Talk:List of Hittite kings

Contradictory dates and names for sacking of Babylon by Hittite King. Listed on this page is Mursili I - sacking of Babylon ca 1531. On page under heading 16th Century BC this event is listed against the date of 1595 BC by Mursilis I. Hhaahland (talk) 00:54, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Section

Question for Dieter A. Bachmann : Why did you axe Piyusti? Is it because you consider him "Hattian" rather than Hittite? This is probably just a question of definition. The word "Hittite" derives from the kings of "Hattusa", which Piyusti was. Neither Pithana nor Anitta, on the other hand, ruled from Hattusa, and yet they remain on the list. (Anitta destroyed it, he did not rule from it. His connection to the later Hittite dynasty remains ambiguous.) Cheers. 69.109.169.10 17:29, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Changes of May 25, 2008

Request that these edits be undone. The Wikipedia article on chronology does not adequately cover the Hittite kings and the problems of dating their reigns.

• There is not agreement on short vs. middle chronology for the Hittites. It just isn't that straightforward. The Wikipedia chronology article deals with it by giving dates for some Hittite kings and just leaving out the rest. Therefore trying to be consistent between the chronology article and the list of Hittite kings here is not adequate. The way it has been handled in these edits is to give short chronology dates to (most of) the Old Kingdom, ignore the Middle Kingdom dates altogether (which is consitent with how it was done before), and then start up (most of) the New Kingdom with the dates that were in this article before.
• The new table makes PU-LUGAL-ma a different individual from Pusarruma. This is one man, not two.

   Done What's the standard spelling for this name? Pu-Sarruma?

  I am accustomed to seeing it as PU-Sarruma. (PU being left as a Sumerogram, LUGAL-ma being normalized to Sarruma) Publik (talk) 19:22, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

• PU-Sarruma does not belong to the Old Kingdom. The Old Kingdom begins with Labarna I.

   Done fixed merging mistake

• It is Hattusili I (Labarna II) that is sometimes stated to be the first king to reoccupy Hattusa, so that statement belongs with him.

   Done fixed merging mistake

• The expression of "Tudhaliya I/II" is unsatisfactory, although done by Bryce. It has been created purely for the purpose of not having to renumber Tudhaliya III (Suppiluliuma's father) and especially Tudhaliya IV. The king list here dealt with the problem by giving Tudhaliya "the younger" the mark of Tudhaliya III (thus leaving Tudhaliya IV intact). I think a better solution would be to give the pre-Old Kingdom Tudhaliya the mark of "Tudhaliya I", leave out "Tudhaliya the Younger" who may never have sat on the throne at all before he was killed, and then the rest of them fall into their customary numbering.

   Done removed

• The existence of Hattusili II is disputed. The question mark should have been left.

   Done

• I don't think the added notes are necessary, particularly geneologies. That information belongs in the individual king articles.
• If you remove the notes, you largely remove the need for tables. I'm normally in favor of tables, but it makes the list look bulky in this case, and the Middle Kingdom is treated inconsistently. And the varying table widths are ugly.
• This new chronology also makes the first paragraph invalid. The dates were changed so that now they do not follow Bryce.
• I'm guessing that the citation request was put in there under the confusion that the man referred to as Tudhaliya III in the old version (i.e. Tudhaliya the Younger) was talking about Suppiluliuma's father, rather than brother.

   Done fixed.

I think that covers all the points. But massive revisions are always subject to missing a couple things. All in all, I think the article was fine how it was, and should be reverted. Thanks for considering. Publik (talk) 05:45, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Although there is no scientific agreement between middle and short chronologies, the short chronology is being used (and labled) for consistency and ease of comparison across Wikipedia.

I think the tables make the information easier to find, and the notes put all the kings and synchronisms in one place for easy reference.

I'll also bring up the content questions on the Chronology page.

