Hittite
/ˈhɪtʌɪt
/noun
1A member of an ancient people who established an empire in Asia Minor and Syria that flourished from circa 1700 to circa 1200 bc.The Capital of the Hittites was in Asia-Minor and it was called Hatttusa....
- Rollerskates only increase the mystery of the ancient Hittites.
- After the Bronze Age, Amorites, Western Semites, Hyksos and Hittites successively invaded the area.
1.1A subject of the Hittite empire or one of their descendants, including a Canaanite or Syrian people mentioned in the Bible (11th to 8th century bc).The conquest of the state of Mitanni in the late 14th century by the Hittites had created a crucial border zone between their empire and the Egyptians....
- Much of that literature has also been found in translation in other contemporary societies of the Near East, such as the literature of the Hittites and the Canaanites.
- Another man named Beeri, a Hittite, was the father of one of the wives of Esau.
2 [mass noun] The language of the Hittites, the oldest attested Indo-European language. Written in both hieroglyphic and cuneiform scripts, it was deciphered in the early 20th century.The paper dates the initial divergence of the Indo-European language family to 8700 years ago, with Hittite as the first language to split off....
- It exists today in myriad, fragmented Sumerian, Hittite, Babylonian, and other versions that scholars have had to piece together.
- The structure of Old Irish, says Professor Watkins, can be compared only with that of Vedic Sanskrit or Hittite of the Old Kingdom.
adjective
Relating to the Hittites, their empire, or their language.This brought Egypt into conflict with the equally expansionist Hittite empire....
- After the collapse of the Hittite empire around 1200 bc the site was abandoned until the mid 1st millennium bc.
- This ‘Succession Myth’ has striking parallels in Akkadian and Hittite texts, and seems originally to have come from the near east.
Origin
From Hebrew Ḥittīm, ultimately from Hittite Ḫatti.