The Hittite & Lydian kingdom, The Red Sea, the Mycenean
The Old Kingdom (Egypt 3rd millennium BC), centered at Hattusa,
peaked during the 16th century, and even managed to sack Babylon at one point,
but made no attempt to govern there, choosing instead to turn it over to the
domination of their Kassite allies
who were to rule it for over 400 years. During the 15th century, Hittite
power fell into obscurity, re-emerging with the reign of Tudhaliya I from
ca. 1400 BC. The Old
Kingdom at Memphis from the name of the pyramid of Unas and the high points
of civilization in the Nile Valley- ended during the Nomadic
invasions of Akkad which fell under attack by the Guti (Mesopotamia),
a mountain people from the northeast. The Nile has been the lifeline for Egyptian
culture since the Stone Age or otherwise inhospitable regions of the Sahara.
A severe drought in the region that resulted in a drastic drop
in precipitation between 2200 and 2150 BC, which in turn prevented the normal
flooding of the Nile. The result was the collapse of the Old Kingdom followed
by decades of famine and strife and the advent of the Middle Kingdom of the
11th-14th Dynasty. The Sixth Dynasty ended (2134 BC) about 30
years before the date of the Biblical flood according to the Hebrew Calendar.
After Hattusa was made capital, the area encompassed by the bend of the Halys
River 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. Before 2000 B.C. a settlement of the apparently indigenous
Hatti people of Bronze Age Anatolia was established from the Sixth Millennium B.C. on sites that had been occupied even earlier.
The Hittites were also famous for their skill in building and using chariots.
The Hittites were pioneers of the Iron Age, manufacturing iron artifacts from
as early as the 14th century BC. The Hittites passed much knowledge and lore
from the Ancient Near East to the newly arrived Greeks in Europe as the Sumerians
transfered the Bronze Age technologically to Egypt. By 1380 B.C. Pharaoh Amenhotep
II connects the Nile and the Red Sea inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa
and Asia with a canal.
The Red Sea (Southern Sea) was formed by Arabia splitting from Africa due
to continental drift and is one of the most saline water bodies in the world,
occupying a part of the Great Rift Valley. The Egyptians were the first to
attempt a mission of exploration in the Red Sea. The association of the Red
Sea with the Biblical account of the Exodus, in particular in the Passage
of the Red Sea, goes back to the Septuagint translation of the book of Exodus
from Hebrew into Koine.
Under Suppiluliuma I and Mursili II, the Empire was extended to most of Anatolia
and parts of Syria and Canaan, so that by 1300 the Hittites were bordering
on the Egyptian sphere of influence, leading to the inconclusive Battle of
Kadesh in the early 13th century. The Hittite Empire which began 1322 B.C.
encompassed central Anatolia, north-western Syria as far as Ugarit, and upper
Mesopotamia til the city-states.
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