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The empire which pressed back the Egyptians is the last but one which we have to consider before 1000 B.C. It has long been known that the Hittites, variously called Kheta by Egyptians and Heth or Hatti by Semites and by themselves, developed into a power in westernmost Asia at least as early as the fifteenth century; but it was not until their cuneiform archives were discovered in 1907 at Boghazkeui in northern Cappadocia that the imperial nature of their power, the centre from which it was exerted, and the succession of the rulers who wielded it became clear.
A century and a half later the Hatti had returned into a darkness even deeper than that from which they emerged. The last king of Boghazkeui, of whose archives any part has come to light, is one Arnaunta, reigning in the end of the thirteenth century.
But these Mushki had so far adopted Hatti civilization either before or since their great raiding expedition which Tiglath Pileser I of Assyria repelled, that their domination can scarcely have made much difference to the social condition of Asia Minor. Their capital was probably where the Hatti capital had been at Boghazkeui; but how far their lordship radiated from that centre is not known.
And since, moreover, the excavated ruins at both Boghazkeui, the capital of the Hatti, and Carchemish, their chief southern dependency, show unmistakable signs of destruction and of a subsequent general reconstruction, which on archaeological grounds must be dated not much later than Arnaunta's time, it seems probable that the history of Hatti empire closed with that king.
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