The Iron Age States of Central Anatolia and Northern Syria

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the history of southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria from ca. 1180 to the middle of the sixth century bc, covering those states that emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of the Late Bronze Age Hittite Empire and that, for the most part, consisted of single cities and their hinterland. The chapter explores how the various sources available today, from archaeological evidence to texts (principally the Assyrian royal inscriptions and various local evidence written in Anatolian hieroglyphic or West Semitic alphabetic script), inform attempts to reconstruct the history of this region. In distilling and combining this information, the chapter attempts to disentangle the different perspectives that emerge from these sources. The aim is to offer a historical narrative that is not told solely from the perspective of the major powers of the day.