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136-518: It has been suggested that this was a Hittite site in the Bronze Age, with the underlying hill being the sacred Mount Daha. An important Imperial Hittite city at Kusakli Hoyuk sits in the valley of Egrioz Su river about 8 km to the north-northwest of the city on the Kerkenes Dag. According to Gurney, the textual evidence that he assembled strongly points towards an identification of Kusakli Hoyuk with

272-464: A European Power was a probable event. The threat that caused Gordon, diplomat and military officer, to publish the article was resumption of work on a railway from Russia to the Persian Gulf. Gordon, a published author, had not used the term previously, but he was to use it from then on. A second strategic personality from American diplomatic and military circles, Alfred Thayer Mahan , concerned about

408-466: A country, and in his hand the great cities prospered. But, when later the princes' servants became corrupt, they began to devour the properties, conspired constantly against their masters, and began to shed their blood." This excerpt from The Edict of Telepinu , dating to the 16th century BC, is supposed to illustrate the unification, growth, and prosperity of the Hittites under his rule. It also illustrates

544-497: A field, village or shire. There was a linguistic predisposition to use such terms. The Romans had used them in near Gaul / far Gaul, near Spain / far Spain and others. Before them the Greeks had the habit, which appears in Linear B , the oldest known script of Europe, referring to the near province and the far province of the kingdom of Pylos . Usually these terms were given with reference to

680-469: A fourth was about to fall to revolution, and two more, the British and French, were forced to yield in revolutions started under the aegis of their own ideologies. By 1916, when millions of Europeans were becoming casualties of imperial war in the trenches of eastern and western Europe over "the eastern question", Arnold J. Toynbee , Hegelesque historian of civilization at large, was becoming metaphysical about

816-552: A geographic feature, such as a mountain range or a river. Ptolemy 's Geography divided Asia on a similar basis. In the north is "Scythia this side of the Himalayas" and "Scythia beyond the Himalayas". To the south is "India on this side of the Ganges" and "India beyond the Ganges". Asia began on the coast of Anatolia ("land of the rising Sun"). Beyond the Ganges and Himalayas (including

952-555: A king named Labarna renamed himself Hattusili I (meaning "the man of Hattusa") sometime around 1650 BC and established his capital city at Hattusa. Before the archeological discoveries that revealed the Hittite civilization, the only source of information about the Hittites had been the Hebrew Bible. Francis William Newman expressed the critical view, common in the early 19th century, that, "no Hittite king could have compared in power to

1088-536: A non- Indo-European people settled along the shores of the Black Sea . The capital once again went on the move, first to Sapinuwa and then to Samuha . There is an archive in Sapinuwa, but it has not been adequately translated to date. It segues into the "Hittite Empire period" proper, which dates from the reign of Tudhaliya I from c.  1430 BC . One innovation that can be credited to these early Hittite rulers

1224-505: A part of it. Hittite prosperity was mostly dependent on control of the trade routes and metal sources. Because of the importance of Northern Syria to the vital routes linking the Cilician gates with Mesopotamia, defense of this area was crucial, and was soon put to the test by Egyptian expansion under Pharaoh Ramesses II . The outcome of the Battle of Kadesh is uncertain, though it seems that

1360-484: A phrase containing a noun, East, qualified by an adjective, far, could be at any location in the "far east" of the speaker's home territory. The Ottoman Empire, for example, was the far East as much as the East Indies. The Crimean War brought a change in vocabulary with the introduction of terms more familiar to the late 19th century. The Russian Empire had entered a more aggressive phase, becoming militarily active against

1496-598: A time, Near East often included the Balkans. Robert Hichens' 1913 book The Near East is subtitled "Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople". The change is evident in the reports of influential British travelers to the Balkans. In 1894, Sir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet , a journalist, traveled to the Far East, afterwards writing a book called The Peoples and Politics of the Far East , which came out in 1895. By "Far East" he meant Siberia , China , Japan , Korea , Siam and Malaya . As

