by
My
tentative suggestion would be that the Hittites were either
(i)
geographically contiguous with the Chaldeans,
whose land Royce Erickson
has re-located to NW Syria, or
(ii) were the Chaldeans
(and possibly also the Kassites).
The ancient Hittite capital of
Hattusha is generally considered today to have been the impressive site at Boğazköy
in Turkey:
Boğazköy
| Turkey, Map, History, & Facts | Britannica
“Boğazköy,
village, north-central Turkey.
Located 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Yozgat, it is the
site of the archaeological remains of Hattusas (Hattusa, Hattusha, or
Khattusas), the ancient capital of the Hittites,
who established a powerful empire in Anatolia and
northern Syria in the 2nd millennium bce”.
However,
according to the major geographical reconstruction of the land of Anatolia as recently
(2020) undertaken by Royce (Richard) Erickson, and as written about in e.g. my
article:
More
geographical ‘tsunamis’: lands of Elam and Chaldea
(10) More geographical ‘tsunamis’:
lands of Elam and Chaldea
– this,
following on from various other groundbreaking geographical revisionisms – the vast
region of Anatolia belonged to nations such as Elam, Media and Persia.
The somewhat
poorly known - certainly most enigmatic - Hittites, now get squeezed right out
of that northern area, and thus need to find themselves a more appropriate home
location.
My tentative
suggestion would be that the Hittites were either (i) geographically contiguous
with the Chaldeans, whose land Royce Erickson has re-located to NW Syria (see his
Figure 8 map above), or (ii) were the Chaldeans (and possibly also the
Kassites).
Perhaps
coming to my aid here is the following extract from James Fraser’s 2016
article:
Kadesh
on the Orontes
which
crucially, biblically, locates “Kadesh in the land of the Hittites” (2 Sam 24:6):
Kadesh-on-the-Orontes
Kadesh (Qadesh) was a
Bronze Age city-state centered on the 10 ha site of Tell Nebi Mend on the
Orontes River, 25 km SW of Homs. The site sits at a junction between a key
north-south route through inland Syria, and a strategic east-west route to the
coast. The city is possibly named in the Bible as “Kadesh in the land of the
Hittites” (2 Sam 24:6), which marked the northern limit of the census of David;
however, the text is corrupt, and cited elsewhere as “the region of
Tahtim-hodshi” (2 Sam 24:6 [NIV]) ….
Obviously, this cannot be anywhere
near Anatolia!
Other significant conclusions
may perhaps now be drawn from the above.
According to James Fraser, “the
text is corrupt”, with Kadesh being replaced in the NIV by “Tahtim-hodshi”.
It may not
be corrupt, however.
The
Assyrians referred to a particular region as the “Sealand”, which region I have
identified as (our now revised) Chaldea:
Region
Assyria meant by Mãt-tâmti, the “Sealand”
(10) Region Assyria meant by Mãt-tâmti,
the “Sealand”
The Hebrew description, “the region [land] of
Tahtim-hodshi”, might be interchangeable with the Assyrian as follows:
The
Land (Mãt) - Sea (tâmti/tahtim) of Kadesh.
And
could this “Sealand”, too, be the same as the ancient land of Iamkhad (Yamhad),
Yam/Sea (?), for which name no plausible explanation appears yet to have been given?
Another matter of potential
import: Royce Erickson’s useful estimation
of the location of the Chaldean capital of Dur Yakin lies appreciably close (though
not quite exactly) to where Kadesh is situated – both being on the Orontes
River (compare maps).
The Chaldean capital of Dur
Yakin now becomes a solid candidate for the Hittite capital of Hattush(a)/Kadesh.
Finally,
for the potential inclusion of the Kassites into our mix, see my article:
Merging
of a Kassite and a Hittite king
(10) Merging a Kassite and a Hittite
king
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