HIT'TITES
Genesis 15:20; 23:10; 25:9; 26:34; Nehemiah 9:8; Ezekiel 16:3,45.
The greatest romance of archaelogical discovery in Bible lands in the 20th Century has been the coming out into the light of the great Hitite empire. Up until 1906 scholars had questioned the very existence of the Hittites as a nation of any importance. But when cuneiform tablets found in their capital at modern Boghaz Köi, Turkey, changed the historical significance of the Hittites. Their empire is comparable to the great civilizations on the Euphrates and the Nile. The Hittites were influenced greatly by the Babylonian culture, especially cuneiform writing and jurisprudence.
It is now known that there were two distinct groups bearing no resemblance to each other which occupied their great inland empire of central Asia Minor. By conquest the Hittites obtained control of the territory in central Anatolia on the Halys River.
Hittites from the city-states of northern Syria probably served in David's armies including Ahimelech (1 Samuel 26:6) and Uriah (2 Samuel 11:3).
It is now apparent that the Hittite allies mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions seem to be identical with the allies of King Priam in the Trojan War. Thus Homer's story of the wars about Troy is also a story in part of the Hittite people.
The lesser known ethnic group which lived in Palestine at the time of the patriarchs were known also as the "sons of Heth" (Genesis 15:19-21). They were descendants of Ham, Noah's son, and Canaan, his grandson (Genesis 10:15; 1 Chronicles 1:13; Numbers 13:29; Joshua 11:3).