Hittites

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who established an empire at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around the 18th century BC, which reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, encompassing 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 in the Bronze Age collapse, splintering into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some surviving until the 8th century BC.

Their Hittite language was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Natively, they referred to their land as Hatti, and to their language as Nesili (the language of Nesa). The conventional name "Hittites" is due to their initial identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology. Despite the use of "Hatti", 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 which was part of the Northwest Caucasian languages group known as Hattic.

The Hittite military made successful use of chariots. Although belonging to the Bronze Age, 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.