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1632-581: A variation soon developed among the scholars and the men of the cloth and their associates: the Nearer East , reverting to the classical and then more scholarly distinction of nearer and farther . They undoubtedly saw a need to separate the biblical lands from the terrain of the Ottoman Empire. The Christians saw the country as the land of the Old and New Testaments, where Christianity had developed. The scholars in

1768-507: Is a term of current fashion for a region which our grandfathers were content to call simply The East. Its area is generally understood to coincide with those classic lands, historically the most interesting on the surface of the globe, which lie about the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea; but few probably could say offhand where should be the limits and why. Hogarth then proceeds to say where and why in some detail, but no more mention

1904-644: Is a transcontinental region around the East Mediterranean encompassing parts of West Asia , the Balkans , and North Africa ; it also includes the historical Fertile Crescent , the Levant , Anatolia , East Thrace and Egypt . The term was invented by modern Western geographers and was originally applied to the Ottoman Empire , but today has varying definitions within different academic circles. The term Near East

2040-624: Is believed to have been in use in Central Anatolia between the 20th and 12th centuries BC. The Hittites are first associated with the kingdom of Kussara sometime prior to 1750 BC. Hittites in Anatolia during the Bronze Age coexisted with Hattians and Hurrians , either by means of conquest or by gradual assimilation. In archaeological terms, relationships of the Hittites to the Ezero culture of

2176-531: Is clear from some of the texts included here. For several centuries there were separate Hittite groups, usually centered on various cities. But then strong rulers with their center in Hattusa (modern Boğazkale) succeeded in bringing these together and conquering large parts of central Anatolia to establish the Hittite kingdom. The Hittite state was formed from many small polities in North-Central Anatolia, at

2312-497: Is evidence of having taken a route across the Caucasus. David Reich, Iosif Lazaridis, Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg et al. have demonstrated that the Hittite route must have been via the Caucasus and not the Balkans, since Yamnaya expansion into the Balkans carried a component of Eastern Hunter Gatherer ancestry that does not exist in any ancient Anatolian DNA samples, which indicates also that Hittites and their cousin groups split off from

2448-472: Is made of the classics. His analysis is geopolitical . His map delineates the Nearer East with regular lines as though surveyed. They include Iran, the Balkans, but not the Danube lands, Egypt, but not the rest of North Africa. Except for the Balkans, the region matches the later Middle East. It differs from the Ottoman Empire of the times in including Greece and Iran. Hogarth gives no evidence of being familiar with

2584-533: Is the practice of conducting treaties and alliances with neighboring states; the Hittites were thus among the earliest known pioneers in the art of international politics and diplomacy. This is also when the Hittite religion adopted several gods and rituals from the Hurrians. With the reign of Tudhaliya I (who may actually not have been the first of that name; see also Tudhaliya ), the Hittite Kingdom re-emerged from

2720-561: The Amorite rulers of the Old Babylonian Empire in the process. Rather than incorporate Babylonia into Hittite domains, Mursili seems to have instead turned control of Babylonia over to his Kassite allies, who were to rule it for the next four centuries. Due to fear of revolts at home, he did not remain in Babylon for long. This lengthy campaign strained the resources of Hatti, and left

2856-467: The Anitta text, begin by telling how Pithana the king of Kussara conquered neighbouring Neša ( Kanesh ), this conquest took place around 1750 BC. However, the real subject of these tablets is Pithana 's son Anitta ( r.  1745–1720 BC), who continued where his father left off and conquered several northern cities: including Hattusa, which he cursed, and also Zalpuwa. This was likely propaganda for

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2992-643: The Battle Hymn of the Republic , leapt into the war of words and joined the Red Cross . Relations of minorities within the Ottoman Empire and the disposition of former Ottoman lands became known as the " Eastern question ", as the Ottomans were on the east of Europe. It now became relevant to define the east of the eastern question. In about the middle of the nineteenth century, Near East came into use to describe that part of

3128-527: The King of Judah ...". As the discoveries in the second half of the 19th century revealed the scale of the Hittite kingdom, Archibald Sayce asserted that, rather than being compared to Judah, the Anatolian civilization "[was] worthy of comparison to the divided Kingdom of Egypt", and was "infinitely more powerful than that of Judah". Sayce and other scholars also noted that Judah and the Hittites were never enemies in

