The Dark Lords of Hattusha

‘The Dark Lords of Hattusha’ recounts the history of the Hittite Empire, which lost 2500 years ago. The deciphering of their language enabled archaeologists to finally retrace this great lost civilization.

Although belonging to the Bronze Age, the Hittites were forerunners of the Iron Age, developing the manufacture of iron artifacts from as early as the 20th century BCE. Hittite weapons were made from bronze; iron was so rare and precious that it was employed only as prestige goods. The Hittites were also famous for their skill in building and using chariots. These chariots gave them a military superiority as illustrated on a plate from Carchemish.

The Hittites were an ancient Indo-European people, speaking a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. They were part of a larger movement of Indo-Europeans in the 30th century BCE and established a kingdom centered at Hattusha on the Central Anatolian plateau ca. the 18th century BCE. The Hittites used cuneiform letters. Archaeological expeditions have discovered entire sets of royal archives in cuneiform tablets, written either in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the time, or in the various dialects of the Hittite confederation.

This film thus takes the viewers back in time and opens the history of this once great empire.

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