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 Whether the Mitanni had shared in that civilization while independent, and whether they were racially kin to the Hatti, cannot be determined at present. Winckler has adduced evidence from names of local gods to show that there was an Indo-European racial element in Mitanni; but none for a similar element in the Hatti, whose chief god was Teshub. The majority of scholars has always regarded the Hittites proper as, at any rate, non-Semitic, and some leading authorities have called them proto-Armenian, and believed that they have modern descendants in the Caucasus. This racial question can hardly be determined till those Hatti records, whether in cuneiform or pictographic script, which are couched in a native tongue, not in Babylonian, are read. In the meantime we have proper names to argue from; and these give us at least the significant indication that the Hittite nominative ended in s and the accusative in m. In any case the connexion of the Hatti with the peculiar class of monuments which we have been describing, can hardly be further questioned; and it has become more than probable that the Hatti of Cappadocia were responsible in the beginning for the art and script of those monuments and for the civilization of which they are memorials. Other peoples of north Syria and Asia Minor (e.g. the Kummukh or Commagenians and the Muski or Phrygians) came no doubt under the influence of this civilization and imitated its monuments, while subject to or federated with the Hatti. Through Phrygia and (q.v.) influences of this same Cappadocian civilization passed towards the west; and indeed, before the Greek colonization of Asia Minor, a loosely knit Hatti empire may have stretched even to the Aegean. The Nymphi (Kara Bel) and Niobe sculptures near Smyrna are probably memorials of that extension. Certainly some inland Anatolian power seems to have kept Aegean settlers and culture away from the Ionian coast during the Bronze Age, and that power was in all likelihood the Hatti kingdom of Cappadocia. Owing perhaps to Assyrian aggression, this power seems to have begun to suffer decay about 1000 and thereafter to have shrunk inwards, leaving the coasts open. The powers of Phrygia and Lydia rose successively out of its ruins, and continued to offer westward passage to influences of Mesopotamian culture till well into historic times. The Greeks came too late to Asia to have had any contact with Hatti power obscured from their view by the intermediate and secondary state of Phrygia. Their earliest writers regarded the latter as the seat of the oldest and most godlike of mankind. Only one Greek author, Herodotus, alludes to the pre-historic Cappadocian power and only at the latest moment of its long decline. At the same time, some of the Greek legends seem to show that peoples, with whom the Greeks came into early contact, had vivid memories of the Hatti. Such are the Amazon stories, whose local range was very extensive, and the myths of Memnon and Pelops. The real reference of these stories, however, was forgotten, and it has been reserved to our own generation to rediscover the records of a power and a civilization which once dominated Asia Minor and north Syria and occupied all the continental roads of communication between the East and the West of the ancient world. The credit of having been the first to divine this importance of the Hittites should always be ascribed to Sayce.

