The Hittites were an Anatolian Indo-European people who formed one of the first major civilizations of Bronze Age West Asia. Possibly originating from beyond the Black Sea, they settled in modern day Turkey in the early 2nd millennium BC. The Hittites formed a series of polities in north-central Anatolia, including the kingdom of Kussara, the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom, and an empire centered on Hattusa. Known in modern times as the Hittite Empire, it reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Šuppiluliuma I, when it encompassed most of Anatolia and parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.
The Great Temple in the inner city of Hattusa
An Alaca Höyük bronze standard from a third millennium BC pre-Hittite tomb (Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara)
Ivory Hittite Sphinx, 18th century BC
Hattusa ramp
The Anatolians were Indo-European-speaking peoples of the Anatolian Peninsula in present-day Turkey, identified by their use of the Anatolian languages. These peoples were among the oldest Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups and one of the most archaic, because Anatolians were among the first Indo-European peoples to separate from the Proto-Indo-European community that gave origin to the individual Indo-European peoples.
Indo-European migrations as described in The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David W. Anthony
Sphinx Gate entrance at Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire.
Relief of Yariri and Kamani, 8th-century BC Luwian rulers of Carchemish, a Neo-Hittite State (despite the name, Neo-Hittites were overwhelmingly Luwians and not Hittites).