3264-547: The Mediterranean coastline, starting from the Aegean , and continuing all the way to Canaan, founding the state of Philistia  – taking Cilicia and Cyprus away from the Hittites en route and cutting off their coveted trade routes. This left the Hittite homelands vulnerable to attack from all directions, and Hattusa was burnt to the ground sometime around 1180 BC following a combined onslaught from new waves of invaders:

3400-471: The Near East because Old Persian cuneiform had been found there. This usage did not sit well with the diplomats; India was left in an equivocal state. They needed a regional term. The use of the term Middle East as a region of international affairs apparently began in British and American diplomatic circles quite independently of each other over concern for the security of the same country: Iran, then known to

3536-582: The Near East , the Ottoman Empire, and the Far East , the East Indies. The two terms were now compound nouns often shown hyphenated. In 1855, a reprint of a letter earlier sent to The Times appeared in Littell's Living Age . Its author, an "official Chinese interpreter of 10 years' active service" and a member of the Oriental Club , Thomas Taylor Meadows, was replying to the suggestion by another interpreter that

3672-592: The Ottoman Porte (government of the Ottoman Empire) at Constantinople . Compared to Anatolia, Levant also means "land of the rising sun", but where Anatolia always only meant the projection of land currently occupied by the Republic of Turkey, Levant meant anywhere in the domain ruled by the Ottoman Porte. The East India Company (Originally charted as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into

3808-593: The Tien Shan ) were Serica and Serae (sections of China ) and some other identifiable far eastern locations known to the voyagers and geographers but not to the general European public. By the time of John Seller's Atlas Maritima of 1670, "India Beyond the Ganges" had become "the East Indies " including China, Korea, southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific in a map that was every bit as distorted as Ptolemy's, despite

3944-632: The "collective wisdom" of Europe, and introducing a concept to arise many times in the decades to follow under chilling circumstances: "... no final solution of the difficulty has yet been found." Miller's final pronouncements on the topic could not be ignored by either the British or the Ottoman governments: It remains then to consider whether the Great Powers can solve the Eastern Question ;... Foreigners find it extremely difficult to understand

4080-551: The 13th century BC into the 12th century BC with drought for three consecutive years in 1198, 1197 and 1196 BC. By 1160 BC, the political situation in Asia Minor looked vastly different from that of only 25 years earlier. In that year, the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I was defeating the Mushki (Phrygians) who had been attempting to press into Assyrian colonies in southern Anatolia from

4216-589: The 21st century, with the Late Bronze Age collapse, and subsequent Iron Age , seeing the slow, comparatively continuous spread of ironworking technology across the region. While there are some iron objects from Bronze Age Anatolia , the number is comparable to that of iron objects found in Egypt , Mesopotamia and in other places from the same period; and only a small number of these objects are weapons. X-ray fluorescence spectrometry suggests "that most or all irons from

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4352-658: The Anatolian highlands, and the Kaska people, the Hittites' old enemies from the northern hill-country between Hatti and the Black Sea, seem to have joined them soon after. The Phrygians had apparently overrun Cappadocia from the West, with recently discovered epigraphic evidence confirming their origins as the Balkan "Bryges" tribe, forced out by the Macedonians. Near East The Near East

4488-483: The Arzawans. This was the first recorded use of biological warfare . Mursili also attacked a city known as Millawanda ( Miletus ), which was under the control of Ahhiyawa . More recent research based on new readings and interpretations of the Hittite texts, as well as of the material evidence for Mycenaean contacts with the Anatolian mainland, came to the conclusion that Ahhiyawa referred to Mycenaean Greece , or at least to

4624-457: The Assyrians under his son-in-law, and he defeated Carchemish , another Amorite city-state. With his own sons placed over all of these new conquests and Babylonia still in the hands of the allied Kassites , this left Šuppiluliuma the supreme power broker in the known world, alongside Assyria and Egypt, and it was not long before Egypt was seeking an alliance by marriage of another of his sons with