The history of the Hatti and their civilization, then, would appear to have been, very briefly, this. They belonged to an ethnic scattered widely over Eastern Asia Minor and Syria at an early period (Khatti invaded Akkad about 1800 in the reign of Samsuditana); but they first formed a strong state in Cappadocia late in the 16th century Subbiluliuma became their first great king, though he had at least one dynastic predecessor of the name of Hattusil. The Hatti now pushed southwards in force, overcame the kingdom of Mitanni and proceeded partly to occupy and partly to make tributary both north Syria and western Mesopotamia where some of their congeners were already settled. They came early into collision with Egypt, and at the height of their power under Hattusil II. fought the battle of Kadesh with Rameses II., on at least equal terms. Both now and previously the diplomatic correspondence of the Hatti monarchs shows that they treated on terms of practical equality with both the Babylonian and the Egyptian courts; and that they waged constant wars in Syria, mainly with the Amorite tribes. At this time the Hatti empire or confederacy probably included, on the west, both Phrygia and Lydia. The Boghaz Keui correspondence ceases to be important with the generation following Hattusil II., and in the Assyrian records, which begin about a couple of centuries later, we find Carchemish the chief Hatti city and N. Syria called the Hatti-land. It is possible therefore that a change of imperial centre took place after the Hatti had ceased to fear Egypt in north Syria. If so, the continuation of Hittite history will have to be sought among the remains at Jerablus and other middle Euphratean sites, rather than in those at Boghaz Keui. The establishment of the Hatti at Carchemish not only made them a commercial people and probably sapped their highland vigour, but also brought them into closer proximity to the rising North Semitic power of Assyria, whose advent had been regarded with apprehension by Hattusil II. (see above). One of his successors, Arnaunta (late 13th century?), was already feeling the effect of Assyrian pressure, and with the accession of Tiglath Pileser I., about a century later, a long but often interrupted series of Assyrian efforts to break up the Hatti power began. A succession of Ninevite armies raided north Syria and even south-east Asia Minor, and gradually reduced the Hatti. But the resistance of the latter was sturdy and prolonged. They remained the strongest power in Syria and eastern Asia Minor till well into the first millennium, and their Syrian seat was not lost finally till after the great extension of Assyrian power which took place in the latter part of the 9th century. What had been happening to their Cappadocian province meanwhile we do not yet know; but the presence of Phrygian inscriptions at Euyuk and Tyana, ancient seats of their power, suggests that the client monarchy in the Sangarius valley shook itself free during the early part of the Hittite struggle with Assyria, and in the day of Hatti weakness extended its dominion over the home territory of its former suzerain. “White Syrians,” however, were still in Cappadocia even after the Cimmerians had destroyed the Phrygian monarchy, allowing Lydia to become independent under the Mermnad dynasty. Croesus found them centred at Pteria in the 6th century and dealt them a final blow. But much of their secular or religious custom lived on to be recorded by Greek writers, and regarded by modern scholars as typically “Anatolian.”

—General summaries: L. Messerschmidt, The Hittites (“Ancient East” series, vi., 1903); A. H. Sayce, The Hittites (“Bypaths of Biblical Knowledge” series, xii., 2nd ed. 1892); G. Perrot and C. Chipiez, History of Art in Sardinia, Judaea, Syria and Asia Minor (Eng. trans., vol. ii., 1890); L. Lantsheere, De la race et de la langue des Hétéens (1891); P. Jensen, Hittiter und Armenier (1898); M. Jastrow, final chapter in H. V. Hilprecht, Exploration in Bible Lands (1903); W. Wright, Empire of the Hittites (1884); F. Hommel, Hettiter und Skythen (1898); D. G. Hogarth, Ionia and the East (1909); W. Max Müller, Asien und Europa, chap. xxv. (1893). See also authorities for Egyptian and Assyrian history.

Inscriptions: L. Messerschmidt, “Corpus inscr. Hettiticarum,” ''Zeitsch. d. d. morgenländ. Gesellschaft'' (1900, 1902, 1906, &c.), and “Bemerkungen zu d. Heth. Inschriften,” ''Mitteil. d. vorderasiat.'' Gesellschaft (1898); P. Jensen, “Grundlagen für eine Entzifferung der (Hat. oder) Cilicischen Inschriften,” ''Zeitschr. d. d. morgenländ.'' Gesellschaft (1894); F. E. Peiser, Die Hettitischen Inschriften (1892); A. H. Sayce, “Decipherment of the Hittite Inscriptions,” Proc. ''Soc. of Bibl. Archaeology'' (1903), and “Hittite Inscriptions, translated and annotated,” ibid. (1905, 1907); J. Menant, “Études Hétéennes,” ''Recueil de travaux rel. à la philologie, &c., and Mém. de'' ''l’Acad. Inscr.'', vol. xxxiv. (1890); J. Halévy in Revue sémitique, vol. i. Also divers articles by A. H. Sayce, F. Hommel and others in Proc. and ''Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. since 1876, and in Recueil de'' travaux, &c., since its beginning.

Exploration: G. Perrot and E. Guillaume, ''Exploration arch. de'' la Galatie, &c. (1862–1872); E. Chantre, Mission en Cappadocie (1898); Sir W. M. Ramsay, “Syro-Cappadocian Monuments,” in ''Athen. Mitteilungen'' (1889), with D. G. Hogarth, “Pre-Hellenic Monuments of Cappadocia,” in Recueil de travaux, &c. (1892–1895); and with Miss Gertrude Bell, The Thousand and One Churches (1909); C. Humann and O. Puchstein, Reisen in Nord-Syrien, &c. (1890). J. Garstang in Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, i. (1908) and following numbers. Reports on excavations at Sinjerli in Berl.