All language subtitles for Lost Cities of the Ancients (2006) - S01 E03. The Dark Lords of Hattusha.EN

WOMAN SCREAMS

A mysterious new army has
struck Babylon without warning.

Spreading terror throughout the city.

With ruthless efficiency, these
dark warriors of Hattusha

would go on to destroy
anything in their way.

Their mission -

to become the greatest empire
the world had ever seen.

Yet once they had succeeded,

this ruthless army - and the vast empire
they created - simply disappeared,

as mysteriously as they had emerged.

For 3,000 years, all trace of them was lost

from all the history books, and
even from myth and legend.

Till one by one, fragments from
this lost world began to emerge.

These fragments opened up a world
of mysteries and secret codes.

A fortress city, built to last forever...

An unstoppable war machine...

And a mighty empire, even
greater than that of Egypt.

This is the story of how a
civilisation built to last forever,

could simply vanish from history.

At the turn of the 20th century,

explorers were setting off on one
of archaeology's great quests -

to test the truth of the ancient myths.

The earliest historians had told of a
world before the Bible was written,

ruled by just three mighty empires.
Egypt, Assyria and Babylon.

The explorers now confirmed those accounts.

These three great empires, all
centred on the Middle East,

had left behind fabulous
cities and monuments.

So the notion there could
be a fourth great empire,

of which there was no
trace, seemed impossible.

Yet fragments of a mysterious language, seemingly
spoken across large areas of the ancient world,

were beginning to emerge.

And some even dared to believe this
language, which no-one could understand,

could be evidence of a fourth vast empire -

one completely lost to history.

Hugo Winckler, a German professor,

was one of those who believed
there might be a fourth empire.

But he lacked the proof.

He could read several ancient languages,
including Babylonian and Assyrian.

But now he was scouring the world for
examples of that lost language -

a language no-one could understand.

Because he believed it could lead
him to the lost fourth empire.

He asked his contacts to bring him
any unusual writings that turned up.

Theodor Macridi was Curator at
the Ottoman Museum in Istanbul.

KNOCK ON DOOR

Professor, take a look at this.

It has ended up in my
department at the museum.

A tablet with cuneiform writing on it. Macridi,
couldn't one of your people deal with it?

That's just it. No. No-one
can make any sense of it.

We hoped you could. What do you think?

It's fascinating.

- Why?
- Because I don't understand a word of it.

Not a single word.

This single tablet would be the vital clue
that would lead him to his lost empire.

Right, where does it come from?

There. Some ruins in
Bogazkoy, central Anatolia.

Anatolia? But there's nothing
important up there. Nothing.

Winckler and his team
set off to investigate,

and headed for the wilds of
Anatolia in central Turkey.

Following in the footsteps of earlier explorers,
he went in search of this remote site,

and the source of those strange writings.

But the further he travelled, the more absurd it
seemed that a missing empire could be so far away

from the other named centres
of the ancient world.

And then, in the middle of nowhere,

he saw something remarkable.

A massive gateway adorned with lions.

The shape and style of the carvings
differed to anything he'd ever seen.

The size of the gateway and the quality
of the craftsmanship, breathtaking.

Everywhere, the signs of
a major civilisation.

And it all led into a vast city.

Who built this place?

As Winckler examined the ruins further, he
could see the city stretched out for miles.

Here, in the mountains of Anatolia,

nearly 1,000 miles from the three
key capitals of the ancient world,

were the remains of a vast
city, forgotten by history.

A civilisation about which he and
the rest of the world knew nothing.

The team set up camp.

They were looking for anything to tell them
who had built this extraordinary city,

and if it was connected to
the missing fourth empire.

They discovered clay
tablets across the site.

Each was covered in the same mysterious
language Winckler had seen in the library.

But in order to unlock the secrets
of this lost civilisation,

Winckler now needed to find one tablet in
a language he could actually understand.

For weeks, the team searched, but he
just couldn't make sense of any of them.

The tablets were indecipherable.

And then, at last, something
appeared that did make sense.

A tablet written in a
language he could understand.

