Editing Bronze Age (section)

=== Anatolia ===
{{further|Prehistory of Anatolia#Bronze Age}}
[[File:Hattusa Bronze Tablet Cuneiform.JPG|thumb|upright|Hittite bronze tablet from Çorum-Boğazköy dating from 1235&nbsp;BC, [[Museum of Anatolian Civilizations]], [[Ankara]]]]

The [[Hittite Empire]] was established during the 18th century&nbsp;BCE in [[Hattusa]], northern [[Anatolia]]. At its height in the 14th century&nbsp;BCE, the Hittite Kingdom encompassed central Anatolia, southwestern Syria as far as [[Ugarit]], and upper [[Mesopotamia]]. After 1180&nbsp;BCE, amid general turmoil in the [[Levant]], which is conjectured to have been associated with the sudden arrival of the [[Sea Peoples]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Killebrew |first=Ann E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gBCl2IQfNioC&pg=PA1 |title=The Philistines and Other 'Sea Peoples' in Text and Archaeology |publisher=Society of Biblical Literature |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-58983-721-8 |series=Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and biblical studies |volume=15 |page=2 |quote=First coined in 1881 by the French Egyptologist G. Maspero (1896), the somewhat misleading term 'Sea Peoples' encompasses the ethnonyms Lukka, Sherden, Shekelesh, Teresh, Eqwesh, Denyen, Sikil / Tjekker, Weshesh, and Peleset (Philistines). [Footnote: The modern term 'Sea Peoples' refers to peoples that appear in several New Kingdom Egyptian texts as originating from 'islands' (tables 1–2; Adams and Cohen, this volume; see, e.g., [[Robert Drews|Drews]] 1993, 57 for a summary). The use of quotation marks in association with the term 'Sea Peoples' in our title is intended to draw attention to the problematic nature of this commonly used term. It is noteworthy that the designation 'of the sea' appears only concerning the Sherden, Shekelesh, and Eqwesh. Subsequently, this term was applied somewhat indiscriminately to several additional ethnonyms, including the Philistines, who are portrayed in their earliest appearance as invaders from the north during the reigns of Merenptah and Ramesses Ill (see, e.g., Sandars 1978; Redford 1992, 243, n. 14; for a recent review of the primary and secondary literature, see Woudhuizen 2006). Henceforth the term Sea Peoples will appear without quotation marks.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Drews |first=Robert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bFpK6aXEWN8C&pg=PA48 |title=The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1993 |isbn=0691025916 |pages=48–61 |quote=The thesis that a great 'migration of the Sea Peoples' occurred ca. 1200 B.C. is supposedly based on Egyptian inscriptions, one from the reign of Merneptah and another from the reign of Ramesses III. Yet in the inscriptions themselves, such a migration nowhere appears. After reviewing what the Egyptian texts have to say about 'the sea peoples', one Egyptologist (Wolfgang Helck) recently remarked that although some things are unclear, 'eins ist aber sicher: Nach den ägyptischen Texten haben wir es nicht mit einer "Völkerwanderung" zu tun.' Thus, the migration hypothesis is based not on the inscriptions themselves but on their interpretation.}}</ref> the kingdom disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived into the 8th century&nbsp;BCE.

[[Arzawa]], in Western Anatolia, during the second half of the 2nd millennium&nbsp;BC, likely extended along southern Anatolia in a belt from near the [[Turkish Lakes region]] to the [[Aegean Sea|Aegean]] coast. [[Arzawa]] was the western neighbour of the Middle and New [[Hittite Kingdom]]s, at times a rival and, at other times, a vassal.

The [[Assuwa league]] was a confederation of states in western Anatolia defeated by the Hittites under the earlier [[Tudhaliya I]] {{circa|1400&nbsp;BC|lk=no}}E. Arzawa has been associated with the more obscure [[Assuwa]] generally located to its north. It probably bordered it, and may have been an alternative term for it during some periods.