4760-486: The Balkans and Maykop culture of the Caucasus had previously been considered within the migration framework. Analyses by David W. Anthony in 2007 concluded that steppe herders who were archaic Indo-European speakers spread into the lower Danube valley about 4200–4000 BC, either causing or taking advantage of the collapse of Old Europe . He thought their languages "probably included archaic Proto-Indo-European dialects of

4896-418: The Balkans. Apart from the fact that he attended Oxford and played Rugby , not many biographical details have been promulgated. He was, in effect (whatever his formal associations if any), a point man of British Near Eastern intelligence. In Miller's view, the Ottoman officials were unfit to rule: The plain fact is that it is as hard for an Ottoman official to be honest as it is for a camel to enter through

5032-512: The British Empire was wasting its resources on a false threat from Russia against China. Toward the end of the letter he said: To support the "sick man" in the Near East is an arduous and costly affair; let England, France and America too, beware how they create a "sick giant" in the Far East, for they may rest assured that, if Turkey is [a] European necessity, China is a world necessity. Much of

5168-475: The Bronze Age are derived from" meteorites . The Hittite military also made successful use of chariots . Modern interest in the Hittites increased with the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. The Hittites attracted the attention of Turkish archaeologists such as Halet Çambel and Tahsin Özgüç . During this period, the new field of Hittitology also influenced the naming of Turkish institutions, such as

5304-477: The East-Indies") was chartered in 1600 for trade to the East Indies. It has pleased western historians to write of a decline of the Ottoman Empire as though a stable and uncontested polity of that name once existed. The borders did expand and contract but they were always dynamic and always in "question" right from the beginning. The Ottoman Empire was created from the lands of the former eastern Roman Empire on

5440-639: The Hebrew texts; in the Book of Kings , they supplied the Israelites with cedar, chariots, and horses, and in the Book of Genesis were friends and allies to Abraham . Uriah the Hittite was a captain in King David 's army and counted as one of his "mighty men" in 1 Chronicles 11. French scholar Charles Texier found the first Hittite ruins in 1834 but did not identify them as such. The first archaeological evidence for

5576-596: The Hittite Empire period the kingship became hereditary and the king took on a "superhuman aura" and began to be referred to by the Hittite citizens as "My Sun". The kings of the Empire period began acting as a high priest for the whole kingdom – making an annual tour of the Hittite holy cities, conducting festivals and supervising the upkeep of the sanctuaries. During his reign ( c.  1400 BC ), King Tudhaliya I, again allied with Kizzuwatna, then vanquished

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5712-528: The Hittite confederation. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara , Turkey houses the richest collection of Hittite and Anatolian artifacts. The Hittite kingdom was centered on the lands surrounding Hattusa and Neša (Kültepe), known as "the land Hatti" ( Ha-at-ti ). After Hattusa was made the capital, the area encompassed by the bend of the Kızılırmak River (Hittite Marassantiya, Greek Halys )

5848-468: The Hittite script is quite different from that of the preceding Assyrian colonial period. The Hittites entered a weak phase of obscure records, insignificant rulers, and reduced domains. This pattern of expansion under strong kings followed by contraction under weaker ones, was to be repeated over and over through the Hittite Kingdom's 500-year history, making events during the waning periods difficult to reconstruct. The political instability of these years of

5984-629: The Hittites appeared in tablets found at the karum of Kanesh (now called Kültepe ), containing records of trade between Assyrian merchants and a certain "land of Hatti ". Some names in the tablets were neither Hattic nor Assyrian, but clearly Indo-European . The script on a monument at Boğazkale by a "People of Hattusas" discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo and Hama in Northern Syria . In 1887, excavations at Amarna in Egypt uncovered

6120-463: The Hurrian states of Aleppo and Mitanni, and expanded to the west at the expense of Arzawa (a Luwian state). Another weak phase followed Tudhaliya I, and the Hittites' enemies from all directions were able to advance even to Hattusa and raze it. However, the kingdom recovered its former glory under Šuppiluliuma I ( c.  1350 BC ), who again conquered Aleppo. Mitanni was reduced to vassalage by