Babylonian. The diplomatic
language of the ancient world.

Macridi. Macridi!

Something?

Look, it's in Babylonian.

"Re mah ce sa."

"Shari ra bi."

The treaty which Ramesses the great king,

the King of Egypt... made with Hattusili,

Great King, King of the Hatti,

in order to establish a great peace

and great brotherhood between them forever.

Only the kings of the three great empires -

of Egypt, Assyria and Babylon -
were referred to as "Great King".

And yet here in this peace treaty
was named a fourth Great King.

Hattusili, King of the
mysterious land of Hatti.

Macridi, I think we've
found our lost empire.

The peace treaty, dated to 1259BC,

was proof there had indeed
been a missing fourth empire.

And here...

Yet Winckler was to die before
he could solve the real mystery.

Is the capital city.

How did such a vast empire disappear
so completely from history?

It was a question that would
take nearly 100 years to answer.

Archaeologists would need to
examine the city carefully,

analyse in detail everything recovered,

and then decipher two seemingly
impenetrable codes -

one of them in hieroglyphs.

They called the city Hattusha.

In the land of Hatti.

They called its people the Hittites,

even though they were completely different

to the famous Hittites of the Bible.

The Hittites of Hattusha had built their
capital in the strangest of places.

A place where no capital of
an empire should ever be.

For a great city, it is just so remote.

It's totally cut off. You
can't get in or out.

All major cities of the time were
crossroads to the rest of the world.

Close to the trade routes
or rivers or the sea.

But not Hattusha.

Hattusha was 50 miles from a major river,

locked in behind towering mountain ranges,

it was hundreds of miles from the sea,

and perched high up on the barren
hills where the climate was harsh.

The whole region is landlocked.

It's cut off from the Black Sea, it's some
250 miles from the eastern Mediterranean.

There's the other factor too, because of its height, the
region's snowed in for a number of months of the year.

So it's totally cut off.

It seemed impossible to imagine

how or why the Hittites built
their capital city here.

But archaeologists were to discover
it was precisely these difficulties

that made it the perfect
site for Hittite ambitions.

Every detail of their city
was deliberately planned.

A permanent stronghold, able
to withstand any attack.

The Hittites began by exploiting the
natural defences of the mountains.

They built in the most extreme places.

Carved into sheer rock faces...

And built across steep ravines.

They hauled huge stones
up hundreds of metres.

They drilled holes into solid granite.

And built thick walls along
the edges of sheer cliffs.

Everywhere were feats of
death-defying engineering,

as they forged a city out
of the granite mountains.

One massive outer wall
enclosed the entire city.

It was more than four miles long,

and crossed every obstacle.

An unbreakable ring

to protect the Hittites
from the outside world.

The Hittites then turned every part of
Hattusha into an impregnable fortress.

They were clearly obsessed
with their own security.

These walls were among the
thickest in the ancient world,

with unique features to
strengthen them even further.

We found these large walls
around the whole city,

which, at some places, reach a
width of more than eight metres.

The most surprising feature of the
walls are these puzzling compartments

which make the walls unique
in the ancient world.

These compartments gave the
walls an incredible strength.

The Hittites filled them with a special
watertight mix of earth and sand.

When it was pounded...

it set hard, like concrete.

And on top of these
super-strong foundations,

scientists calculated that Hittite builders
added eight-metre-high mud brick walls.

And images on pottery show
that, at every 12 metres,

they built watchtowers, 30 metres high,

and turned gateways, normally the weak point
of any defensive system, into deadly traps.

Any enemy which did break
through would be caught,

powerless against Hittite defenders on the
massive defensive towers looming above them.

The unique features of the wall meant that the
Hittites were able to build a fortification system

which was unbreakable for
any weapon of its time.

But the city didn't stop there.

Cutting through the site was an inner
wall even thicker than the first.

And here they'd added another
defensive innovation -

secret tunnels. Eight of them.

Anyone who did break through the outer
ring faced an even greater danger -

ambush.

A surprise counter-attack by the
Hittite army hidden in the tunnel.

