VGN-FZ31M battery

Poland recovered Podolia.^[54] Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ottoman Empire continued losing its territories, including Greece, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and the Balkans in the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars. Anatolia remained multi-ethnic until the early 20th century (see Rise of Nationalism under the Ottoman Empire). Sony VAIO PCG-3J1M battery

Its inhabitants were of varied ethnicities, includingTurks, Armenians, Kurds, Greeks, Frenchs, and Italians (particularly from Genoa and Venice). Faced with territorial losses on all sides the Ottoman Empire forged an alliance with Germany who supported it with troops and equipment. The Ottoman Empire joined the World War I on the side of the Central Powers, after granting two German warships as refugees. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ31B battery

When the First World War coupled with ethnic tensions devastated Anatolia, it brought about the collapse of the Ottoman Empire

On October 30, 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed, followed by the imposition of Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920 by Allied Powers, which was never ratified. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ32 battery

The Treaty of Sèvres would break up the Ottoman Empire and force large concessions on territories of the Empire in favour of Greece, Italy, Britainand France.

The occupation of some parts of the country by the Allies in the aftermath of World War I prompted the establishment of the Turkish national movement.^[53] Sony VAIO VGN-FZ410 battery

Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, a military commander who had distinguished himself during the Battle of Gallipoli, the Turkish War of Independence was waged with the aim of revoking the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres.^[55] By September 18, 1922, the occupying armies were expelled. On November 1, the newly founded parliament formally abolished the Sultanate, Sony VAIO VGN-FZ21 battery

thus ending 623 years of Ottoman rule. The Treaty of Lausanne of July 24, 1923, led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the newly formed "Republic of Turkey" as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, and the republic was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923, in the new capital of Ankara.^[53] Sony VAIO VGN-FZ21S battery

Mustafa Kemal became the republic's first President of Turkey and subsequently introduced many radical reforms with the aim of founding a new secular republic from the remnants of its Ottoman past.^[53] The Ottoman fez was abolished, full rights for women politically were established, and new writing system for Turkish based upon the Latin alphabet was created.^[56] Sony VAIO VGN-FZ21M battery

According to the Law on Family Names, the Turkish parliament presented Mustafa Kemal with the honorific surname "Atatürk" (Father of the Turks) in 1934.

Turkey was neutral in World War II (1939-45) but signed a treaty with Britain in October 1939 that said Britain would defend Turkey if Germany attacked it. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ38M battery

An invasion was threatened in 1941 but did not happen and Ankara refused German requests to allow troops to cross its borders into Syria or the USSR. Germany had been its largest trading partner before the war, and Turkey continued to do business with both sides. It purchased arms from both sides. The Allies tried to stop German purchases of chrome (used in making better steel). Sony VAIO PCG-8141M battery

Starting in 1942 the Allies provides military aid. The Turkish leaders conferred with Roosevelt and Churchill at the Cairo Conference in November, 1943, and promised to enter the war. By August 1944, with Germany nearing defeat, Turkey broke off relations. In February 1945, it declared war on Germany and Japan, a symbolic move that allowed Turkey to join the nascent United Nations.^[57][58] Sony VAIO VGN-S battery

Meanwhile relations with Moscow worsened, setting stage for the start of the Cold War. The demands by the Soviet Union for military bases in the Turkish Straits, prompted the United States to declare the Truman Doctrine in 1947. The doctrine enunciated American intentions to guarantee the security of Turkey and Greece, and resulted in large-scale U.S. military and economic support.^[59] SONY PCG-7113M battery

After participating with the United Nations forces in the Korean War, Turkey joined NATO in 1952, becoming a bulwark against Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean. Following a decade of intercommunal violence on the island of Cyprus and the Greek military coup of July 1974, overthrowing President Makarios and installing Nikos Sampson as a dictator, Turkey invaded the Republic of Cyprus in 1974. SONY PCG-7112M battery

Nine years later the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was established. Turkey is the only country that recognises the TRNC^[60]

The single-party period was followed by multiparty democracy after 1945. The Turkish democracy was interrupted by military coups d'état in 1960, 1971 and1980.^[61] SONY PCG-8Z3M battery

In 1984, the PKK began an insurgency against the Turkish government; the conflict, which has claimed over 40,000 lives, continues today.^[62] Since the liberalization of the Turkish economy during the 1980s, the country has enjoyed stronger economic growth and greater political stability.

