00:00 The late Bronze Age world is rich and complex, and one state in particular, the Hittites, holds a fascinating allure, with Professor Trevor Bryce being one of the leading experts on the subject.

04:21 The Hittites were a Bronze Age people who referred to themselves as the people of the land of Hattie, and their writings in an Indo-European language were discovered and deciphered in the early 20th century.

09:31 The late Bronze Age world had a large quantity of written material, including official records, letters between kings, and Hittite treaties, which provide insight into the personal lives and relationships of these rulers.

13:58 The Hittites controlled the Near Eastern world through an international language of diplomacy, had a diverse civilization, and retained control of their kingdom through military conquests and their perceived divine authority.

18:58 The Hittite royal family and their elite packed up and left the city of Hattusha before it fell into ruin and was torched and vandalized, raising questions about why they left and where they went.

24:46 The Hittites may have left their capital city of Hattusha due to a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague, and they may have been heading to the city of Takuntasha to make it their new capital, although its exact location is unknown and difficult to excavate. The increased communication and contact between different places in the late Bronze Age world also increased the risk of epidemic and pandemic diseases.

29:36 The Trojans were likely part of a larger group of Luwian speakers and may have spoken an Indo-European language connected to Hittite but different from it, and while there may have been conflicts between Greeks and Anatolians along the western coast of Anatolia, the story of the Iliad likely conflated these episodes into a single Trojan war lasting almost 10 years.

34:47 The term Ahiawa in Hittite texts was originally called Akia and is now accepted as the word for Greece, with the kingdom of Mycenae likely being the specific kingdom referred to as Achiawa, suggesting a supernational Greek state ruled by Mycenaean, although the exact political organization of Mycenaean Greece is still uncertain due to limited written records.

40:23 The Hittite texts reveal that the Greeks were interested in establishing major landfalls in Anatolia and interfering politically and militarily with the Western Anatolian states, using local insurrectionists as proxies, and archaeological evidence confirms the Greek presence in cities like Miletus, but the exact political structure of the Greek world remains uncertain due to the perishable nature of historical texts.

45:31 The Hittite texts reveal that the kings went on religious pilgrimages each year and had palatial residences in different cities, with festival texts providing detailed information about the festivals held in these cities.