6256-464: The Kaskians, Phrygians and Bryges . The Hittite Kingdom thus vanished from historical records, much of the territory being seized by Assyria. Alongside with these attacks, many internal issues also led to the end of the Hittite Kingdom. The end of the kingdom was part of the larger Bronze Age Collapse . A study of tree rings of juniper trees growing in the region showed a change to drier conditions from

6392-654: The Levant and Mesopotamia . The Hittite language —referred to by its speakers as nešili , "the language of Nesa "—was a distinct member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family ; along with the closely related Luwian language , it is the oldest historically attested Indo-European language. The history of the Hittite civilization is known mostly from cuneiform texts found in their former territories, and from diplomatic and commercial correspondence found in

6528-480: The Mediterranean ;..." The regions in their inventory were Assyria, Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Persia, Armenia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Ancient Israel, Ethiopia, Caucasus, Libya, Anatolia and Abyssinia. Explicitly excluded is India. No mention is made of the Balkans. The British archaeologist D. G. Hogarth published The Nearer East in 1902, in which he stated his view of the Near East : The Nearer East

6664-525: The Mitanni and Hurrians were duly appropriated by Assyria, enabling it to encroach on Hittite territory in eastern Asia Minor , and Adad-nirari I annexed Carchemish and northeast Syria from the control of the Hittites. While Šuppiluliuma I reigned, the Hittite Empire was devastated by an epidemic of tularemia . The epidemic afflicted the Hittites for decades and tularemia killed Šuppiluliuma I and his successor, Arnuwanda II . After Šuppiluliuma I's rule, and

6800-468: The Near East. Geography alone was not a sufficient explanation of the terms, he believed. If the Ottoman Empire had been a sick man, then: There has been something pathological about the history of this Near Eastern World. It has had an undue share of political misfortunes, and had lain for centuries in a kind of spiritual paralysis between East and West—belonging to neither, partaking paradoxically of both, and wholly unable to rally itself decidedly to one or

6936-532: The Near Eastern frontiers up to the desert belt of the Sahara, Nefud and Kevir. From the death of the Near East, new nations were able to rise from the ashes, notably the Republic of Turkey. Paradoxically it now aligned itself with the west rather than with the east. Mustafa Kemal , its founder, a former Ottoman high-ranking officer, was insistent on this social revolution, which, among other changes, liberated women from

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7072-539: The Old Hittite Kingdom can be explained in part by the nature of the Hittite kingship at that time. During the Old Hittite Kingdom prior to 1400 BC, the king of the Hittites was not viewed by his subjects as a "living god" like the Pharaohs of Egypt, but rather as a first among equals. Only in the later period from 1400 BC until 1200 BC did the Hittite kingship become more centralized and powerful. Also in earlier years

7208-400: The Old Kingdom, Telepinu, reigned until about 1500 BC. Telepinu's reign marked the end of the "Old Kingdom" and the beginning of the lengthy weak phase known as the "Middle Kingdom". The period of the 15th century BC is largely unknown with few surviving records. Part of the reason for both the weakness and the obscurity is that the Hittites were under constant attack, mainly from the Kaskians,

7344-449: The Ottoman Empire and also against China, with territorial aggrandizement explicitly in mind. Rethinking its policy the British government decided that the two polities under attack were necessary for the balance of power. It therefore undertook to oppose the Russians in both places, one result being the Crimean War. During that war the administration of the British Empire began promulgating a new vocabulary, giving specific regional meaning to

7480-425: The Ottoman Empire. Some regions beyond the Ottoman Porte were included. One was North Africa west of Egypt. It was occupied by piratical kingdoms of the Barbary Coast , de facto -independent since the eighteenth century, formerly part of the empire at its apogee. Iran was included because it could not easily be reached except through the Ottoman Empire or neighboring Russia. In the 1890s the term tended to focus on