This was a city bristling with layer
upon layer of defensive rings.

Hattusha was home to
more than 50,000 people.

The Hittites had deliberately chosen a remote mountainous
location, well out of reach of their enemies.

And then transformed this impossible
site into an impregnable fortress.

But the dry, barren mountains of
Anatolia still presented the Hittites

with what seemed an insurmountable problem.

The lack of water.

And so they devised an ingenious way to provide
themselves with continuous, fresh water,

even if they were under siege.

At the heart of their system

were the strangest looking
objects ever found at the site.

Although, at first, it wasn't
clear exactly what they were.

Luckily, while digging the upper
city we were able to find,

um, a row of them, and it was understood
that this narrowing of the cylinder

was just used to stick them together to form a
row, so then it became obvious, it's a pipe.

The Hittites had discovered natural
springs in the hills above Hattusha.

Using the pressure of the water, they
then ran it across the neighbouring hills

and down into vast storage
pools within the city walls.

It became clear that the
Hittites were rather clever

in bringing water from the natural springs to the highest
point of the city, to where they built the ponds.

These seven ponds were huge.

One alone held enough to meet the
needs of 10,000 people for a year.

They ran the fresh water down through
miles of pipes into the city's buildings.

It is a masterpiece of ancient engineering.

Um, the Hittites were able to use
the landscape very cleverly.

The Hittites had imposed themselves
on this strange remote place,

and forced it to meet their needs.

As archaeologists mapped out the city,

it confirmed just how impressive
this civilisation had once been.

As soon as the Hittites had
made their city impregnable,

they decided to show the world
just how powerful they were.

They designed monuments to
be the envy of the world

and stand forever as evidence
of their power and strength.

One of the buildings had
monumental doorways

and 200 rooms surrounding
a vast central courtyard.

Inside were a number of
ritualistic objects.

This was the great temple of Hattusha -

the most holy place in the entire empire.

At the highest point of the city,
there was even a massive pyramid.

250 metres wide, with 100
steps leading to the top.

It was magnificent.

The outer city wall ran
across the top of it.

In the centre, a gateway
adorned with sphinxes,

facing south, to Egypt.

The first sight of the
city for most visitors.

A symbol of the power
of the Hittite empire.

But it was on a hill, right
in the centre of the city,

that the Hittites built the most
important building of all -

a castle for the king.

This was the beating heart of the city.

Around the castle, yet another
massive fortified wall

to keep the king safe.

From here, every corner of
the city could be observed.

A central passageway ran up through the castle,
denying access to all but the most important.

At the top, were the king's
own private apartments,

at the heart of the city
and its massive defences.

And laid out beneath, a
wonder of the ancient world.

This truly was a city built
on a monumental scale.

Every detail of its defences and
survival had been ingeniously designed.

The Hittites, it seemed, has planned
for Hattusha to be here forever.

But still there was nothing
to explain how they'd emerged

from their isolated city
to build a great empire.

And how they'd disappeared
so completely from history.

For this, archaeologists would need
to continue searching for clues.

They uncovered the sacred
places of the kings.

They found images of the
Hittites themselves.

And others that revealed their
obsession with warfare.

And with death.

But strangely, throughout the city,
they discovered few precious objects.

None of the things normally found among
the remains of an ancient capital.

It was if Hattusha had been
mysteriously stripped clean,

leaving nothing behind to reveal
the fate of the Hittite empire.

But ancient Hattusha did have one wonderful treasure
just waiting to be discovered by archaeologists.

Not gold or jewels, but
something far more precious.

Hidden away in a labyrinth of rooms
are five enormous libraries.

In them, beautifully filed and
catalogued, were 30,000 tablets.

It was one of the largest and
oldest libraries ever discovered.

Recorded here, the thoughts and
deeds of this mysterious people.

The inside story of a lost
civilisation laid out in neat rows,

just waiting to be read.

There was only one problem.

They were written in a language
no-one could understand.

Cracking this code was to absorb some
of the greatest linguistic minds.

