Egyptology, Assyriology, and especially Hittitology are very young disciplines. Champollion published his Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens Égyptiens in 1824. Akkadian was considered more or less adequately understood by 1857, when the British Royal Asiatic Society received roughly equivalent translations of an unpublished text from four scholars (Henry Talbot, Edward Hincks, Henry Rawlinson, and Jules Oppert). Although a couple of Hittite tablets to/from a kingdom in western Anatolia had been found among the Amarna letters recovered in 1887, Bedřich Hrozný did not decipher Hittite until 1915, a few years after the excavations at the Hittite capital began, which turned up thousands of Hittite tablets. Our knowledge of the Sumerians also developed relatively recently, which I discussed in When did the modern understanding of the history of Bronze Age Mesopotamia develop?

It is not true, as is often claimed, that the Hittites are known only from the Old Testament. The Old Testament was, however, the main source of references to the Hittites prior to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform and the exploration of central Anatolia in the 1800s.

The Hittites appear frequently in Egyptian monumental texts. For example, most of our knowledge of the battle of Kadesh - the showdown between the Egyptians under Ramesses II and the Hittites under Muwatalli II - comes from copies of the two Egyptian accounts (the "Bulletin" and the "Poem") rather than the laconic Hittite references to the battle. To the later amusement of the Hittite king Hattušili III, Ramesses made some grandiose claims about the battle.

Then the vile chief of Hatti wrote and worshiped my name like that of Re, saying: "You are Seth, Ba'al in person: the dread of you is a fire in the land of Hatti." He sent his envoy with a letter in his hand (addressed) to the great name of my majesty, greeting the Majesty of the Palace: "Re-Horakhti, the Strong-Bull-beloved-of-Ma'at, the Sovereign who protects his army, mighty on account of his strong arm, rampart of his soldiers on the day of battle, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Usermaatre-setepenre, the Son of Re, the lion, lord of strength: Ramesses, beloved of Amun, given life forever."

The famous treaty between Hattušili III of Hatti and Ramesses II of Egypt is known from both Egypt (Karnak and the Ramesseum) and Hattuša. Particularly interesting is the description of the hieroglyphic seals of Hattušili III and his wife Puduhepa.

What is in the middle of this silver tablet:

On its front side is a figure in the likeness of Seth embracing the form of the great chief of Hatti, surrounded by these words:

"The seal of Seth, the ruler of the skies,

the seal of the treaty which Hattušili, the great chief of Hatti, the Hero, the son of Muršili, the Hero, the great chief of Hatti, the Hero, made."

...

What is in the middle of its reverse side:

A depiction in the form of the goddess of Hatti embracing the form of the great one (fem.) of Hatti, surrounded by these words:

"The seal of the Sun Goddess of the city of Arinna, the lady of the land.

The seal of Puduhepa, the queen of the land of Hatti, the daughter of the land of Kizzuwatna, the priestess of the Sun Goddess of Arinna, the mistress of the land, the servant of the goddess."

The marriage between Ramesses II and the oldest daughter of Hattušili II is known both from the letters between the Egyptian and Hittite courts found at Hattuša and Ramesses' Marriage Stelae in Egypt (copies were inscribed at Abu Simbel, Elephantine, Karnak, and Amarah West). The second Egyptian-Hittite marriage, however, is known only from Egyptian stelae from Coptos and Abydos.

Words spoken by the great chief of Hatti: "I have come before you to adore your beauty by subduing the foreign countries, for you are truly the son of Seth, and he has decreed for you the land of Hatti, and I am plundered of all my belongings. My eldest daughter is before them in order to present them to your face. Good is all that you have decreed for us, while I am under your feet forever and ever, as is the entire land of Hatti. When you arise upon the seat of Re, every land is under your feet forever."

Based largely on this Egyptian evidence, Archibald Sayce argued correctly in lectures given between 1876 and 1880 that the Hittites were not a minor hill tribe but rather a mighty empire based in Syria and Anatolia. His argument was bolstered by the then recent discovery of the Hama stones in Syria, now known to be inscriptions from the kingdom of Hama, one of the successor "Neo-Hittite" (or "Syro-Hittite") kingdoms of the Iron Age.

The Hittites are also attested in Mesopotamia. Chronicle 20 of the Babylonian Chronicles, for example, references the sacking of Babylon by Muršili I at the beginning of the Hittite Old Kingdom.

At the time of Šamšu-ditana, the Hittites marched against Akkad.

Another example is the letter from the Hittite royal couple to the Babylonian queen, found at the Babylonian capital of Dur-Kurigalzu in the 1940s. I discussed Hittite-Babylonian relations in a previous post.

Most of our information about Hittite history comes from the Hittite capital of Hattuša, however, where proper excavations began in 1906. For more on Hittite texts from Anatolia, see my post about the textual sources for Hittite history.