Hittite Empire
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The Hittite Empire dominated Anatolia and challenged Egypt for control of Syria between about 1600 and 1178 BCE. The Hittites spoke an Indo-European language unique in writing with cuneiform, and they worshipped the storm god Tarhunna alongside older Anatolian deities. The old kingdom fell to internal strife, but from the sixteenth century the empire expanded under Suppiluliuma I, who defeated Mitanni and took Syrian cities; his correspondence with the Egyptian court survives in the Amarna letters. The battle of Kadesh in 1274 BCE between Ramesses II and Muwatalli ended in a stalemate, and some twelve years later the two powers signed the earliest surviving international peace treaty, copies of which hang today at the United Nations. The empire was organised into provinces ruled by nobles who owed troops and loyalty to the king, and it used a congress system to settle disputes between vassal kings. Around 1200 BCE the capital Hattusa was burned and abandoned as the wider eastern Mediterranean collapsed; a remnant kingdom survived in Cilicia for another two centuries, and the Luwian language and storm god passed into the cultures of Syria and Anatolia. Their archives of thousands of clay tablets were found in the royal palace at Hattusa.