A comprehensive history of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of the Hittites and the role it played within the context of the ancient Near Eastern world in general. From their capital Hattusa in central Anatolia, the Hittite kings ruled a vast network of subject territories and vassal states reaching from the Aegean coast of Anatolia through Syria to the river Euphrates. In the 14th-century BC the Hittites became the supreme political and military power in the Near East. How did they achieve their supremacy? How successful were they in maintaining it? What brought about their collapse and disappearance? In seeking to answer these questions, the book begins with an account of the Hittites' predecessors in Anatolia, particularly in the early centuries of the second millennium, traces the rise and development of the Hittite kingdom over a period of some 500 years, and ends with the events which followed in the wake of the kingdom's collapse. Translations from the original texts are a particular feature of the book; thus on many issues the Hittites and their contemporaries are allowed to speak to the modern reader for themselves.;This book is intended for students and scholars of ancient Near Eastern civilizations and archaeology, and their influence on the classical world.