7616-422: The Ottomans retained a band of territory including Albania , Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet , which were lost in the two Balkan Wars of 1912–13. The Ottoman Empire, believed to be about to collapse, was portrayed in the press as the " sick man of Europe ". The Balkan states, with the partial exception of Bosnia and Albania , were primarily Christian, as was the majority of Lebanon . Starting in 1894,

7752-422: The Ottomans struck at the Armenians and Assyrians on the explicit grounds that they were non-Muslim peoples and as such were a potential threat to the Muslim empire within which they lived. The Hamidian Massacres , Adana Massacres and Massacres of Badr Khan targeting Assyrians and Armenians aroused the indignation of the entire Christian world. In the United States, the then aging Julia Ward Howe , author of

7888-400: The Proto Indo Europeans before the formation of the Yamnaya which did admix with Eastern Hunter Gatherers. The dominant indigenous inhabitants in central Anatolia were Hurrians and Hattians who spoke non- Indo-European languages . Some have argued that Hattic was a Northwest Caucasian language , but its affiliation remains uncertain, whilst the Hurrian language was a near- isolate (i.e. it

8024-445: The Slavic Balkan states began to question the very existence of the Ottoman Empire. The result was the Crimean War , 1853–1856, in which the British Empire and the French Empire supported the Ottoman Empire in its struggle against the incursions of the Russian Empire. Eventually, the Ottoman Empire lost control of the Balkan region. Until about 1855, the terms Near East and Far East did not refer to any particular region. The Far East,

8160-437: The Turks against Russia. If the British Empire was now going to side with the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire had no choice but to cultivate a relationship with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was supported by the German Empire. In a few years these alignments became the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance (already formed in 1882), which were in part a cause of World War I . By its end in 1918 three empires were gone,

8296-402: The United States. The innovation of the term Near East to mean the holdings of the Ottoman Empire as early as the Crimean War had left a geographical gap. The East Indies, or "Far East", derived ultimately from Ptolemy 's "India Beyond the Ganges." The Ottoman Empire ended at the eastern border of Iraq. "India This Side of the Ganges" and Iran had been omitted. The archaeologists counted Iran as

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8432-417: The University of Central Florida. Geoffrey Summers initially identified the site with the city of Pteria , which was described by Herodotus as belonging to the Medes . According to Herodotus, this city was captured by the Lydian king Croesus around the year 547 B.C. The Median identification has been rejected by various scholars, including Summers himself. Nevertheless, Summers currently believes that

8568-408: The Zalpuwan/Hattusan family, though whether these were of the direct line of Anitta is uncertain. Meanwhile, the lords of Zalpa lived on. Huzziya I , descendant of a Huzziya of Zalpa, took over Hatti. His son-in-law Labarna I , a southerner from Hurma usurped the throne but made sure to adopt Huzziya's grandson Ḫattušili as his own son and heir. The location of the land of Hurma is believed to be in

8704-460: The aforementioned regions were in actuality "politically one region – in spite of the divisions into which it is academically divided." In The Conflict of Colour , Simpson argued that what united these regions was their skin color and the fact that they were all under European colonial rule . The work included a "color chart" of the world, dividing it into a spectrum of ' black ', 'brown', ' yellow ' and ' white ' races. Simpson also modified

8840-473: The appearance of Hittite, was related to later migrations of Proto-Indo-European speakers from the Yamnaya culture into the Danube Valley at c. 2800 BC, which was in line with the "customary" assumption that the Anatolian Indo-European language was introduced into Anatolia sometime in the third millennium BC. However, Petra Goedegebuure has shown that the Hittite language has borrowed many words related to agriculture from cultures on their eastern borders, which

8976-438: The banks of the Kızılırmak River , during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1900–1650 BC). The early history of the Hittite kingdom is known through four "cushion-shaped" tablets, (classified as KBo 3.22, KBo 17.21+, KBo 22.1, and KBo 22.2), not made in Ḫattuša, but probably created in Kussara , Nēša , or another site in Anatolia, that may first have been written in the 18th century BC, in Old Hittite language, and three of them using

