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Warmatrix

War Matrix - Hittites

Late Bronze Age 1600 BCE - 1100 BCE, Armies and troops

Hittite lion hunting scene
Hittite lion hunting scene
The Hittites built an empire in Anatolia around 1600 BCE, centered around the capital Hattusa. It waxed and waned for four centuries, coming down around 1180 BC in the Late Bronze Age Collapse, together with other bronze age empires.
The main weapon of the Hittites was the chariot. It provided mobility and could be used to harass and sometimes startle enemy forces. Chariot warriors usually fired arrows from composite handbows, but also wielded spears and hand weapons. Both drivers and warriors needed two hands to man the reigns and wield bows, so could not use shields. This led to the development of metal armor, usually metal scales over a leather undercoat.
Their armor and weapons were made of bronze, but the Hittites are also credited with being the first people to master iron working. Iron tools and weapons had been made before, but the Hittites were the first to produce them in large numbers. Apparently they jealously guarded the secret of their craft. Contrary to some theories, iron does not seem to have given a decisive advantage to Hittite armies, and was used side by side with bronze for a long time.
Chariots, horses and to a lesser degree composite bows were expensive and fighting with them required skill and training. Both were ideally suited to a small elite of professional warriors, which formed the nobility. They ruled over the common people, who supplied the infantry. The various groups of noble warriors were loosely related and organized. The Hittite empire was more of a confederacy of equals, nominally loyal to the king, rather than a centralized state. In its later years it adopted more features of neighboring empires, like a bureaucracy and god-like status for its kings.
Ironically it seems to have been their own invention, iron working, that brought down the Hittite empire. Iron gradually, but steadily, replaced bronze in many places, disrupting old trade networks that heavily relied on the exchange of copper and tin. Possibly combined with long lasting drought, this cracked the fragile empires that were built on that trade and prompted the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.