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The Hittites, also spelled Hethites, are a people mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. They are listed in Book of Genesis as second of the eleven Canaanite nations. Under the names (''bny-ḥt'' "children of Heth") and (''ḥty'' "native of Heth") they are mentioned several times as living in or near Canaan since the time of Abraham (estimated to be between 2000 BC and 1500 BC) to the time of Ezra after the return from the Babylonian exile (around 450 BC). Their ancestor Heth (,''ḥt'' in the consonant-only Hebrew script) is said in Genesis to be a son of Canaan, son of Ham, son of Noah. In the late 19th century, the biblical Hittites were identified with a newly discovered Indo-European-speaking empire of Anatolia, a major regional power through most of the 2nd millennium BC, who therefore came to be known as the Hittites. This nomenclature is used today as a matter of convention, regardless of debates about possible identities between the Anatolian Hittite Empire and the biblical Hittites. ==Identification hypotheses== According to Genesis, in Abraham's days, the Hittite Ephron sold him the cave in Hebron. Later, Esau married wives from the Hittites. In the Book of Joshua 1:4, when the Lord tells Joshua "From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your border", this "land of the Hittites" on Canaan's border is seen to stretch between Lebanon and the Euphrates, and from there toward the setting Sun (i.e., to the west). According to the Book of Judges 1:26, when the Israelites captured Bethel, they allowed one man to escape, and he went to the "land of the Hittites" where he founded the settlement of Luz. In King Solomon's era moreover the Hittites are depicted in the Old Testament along with Syria as among his powerful neighbors. From around 1900, archaeologists were aware of a country established in Anatolia and known to Assyrians as "Hatti". Because it was initially assumed that the people of ''Hatti'' were identical to the ''Hetti'' of the Hebrew Bible, the term Hittite Empire is still today used to describe the Anatolian state. Their language is known to have been a member of the Indo-European family. Because its speakers were originally based in Kanesh, they called their language "Neshili". The former inhabitants of Hatti and Hattusas are now called ''Hattites''; and their Hattic language was not Indo-European, but is of unknown linguistic relationship. After the fall of the Hittite Empire around 1178 BC, a remnant of them, still using the name "people of Hatti", established some city-states in the region of northern Syria. Therefore these are usually assumed to be the Hittites mentioned in Solomon's time. However, certain scholars have objected that in their view, the Hittites of the Bible had no connection with either the Hittite Empire or with the preceding Hattites. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Biblical Hittites」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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