The Hittite language was written in
a series of triangular-shaped signs

called cuneiform, one of the
world's oldest writing systems.

Because it was used for writing several
ancient Middle Eastern languages,

the cuneiform signs themselves were
known, and could be easily read.

It was the Hittite language that
was impossible to understand.

It's like being able to read the sounds of Latin,
because it's written in our familiar alphabet,

without being able to understand
the meaning of any of the words.

The key to cracking an unknown language
is to find a language that's similar.

It's then possible, using shared words
and grammar, to begin the decipherment.

But Hittite baffled everyone.

It seemed to be a language all on its own.

There was no other Middle
Eastern language like it.

But the code was finally cracked

with the discovery of just one
sentence among thousands.

A Czech scholar came across the
sentence that starts right here

and ends at the end of the column.

You can see it much better on a
hand copy that we have right here.

It's this sentence.

HE READS THE DIALECT

I have here the same sentence written
out again, first in cuneiform,

then in our own alphabet.

He could see the sign for bread. Something
common to many ancient languages.

"NINDA-an".

But then he saw something that stopped him dead.
Something no-one could have expected -

a word in English.

So, here, one of the words...

jumped out at him at first.

Er, "wa-a-tar."

Well, that is, of course, very
much like our own English "water".

And in a similar way, "ez-za" reminded him
very much of the old High German for "to eat".

"Etzum", which sounds very much the same.

So, in combination, he seemed
to have a sentence here,

a complete sentence that he
might now be able to translate,

so he might have written out the
words, like I've done here,

and the "nu" reminded him of Latin
"nunc", for example, which means "now".

The "NINDA-an"

he recognised as "bread".

"E-ez-za-at-te-ni" - we
already saw was "to eat".

"Wa-a-tar" could be the "water" word,

and the "e-ku-ut-te-ni", at the very end,

the "e-ku" part reminded him very
much of Latin "aqua". Water.

So that might be "to
drink" if it is a verb,

in common, used in combination with water.

So, here he recognised a sentence
that could be translated as,

"Now you eat bread and you drink water."

And with this, he had the first full Hittite
sentence translated in 30,000 years.

The breakthrough surprised everyone.

It meant Hittite was not a Middle
Eastern language, as everyone expected,

but an Indo-European
language, just like English.

The Hittites were unlike all their
rivals in the ancient world,

because they were not from the Middle
East, but from some part of Europe.

The Hittites must have migrated to Turkey

and then chosen the barren mountains of
Anatolia to build their fortress city.

Now, finally, the world of the Hittites
was laid bare for all to read.

Each word revealing more and more of
this mysterious lost civilisation.

And so, for the first time in 3,000 years,

the fabulous story of the fourth great
empire of the ancient world could be told.

It was a story of how the Hittites
carefully planned and executed a strategy

to become a great superpower.

And it all began with control.

Theirs was a world obsessed by
order and riddled with fear.

From the tablets, it was clear that every
aspect of Hittite life was tightly regulated.

From working on state farms,
to the payment of taxes.

And even to people's sex lives.

The texts revealed the population was
tightly controlled by harsh penalties.

"Execute the entire family
of he who disobeys the King."

"Cut off the nose and ears of
the slave who starts a fire..."

"Kill the man who steals a bronze spear."

"He shall be put to death."

"Take away the land of the
man who refuses to pay..."

The commandments of the Hittites, it appears,
were duty, discipline and sacrifice.

And then, to ensure total obedience,

oaths were sworn to the gods who could
themselves inflict terrible punishment.

The anger... of the gods would be
inflicted on you when you broke an oath.

And these oaths would also be very often,
sort of, enforced, strengthened by rituals.

But the most important oath
was loyalty to the King.

According to the texts, a ruling elite,

the lords of Hattusha, executed his will.

These close members of
the King's own family

were the real power in Hattusha.

Bound together by a sacred bond of
unity in the service of the King.

The Storm God will destroy
anyone who dishonours the King.

All must stand united with the King.

To break this bond of brotherhood was the
most terrible act a Hittite could commit.