9112-419: The book was a big success, he was off to the Balkan states with his wife in 1896 to develop detail for a sequel, The People and Politics of the Near East , which Scribners planned to publish in 1897. Mrs. Norman, a writer herself, wrote glowing letters of the home and person of Mme. Zakki, "the wife of a Turkish cabinet minister," who, she said, was a cultivated woman living in a country home full of books. As for

9248-402: The brief reign of his eldest son, Arnuwanda II, another son, Mursili II , became king ( c.  1330 BC ). Having inherited a position of strength in the east, Mursili was able to turn his attention to the west, where he attacked Arzawa. At a point when the Hittites were weakened by the tularemia epidemic, the Arzawans attacked the Hittites, who repelled the attack by sending infected rams to

9384-407: The capital in a state of near-anarchy. Mursili was assassinated by his brother-in-law Hantili I during his journey back to Hattusa or shortly after his return home, and the Hittite Kingdom was plunged into chaos. Hantili took the throne. He was able to escape multiple murder attempts on himself, however, his family did not. His wife, Harapsili and her son were murdered. In addition, other members of

9520-436: The capital of an empire that, at one point, controlled northern Syria. Under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute , excavations at Hattusa have been under way since 1907, with interruptions during the world wars. Kültepe was successfully excavated by Professor Tahsin Özgüç from 1948 until his death in 2005. Smaller scale excavations have also been carried out in the immediate surroundings of Hattusa, including

9656-460: The central Anatolian region until the beginning of the second millennium BC, and who spoke an unrelated language known as Hattic . The modern conventional name "Hittites" is due to the initial identification of the people of Hattusa with the Biblical Hittites by 19th-century archaeologists . The Hittites would have called themselves something closer to "Neshites" or "Neshians" after the city of Nesha, which flourished for some two hundred years until

9792-418: The city of Göllüdağ . 39°45′00″N 35°03′56″E  /  39.75000°N 35.06556°E  / 39.75000; 35.06556 Hittites The Hittites ( / ˈ h ɪ t aɪ t s / ) 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

9928-466: The city was burned, destroyed, and abandoned. An Old-Phrygian inscription has been found at Kerkenes Daǧ. This is the Old-Phrygian inscription K-01. The site also contains a Byzantine castle. The site was first examined in 1903 by J. G. C. Anderson. In 1926 and 1927 H. H. von der Osten and F. H. Blackburn conducted a preliminary survey of the site and made a map of the city defences. Also in 1926,

10064-450: The civilization uncovered at Boğazköy. During sporadic excavations at Boğazköy ( Hattusa ) that began in 1906, the archaeologist Hugo Winckler found a royal archive with 10,000 tablets, inscribed in cuneiform Akkadian and the same unknown language as the Egyptian letters from Kheta —thus confirming the identity of the two names. He also proved that the ruins at Boğazköy were the remains of

10200-412: The coastal region of Adaniya, renaming it Kizzuwatna (later Cilicia ). Throughout the remainder of the 16th century BC, the Hittite kings were held to their homelands by dynastic quarrels and warfare with the Hurrians. The Hurrians became the center of power in Anatolia. The campaigns into Amurru and southern Mesopotamia may be responsible for the reintroduction of cuneiform writing into Anatolia, since

10336-640: The colonial administration belonged to this club, which had been formed by the Duke of Wellington . Meadows' terminology must represent usage by that administration. If not the first use of the terms, the letter to the Times was certainly one of the earliest presentations of this vocabulary to the general public. They became immediately popular, supplanting "Levant" and "East Indies", which gradually receded to minor usages and then began to change meaning. Near East remained popular in diplomatic, trade and journalistic circles, but

10472-500: The conflicts in the Balkan states and Armenia. The demise of "the sick man of Europe" left considerable confusion as to what was to be meant by Near East . It is now generally used only in historical contexts, to describe the countries of West Asia from the Mediterranean to (or including) Iran . There is, in short, no universally-understood fixed inventory of nations, languages or historical assets defined to be in it. The geographical terms Near East and Far East refer to areas of