Categorystuff (talk) 16:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Exact dates are easy-come easy-go for the Hittites, as they are entirely best guesses. So I won't push the point. I disagree about the tables in this instance (but honestly, I really do like tables!), as I think it spreads the information out, whereas before it was simple, compact, and readable. And there's still the varying table widths, and different handling of the Middle Kingdom, to further disconcert the eye. However, as this is a personal aesthetic, I'll not push this point, either. More seriously, it should be noted that only a select number of synchronisms are included. If this article were meant to handle synchronisms with neighboring kingdoms (which I don't think that it is), the synchronism notes would quickly outweigh the list of kings themselves. To use that word "opinion" again, in my opinion synchronisms belong elsewhere, leaving this article truely limited to the list of Hittite kings that people can quickly skim in order to click on a king they are interested in to learn about the reign and what happened in it. In this article, I feel that less is more. Thanks again for your consideration. Publik (talk) 19:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I can say something about Sumerograms - they used to be written in all CAPS, but not anymore, and the word parts are hyphenated as is done here. And is Sarruma a proper noun (i.e. a god or a city or such?). If not, it technically should be lower case, as in "Pu-sarruma". I don't know how it's usually done in Hittitology, though.

Is is possible to pick out the "most important" synchronisms and events for inclusion on this page?

Categorystuff (talk) 23:54, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Who is doing that for Sumerograms? In what field? Certainly not in Hittitology. Sumerograms and Akkadograms are very common in Hittite texts. It's very important to distinguish them clearly, and the standard system does so. ("Pu" looks like a word, "PU" does not.) Both the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and the Chicago Hittite Dictionary continue with the standard system. Anything else is a very, very bad idea. (You might be able to get away with it in Akkadian, but no way for Hittite.)

'Sarruma' is the name of a Hurrian god, so it is proper to capitalize it.

Synchronisms are the life blood of Hittite "absolute" chronology. There are boatloads of them that are important for establishing approximate dates. (The Hittites didn't bother to date anything themselves.) These synchronisms can be multi-step synchronisms. Trying to include synchronisms here is opening a big can of worms. And it also opens up future edits of this article that include additional types of information, contrary to the original intention. I maintain that they are a bad idea for this article. Let them lie quietly in the chronology article, I say, and let this article stick to its purpose - a king list.

(By the way, the Kings of Assyria article has some very nicely formatted tables.)

Publik (talk) 04:05, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

In transcribing Sumerian, the caps are dispensed with. It take it PU is an unpronounced determiner in Hittite? Categorystuff (talk) 14:14, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps if you are writing in pure Sumerian, you might do that in some cases. But where it's a Sumerogram, it's all uppercase. (Similarly, in an Akkadian language document, the signs are not in all caps. But they are when inserted into Hittite documents (Akkadograms).) In this name, PU is not a determiniative, it's an ideogram (Sumerogram). So it is pronounced, we just aren't sure how. It is frequently suspected that PU = Hešmi, i.e. Hešmi-Šarruma. But there is enough uncertainty to leave it as PU. (If it were a determinative, it would be transcribed as ^PUŠarruma.) The third option, not widely accepted, is that it really is vocalic, i.e. Pušarruma. But no satisfactory etymology has been proposed for such a solution. Publik (talk) 22:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I still think it's useful to connect these kings with the wider world on this page. Categorystuff (talk) 21:42, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Although we must agree to disagree, this can fortunately be resolved easily enough: chuck it out to the audience. For comparison, I took a quick look at the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian king lists - no synchronisms are provided in those. Publik (talk) 22:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

That's because I hadn't got to the Assyrian and Babylonian lists yet ;). I have added them to the Sumerian king list where appropriate, as well as to Larsa and I think a few other cities - I personally like them for orientation. Categorystuff (talk) 23:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I can only strongly recommend that you open this to a broader group to discuss the pros and cons before doing so. I assume there is some place to do this in Wikipedia outside of any particular article, since you are talking about impacting multiple articles.

As an alternative approach, I suggest creating a separate article dedicated to synchronisms, and linking each separate king list to it. Then you can put all the synchronisms together, and see how all the various regions corrolate to each other, instead of spot-checks here and there in each article. Publik (talk) 01:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Well this is your turf, so if you really don't like them, take them off. I do still recommend them, though. Categorystuff (talk) 02:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Neo Hittites

After the collapse of the empire a group of Hittite cities survived. They are usually called Neo-Hittites. It may be a good idea to include the names of Neo Hittites in this article. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 19:57, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Revision of the table

This table should be revised to accord with Bryce's thoroughly revised second edition, 2005, p. xv. If no one else does this in the next few months, I shall do it as best I can myself. --Wetman (talk) 01:23, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree, and have done just that for the more "informed" part of the table (starting with Suppiluliuma I), and added the appropriate references to Bryce and Freu. StefThrax (talk) 01:59, 31 May 2024 (UTC)