The gods will always come back at
you if you kill a family member,

and that was a real taboo
in Hittite society.

The brothers burned
effigies of their enemies.

Rituals like this strengthened the sacred bond
of brotherhood that held Hattusha together

in this hostile environment.

This bond was the rock upon which
Hittite success was built.

The texts revealed just how efficiently
the Hittites imposed order on Hattusha.

The libraries held detailed
accounts of the administration,

recorded the treaties and
alliances with other kings

and compiled a detailed history
of the Hittites themselves.

Everything seemed designed
for a greater purpose.

A plan to impose Hittite
power on the world.

And at the heart of their strategy was the
plan to build an unstoppable war machine.

They began by developing

a very effective military
machine, and I think

that's the core of Hittite success.
Very highly disciplined.

Training manuals dictated how to turn
raw recruits into ruthless warriors.

Specialist training sergeants imposed
punishing schedules and absolute obedience.

And trained them in the deadly arts of war.

Officers who don't obey
immediately will be blinded.

We expect soldiers to
spy on their comrades.

Missing targets will be punished.

The king orders him killed.

The best warriors specialised in chariot fighting,
the most powerful weapon of the ancient world.

The horses were force-fed a special diet

and pushed to the limits of their endurance.
The weakest were killed.

It seemed the Hittites had one ambition - to create
a military force that could win at any cost.

They then unleashed their
war machine on the world.

According to the texts,
for hundreds of years,

the great cities and kingdoms of the ancient world
surrendered, or were crushed by the Hittites.

From the Arzawa and Uliwanda in the west,
to Niya, Arahtu and Qatna in the south.

The mighty kingdoms of Aleppo and Mitanni, and
even the lands of the Kaska as far as Hatenzuwa.

The Hittites showed no mercy.

This text tells about a Hittite
king who destroyed a city,

and, at the end, after the city had
been plundered and razed to the ground,

sowed poisonous weeds, simply to make sure
that it would never be resettled again.

So we can see this as a very early
form of biological warfare.

In just one line, the texts record how
the Hittites marched nearly 1,000 miles

to the great city of Babylon,

destroyed it and marched home.

Some kingdoms fought back,
and at times even won.

But nothing could stop
the relentless Hittites.

Their mission was to build
the world's greatest empire.

And now only one power stood in their way -

Egypt.

By 1279BC, Ramesses the Great,

one of the most powerful leaders
in Egyptian history, was pharaoh.

And he knew the Hittites now
threatened Egypt itself.

His own empire stretched from the
Nile to where Syria is today.

All the ancient empires vied to control
this strategically vital area.

And at the heart of the region
was the town of Kadesh.

Whoever controlled Kadesh
might well claim to be

the most powerful king in the
whole near-eastern region.

So that was the bone of contention
between Egypt and the Hittites.

War between the world's two great
superpowers was inevitable.

Its outcome would decide the fate
of the whole of the Middle East.

The stakes could not be higher.

Ramesses commanded more resources
and now added extra divisions,

making his the largest
army in Egyptian history.

Prince Hattusili was the Hittite general with
the largest Hittite army ever assembled -

more than 47,000 men.

And crucially, the Hittites had ruthlessly
prepared for the inevitable clash.

They now unveiled something that
would give them that vital edge.

A new super-weapon.

Some time before the Battle of Kadesh, the Hittites
introduced an innovation in chariot warfare.

What they did was to transfer the wheel
from the back of the car to the centre.

And that was associated with
a very significant change.

This Hittite innovation
revolutionised ancient warfare.

Moving the wheels from the
rear to the centre of the car

made the chariot stronger, and so
capable of carrying an extra man.

And that gave the chariot
greater weight and firepower.

This changed the battle tactics,
in that these three-man vehicles

could be used rather more like a, say, a small
modern tank, for charging into the enemy

right at the beginning of a battle, so
presumably creating as much mayhem as possible,

getting deeper into enemy ranks.

The Battle of Kadesh in 1274BC was the
greatest battle the world had ever seen.

