The Kings of Hatti — the Hittite Empire

This is a list of the known kings of the Hittite Empire c.1650-1200BC with variations marked where scholars disagree.

As Beckman has written (2000), it is currently impossible to produces an absolute chronology for Hittite monarchs. However, we can assemble a working hypothesis based on the evidence available: surviving tablets from the Hittites’ own archives and those of nearby Near Eastern powers; monumental stone inscriptions from Anatolia, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia; and written statements on other objects, such as the bronze swords and tablet found at Hattusa.

What follows is the list of Hittite kings devised by Bryce (2005). I have included alongside it the points at which it differs from an alternative regnal list published by Beckman (2000). Where the two differ — and this is primarily in the Middle Kingdom period — Bryce’s timeline is on the left, Beckman’s on the right. The differences are subtle and open to scholarly debate; only further discoveries of written material, and revised translations and interpretations of existing tablets and inscriptions will steer us toward the true North of Hittite chronology.

The Age of Bronze favours the Bryce timeline on the basis that both are equally valid readings, but we can only select one as our ‘working hypothesis’. As I say, future discoveries and re-interpretations may — undoubtedly will — change the reading presented here. Whether in favour Bryce or Beckman, we cannot say.

Beal (in Steadman & McMahon, 2011) adds a further reading which shifts the start of Hattusili I’s reign forward; names Huzziya I, Huzziya II, and Huzziya II, Huzziya III; excludes Tudhaliya I (Kantuzili); and provides reign dates for those rulers who Bryce and Beckmann place in a single, broad band.

For further events in the history of the Hittite Empire and its contemporaries, please see the Timelines section.

 
At this point, Hattusa is abandoned by its royalty and the Hittite Empire is no more. Many miles from the coast, this city seems unlikely to have fallen prey to the ‘Peoples of the Sea’, pace the friezes of Ramesses III at Medinet Habbu (if ‘Khatte’ is to be read as ‘Hatti’ — see Cline 2015). However, some diasater, human or environmental, caused the nobles of Hatti to leave their home.