The Hittites were an Ancient Anatolian people who established an empire at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around the 18th century BC. Sony VAIO PCG-8161M battery

This empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Asia Minor as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. After c. 1180 BC, the empire came to an end during the Bronze Age collapse, splintering into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BC. Sony VAIO VGN-FZ21J battery

The Hittite language was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. They referred to their native land as Hatti, and to their language as Nešili (the language of Neša). The conventional name "Hittites" is due to their initial identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology. Sony VAIO VGN-FW11 battery

Despite the use of Hatti for their core territory, the Hittites should be distinguished from the Hattians, an earlier people who inhabited the same region (until the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC) and spoke a language possibly in the Northwest Caucasian languages group known as Hattic.

The Hittite military made successful use of chariots.^[1] Although belonging to the Bronze Age, Sony VAIO VGN-FW11M battery

they were the forerunners of the Iron Age, developing the manufacture of iron artifacts from as early as the 14th century BC, when letters to foreign rulers reveal the latter's demand for iron goods.

After 1180 BC, amid general turmoil in the Levant associated with the sudden arrival of the Sea Peoples, the kingdom disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, Sony VAIO VGN-FW11S battery

some of which survived until as late as the 8th century BC. The history of the Hittite civilization is known mostly from cuneiform texts found in the area of their kingdom, and from diplomatic and commercial correspondence found in various archives in Egypt and the Middle East.

The Hittites used Mesopotamian cuneiform letters. Archaeological expeditions to Hattusa have discovered entire sets of royal archives in cuneiform tabletsSony VAIO VGN-FW21E battery

written either in the Semitic Mesopotamian Akkadian language of Assyria and Babylonia, the diplomatic language of the time, or in the various dialects of the Hittite confederation.^[2]

Before the discoveries, the only source of information about Hittites had been the Old Testament (see Biblical Hittites). Sony VAIO VGN-FW21J battery

Francis William Newman expressed the critical view, common in the early 19th Century, that, if the Hittites existed at all, "no Hittite king could have compared in power to the King of Judah...".^[3] As archaeological discoveries revealed the scale of the Hittite kingdom in the second half of the 19th Century, Archibald Henry Sayce postulated, Sony VAIO VGN-FW21L battery

rather than to be compared to Judah, the Anatolian civilization "[was] worthy of comparison to the divided Kingdom of Egypt", and was "infinitely more powerful than that of Judah".^[4] Sayce and other scholars also mention that Judah and the Hittites were never enemies in the Hebrew texts; in the Book of Kings, they supplied the Israelites with cedar, chariots, and horses, as well as being a friend and allied to Abraham in the Book of Genesis. Sony VAIO VGN-FW41M battery

The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at the Assyrian colony of Kültepe (ancient Karum Kanesh), containing records of trade between Assyrian merchants and a certain "land of Hatti". Some names in the tablets were neither Hattic nor Assyrian, but clearly Indo-European.^[ Sony VAIO VGN-FW41M/H battery

The script on a monument at Boğazköy by a "People of Hattusas" discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo and Hamath in Northern Syria. In 1887, excavations at Tell El-Amarna in Egyptuncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton. Sony VAIO VGN-FW21M battery

Two of the letters from a "kingdom ofKheta"—apparently located in the same general region as the Mesopotamian references to "land of Hatti"—were written in standard Akkadian cuneiform script, but in an unknown language; although scholars could read it, no one could understand it. Shortly after this, Sony VAIO VGN-FW21Z battery

Archibald Sayce proposed that Hatti or Khatti in Anatolia was identical with the "kingdom of Kheta" mentioned in these Egyptian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Others, such as Max Müller, agreed that Khatti was probably Kheta, but proposed connecting it with Biblical Kittim, rather than with the "Children of Heth". Sony VAIO VGN-FW32J battery

Sayce's identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century; and the name "Hittite" has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy.

During sporadic excavations at Boğazköy (Hattusa) that began in 1906, the archaeologist Hugo Winckler found a royal archive with 10,000 tablets, inscribed in cuneiform Akkadian and the same unknown language as the Egyptian letters from Kheta—thus confirming the identity of the two names. Sony VAIO VGN-FW17W battery

He also proved that the ruins at Boğazköy were the remains of the capital of an empire that, at one point, controlled northern Syria.

Under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute, excavations at Hattusa have been underway since 1907, with interruptions during both wars. Kültepe was successfully excavated by Professor Tahsin Özgüç from 1948 until his death in 2005. Sony VAIO VGN-FW31E battery

Smaller scale excavations have also been carried out in the immediate surroundings of Hattusa, including the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, which contains numerous rock-cut relief's portraying the Hittite rulers and the gods of the Hittite pantheon.