Thousands of Hittite chariots
smashed into the Egyptian lines.

The Egyptians claimed victory.

But we now know from the
texts found in Hattusha,

that in fact the Hittites had won the war.

A peace treaty in the Hittite library shows
that their commander, Prince Hattusili,

actually conquered all the territory around Kadesh
and drove the Egyptians hundreds of miles south.

The new super-weapon, together
with superior tactics,

had won the day.

Kadesh was a great victory
for the Hittites.

Back in Hattusha, the king was finally one
of the most powerful men in the world.

His uncle, Prince Hattusilis, had defeated the
armies of the pharaoh and returned home a hero.

Remote Hattusha was now the
capital city of a vast empire.

Soon after, Ramesses agreed
an everlasting peace.

In it, the Hittite ruler
was called "Great King",

the title reserved for the
head of a great superpower.

The Hittite's mission was complete.

A small band of brothers had appeared,

and within just a few hundred
years, had forged a mighty empire.

The future belonged to them.

And yet, within decades of the triumphant
return from Kadesh of Prince Hattusili,

this mighty empire vanished from history.

And still no-one knew why.

Every word in the five great libraries of
Hattusha was carefully re-examined for answers.

Somewhere here had to be the final
dramatic chapter of the Hittites.

Surely, only the greatest of catastrophes

could bring the fourth great empire
of the ancient world crashing down.

But they found nothing.

Not one word.

The archives seem to run out,

er, right before the end.

There's nothing that sheds any light
on the very last days of the empire.

It was now clear the
archive would never reveal

what disaster had overwhelmed
the Hittites 3,000 years ago.

And erased all trace of them.

And that's how things remained, until archaeologists
uncovered something that had lain buried

in the heart of Hattusha
for more than 3,000 years.

At first sight, it looked
like the tomb of a king.

But inside, there was no body.

Instead, the walls were
covered in strange symbols.

Hieroglyphs.

A second impossible Hittite code.

These symbols would one day help
unravel the fate of this empire -

a fate brought about not by mighty armies,

but by an all-too-human
tragedy of greed and revenge.

TRANSLATED: We didn't know
what it was at first,

but later when we saw the
hieroglyphs on the walls,

we realised this must
be an important place.

But no-one there could read them.

And they would take years
to fully decipher.

"Amu-u-vah-pah-la-va-sa..."

There are only a handful of people
who can read Hittite hieroglyphs,

and two of them are married to each other.

Professor Dincol and his wife, Belkis,

have devoted their lives to
understanding these strange symbols.

They knew from hieroglyphs already
discovered around the empire,

that this code was increasingly
important to the last Hittite kings.

And so now, together with colleagues
around the world, they got to work.

Hieroglyphs are notoriously
difficult to decipher.

They start off simply enough.

If you draw a figure pointing to himself,

this means, "I am".

But things become more complicated with
the expression of abstract thoughts.

Such a hieroglyph in English
could be created like this.

For example, an eye and a dear,

this would mean "eye deer".

Idea.

The same sign can have
more than one meaning.

But, to make matters worse, some
Hittite hieroglyphs had evolved

until the picture signs no longer
looked like anything recognisable.

The experts needed something
to help them unlock the code.

That came with a number of intriguing finds,
including hundreds of tiny lumps of clay.

They were name seals, a kind
of ancient business card

with the name and rank of the
owner inscribed into the clay.

Around the edge, words were written in
cuneiform, which could be understood.

And in the centre,

the same words, but in hieroglyphs.

So now the code breakers could
begin to match the two.

One by one, the hieroglyphs
were deciphered.

The first hieroglyph from the
cave was also the most exciting.

It was a symbol of the last
known king of the Hittites.

Well, here are the signs of "Great King"

and, here, "hero".

The hieroglyphs told the story of
his last great military campaign.

Surely, here also would be the
name of the mighty foreign power

that had finally brought about
the downfall of the Hittites.

But as the names of his
enemies were deciphered,

everyone was stunned.

Because the enemy that was
named was not foreign,

but came from within the
Hittite empire itself.

