Editing Hittites (section)

===Post-Hittite period===
[[File:Hetite_God_in_Aleppo.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Luwians|Luwian]] storm god [[Tarḫunz]] in the [[National Museum of Aleppo]]]]
{{Main|Syro-Hittite states}}
By 1160 BC, the political situation in Asia Minor looked vastly different from that of only 25 years earlier. In that year, the Assyrian king [[Tiglath-Pileser I]] was defeating the ''[[Mushki]]'' (Phrygians) who had been attempting to press into Assyrian colonies in southern Anatolia from the Anatolian highlands, and the Kaska people, the Hittites' old enemies from the northern hill-country between Hatti and the Black Sea, seem to have joined them soon after. The Phrygians had apparently overrun [[Cappadocia]] from the West, with recently discovered epigraphic evidence confirming their origins as the Balkan "Bryges" tribe, forced out by the Macedonians.

Although the Hittite Kingdom disappeared from Anatolia at this point, there emerged a number of so-called [[Syro-Hittite states]] in Anatolia and northern Syria. They were the successors of the Hittite Kingdom. The most notable Syro-Hittite kingdoms were those at [[Carchemish]] and [[Melid]]. With the ruling family in Carchemish believed to have been a [[Carchemish#Kuzi-Teshub I|cadet branch]] of the then defunct central ruling Hittite line. These Syro-Hittite states gradually fell under the control of the [[Neo-Assyrian Empire]] (911–608 BC). Carchemish and Melid were made vassals of Assyria under [[Shalmaneser III]] (858–823 BC), and fully incorporated into Assyria during the reign of [[Sargon II]] (722–705 BC).

A large and powerful state known as [[Tabal (state)|Tabal]] occupied much of southern Anatolia. Known as Greek ''[[Tibareni|Tibarenoi]]'' ({{langx|grc|Τιβαρηνοί}}), Latin ''Tibareni'', ''Thobeles'' in [[Josephus]], their language may have been Luwian,<ref>Barnett, R.D., "Phrygia and the Peoples of Anatolia in the Iron Age", ''The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. II, Part 2'' (1975) p. 422</ref> testified to by monuments written using [[Anatolian hieroglyphs]].<ref>The Georgian historian [[Ivane Javakhishvili]] considered Tabal, [[Tubal]], [[Jabal (name)|Jabal]] and [[Jubal (Bible)|Jubal]] to be ancient [[Georgians|Georgian]] tribal designations, and argued that they spoke [[Kartvelian languages]], a non-Indo-European language</ref> This state too was conquered and incorporated into the vast Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Ultimately, both Luwian hieroglyphs and cuneiform were rendered obsolete by an innovation, the [[alphabet]], which seems to have entered Anatolia simultaneously from the [[Aegean civilization|Aegean]] (with the Bryges, who changed their name to Phrygians), and from the [[Phoenicia]]ns and neighboring peoples in Syria.