The Hittite kingdom was centred on the lands surrounding Hattusa and Neša, Sony VAIO PCG-3C2M battery

known as "the land Hatti" (^URUHa-at-ti). After Hattusa was made capital, the area encompassed by the bend of the Halys River (Hittite Marassantiya, Turkish: Kızılırmak) was considered the core of the Empire, and some Hittite laws make a distinction between "this side of the river" and "that side of the river", for example, the reward for the capture of an eloped slave after he managed to flee beyond the Halys is higher than that for a slave caught before he could reach the river. Sony VAIO VGN-FW139E battery

To the west and south of the core territory lay the region known as Luwiya in the earliest Hittite texts. This terminology was replaced by the names Arzawa and Kizzuwatna with the rise of those kingdoms.^[5] Nevertheless, the Hittites continued to refer to the language that originated in these areas as Luwian. Sony VAIO VGN-FW139E/H battery

Prior to the rise of Kizzuwatna, the heart of that territory in Cilicia was first referred to by the Hittites as Adaniya.^[6] Upon its revolt from the Hittites during the reign ofAmmuna,^[7] it assumed the name of Kizzuwatna and successfully expanded northward to encompass the lower Anti-Taurus mountains as well. Sony VAIO VGN-FW465J battery

To the north, lived the mountainous people called the Kaskians. To the southeast of the Hittites lay the Hurrian empire of Mitanni. At its peak, during the reign of Mursili II, the Hittite empire stretched from Arzawa in the west toMitanni in the east, many of the Kaskian territories to the north including Hayasa-Azzi in the far north-east, and on south into Canaan approximately as far as the southern border of Lebanon, incorporating all of these territories within its domain. Sony VAIO VGN-FW31M battery

Around 5000 BC, the region centered in Hattusa, that would later become the core of the Hittite kingdom, was inhabited by people with a distinct culture who spoke a non-Indo-European language. The name "Hattic" is used by Anatolianists to distinguish this language from the Indo-European Hittite language that appeared on the scene at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC and became the administrative language of the Hittite kingdom over the next six or seven centuries. Sony VAIO VGN-FW31J battery

As noted above, "Hittite" is a modern convention for referring to this language. The native term was Nesili, i.e. "In the language of Neša".The early Hittites, whose prior whereabouts are unknown, borrowed heavily from the pre-existing Hattian and Hurrian cultures, and also from that of the Assyrian colonisers — in particular, the cuneiform writing and the use of cylindrical seals. SONY PCG-7122M battery

Since Hattic continued to be used in the Hittite kingdom for religious purposes, and there is substantial continuity between the two cultures, it is not known whether the Hattic speakers — the Hattians— were displaced by the speakers of Hittite, were absorbed by them, or just adopted their language.

It is generally assumed that the Hittites came into Anatolia some time before 2000 BC. SONY PCG-7121M battery

^] While their earlier location is disputed, there has been strong evidence for more than a century that the home of the Indo-Europeans in the fourth and third millennia was in the Pontic Steppe, present day Ukraine around the Sea of Azov.^[] This is known as the Kurgan Hypothesis.

The arrival of the Hittites in Anatolia in prehistoric times was one of a superstrate imposing itself on a native culture, SONY VAIO PCG-7192M battery

either by means of conquest^[8] or by gradual assimilation.^[9] In archaeological terms, relationships of the Hittites to the Ezero culture of the Balkans and Maikop culture of the Caucasus have been considered within the migration framework.^[10] The Indo-European element at least establishes Hittite culture as intrusive to Anatolia in scholarly mainstream^[9] SONY VAIO PCG-7194M battery

(excepting the opinion of Colin Renfrew, whose Anatolian hypothesis assumes that Indo-European is indigenous to Anatolia^[11][12]).

The Hittites and other members of the Anatolian family then came from the north, possibly along the Caspian Sea. Their movement into the region may have set off a Near East mass migration sometime around 1900 BC.^[ SONY VAIO PCG-7195M battery

The dominant inhabitants in central Anatolia at the time were Hurrians and Hattians who spoke non-Indo-European languages (some have argued that Hattic was a Northwest Caucasian language, but its affiliation remains uncertain). There were also Assyriancolonies in the country; it was from the Assyrians that the Hittites adopted the cuneiform script. SONY VAIO PCG-7196M battery