That could only mean civil war.

The hieroglyphs had revealed
an unexpected story.

In the last years of the Hittite empire,

the great king was desperately suppressing
a rebellion deep inside Hittite territory.

Now, piece by piece, everything
began to fall into place.

Prince Hattusili's return
from the triumph at Kadesh

had, in fact, sparked a bitter family
feud with the king, his nephew.

The king appears to become
increasingly nervous

about the great power
which Hattusili wielded.

Suspected his intentions, started
stripping him of his powers

and once that happened, Hattusili realised that
his days were numbered unless he retaliated.

Hattusili acted quickly.

He broke the most sacred oath of the
Hittites - the oath of brotherhood.

He arrested the king and
sent him into exile.

The loyalty at the heart of
Hittite unity was shattered.

Brother turned against brother,

and for the next three generations, the
civil war spiralled out of control.

Until Hattusha, at the heart
of the empire, lay dying.

The civil war slowly drained the
great city of Hattusha of life.

The city was designed to withstand
attack from any foreign invader,

but not from within the brotherhood itself.

The civil war brought about the collapse of the
rigid order that had kept the kingdom together,

and the empire began to fragment.

Food no longer reached Hattusha, and
the great capital began to starve.

Now, one of the texts, a very famous text,

is a letter written by a Hittite
king to Vassal, king in Ugarit,

er, urgently requesting that a large consignment
of grain be sent to the Hittite homeland,

and the letter finishes by saying,
"It's a matter of life and death."

Day by day, the poison of betrayal
that Hattusili had unleashed

was weakening Hattusha and draining
Hittite authority around the empire.

But what exactly happened in
the last days of Hattusha

to make the Hittites disappear
so completely from history?

None of the texts or
hieroglyphs could help.

Then, archaeologists uncovered
one last clue in Hattusha

that would help solve the mystery.

As they dug deep into the foundations
of the palace and other key buildings,

they uncovered bricks that
had been baked hard by fire.

But only parts of the city seemed affected.

We have fires here at
the palace in Bogazkoy,

but also in the temple area.
Temple one, and here...

In the upper temple area,
some of the temples burned.

Here, this temple, temple seven, burned.

Only the important buildings
of state were burnt down.

But there was something even stranger
about the destruction of these buildings.

It seems as if those parts of the
city which were destroyed by fire,

er, were... beforehand were
cleaned or were emptied.

The precious objects, which
must once have been there -

the gold, treasures and the most recent
archives of the Hittites - had all disappeared.

And nowhere was there any sign of an
invading army, whether foreign or Hittite.

There was one theory that could explain all
the most recent archaeological evidence.

The Hittites knew their city and empire were
finished, and so they abandoned their city.

It's even possible that, as they left, they
set fire to their own great buildings -

leaving nothing of value to their enemies.

What does the Great King of Hattusha
do in the last moments of desperation?

I believe that what he did was to
organise a systematic evacuation

of the... above all, the acropolis
and the royal buildings,

so that he would take his most valuable
possessions with him, including documents.

Together, the Hittite
brothers were invincible.

They had built a great city and created the
fourth great empire of the ancient world.

They looked set to rule forever.

But with their code of unity
broken, everything disintegrated.

At the height of their power, fear and
greed turned them against each other.

The Hittites deserted their city.

They left behind no monuments
recording their incredible deeds,

and the great libraries containing their story
were burned, burying all the clay tablets.

The Hittites then simply
abandoned Hattusha.

And disappeared without trace.

The interesting question, I
think, is where did they go?

If they took their most
valuable documents with them,

this could mean that the last chapter of
Hittite history lies hidden somewhere,

just waiting to be dug up.

The Hittites had deliberately built
the city of Hattusha to last forever.

But it was so remote that no other great
civilisation ever settled up here again.

There was no-one to pass on the
myths and legends of the Hittites,

and so their history died with the city.

Over time, the stones of Hattusha
were buried and its name forgotten.

And so the amazing story of
the Hittites disappeared

for more than 3,000 years.