10608-513: The contemporaneous initial concept of the Middle East. In the last years of the 19th century, the term Near East acquired considerable disrepute in eyes of the English-speaking public as did the Ottoman Empire itself. The cause of the onus was the religiously motivated Hamidian Massacres of Christian Armenians , but it seemed to spill over into the protracted conflicts of the Balkans. For

10744-527: The corruption of "the princes", believed to be his sons. The lack of sources leads to uncertainty of how the corruption was addressed. On Hattusili I's deathbed, he chose his grandson, Mursili I (or Murshilish I), as his heir. Mursili continued the conquests of Hattusili I. In 1595 BC ( middle chronology ) or 1587 BC (low middle chronology), Mursili I conducted a great raid down the Euphrates River, bypassing Assyria and sacking Mari and Babylon , ejecting

10880-518: The countries where "the eastern question" applied; that is, to all of the Balkans . The countries and regions mentioned are Greece , Bulgaria , Serbia , Bosnia-Herzegovina (which was Muslim and needed, in his view, to be suppressed), Macedonia , Montenegro , Albania , Romania . The rest of the Ottoman domain is demoted to just "the East". If Norman was apparently attempting to change British policy, it

11016-501: The diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten . Two of the letters from a "kingdom of Kheta "—apparently located in the same general region as the Mesopotamian references to "land of Hatti "—were written in standard Akkadian cuneiform, but in an unknown language; although scholars could interpret its sounds, no one could understand it. Shortly after this, Sayce proposed that Hatti or Khatti in Anatolia

11152-548: The early 2nd millennium BC . The Hittites formed a series of polities in north-central Anatolia , including the kingdom of Kussara (before 1750 BC), the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom ( c.  1750 –1650 BC), and an empire centered on Hattusa (around 1650 BC). Known in modern times as the Hittite Empire , it reached its peak during the mid-14th century BC under Šuppiluliuma I , when it encompassed most of Anatolia and parts of

11288-472: The east closest to Europe. The term Far East appeared contemporaneously meaning Japan , China , Korea , Indonesia and Vietnam . Near East applied to what had been mainly known as the Levant , which was in the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Porte , or government. Europeans could not set foot on most of the shores of the southern and central Mediterranean from the Gulf of Sidra to Albania without permits from

11424-473: The east, collaborated with English merchants to form the first trading companies to the far-flung regions, using their own jargon. Their goals were to obtain trading concessions by treaty. The queen chartered the Company of Merchants of the Levant, shortened to Levant Company , and soon known also as The Turkey Company, in 1581. In 1582, the ship The Great Susan transported the first ambassador, William Harebone, to

11560-399: The eye of a needle. It is not so much the fault of the men as the fault of the system, which is thoroughly bad from top to bottom... Turkish administration is synonymous with corruption, inefficiency, and sloth. These were fighting words to be coming from a country that once insisted Europe needed Turkey and was willing to spill blood over it. For his authority Miller invokes the people, citing

11696-632: The eyes of Western commentators. Bertram Lenox Simpson , a journalist who served for a period as an officer for the Chinese Maritime Customs Service , combined both terms in his 1910 work The Conflict of Colour: The Threatened Upheaval Throughout the World as "the Near and Middle East." According to Simpson, the combined region consisted of " India , Afghanistan , Persia , Arabistan , Asia Minor , and last, but not least, Egypt ", explaining that

11832-513: The facility to concentrate in force, if occasion arise, about Aden, India, and the Gulf. Apparently the sailor did not connect with the soldier, as Mahan believed he was innovating the term Middle East . It was, however, already there to be seen. Until the interwar period following the First World War , the terms Near East and Middle East co-existed, but they were not always seen as distinct in

11968-412: The field of studies that eventually became biblical archaeology attempted to define it on the basis of archaeology. For example, The London Review of 1861 (Telford and Barber, unsigned) in reviewing several works by Rawlinson , Layard and others, defined themselves as making: "... an imperfect conspectus of the arrow-headed writings of the nearer east; writings which cover nearly the whole period of

12104-478: The fog of obscurity and entered the "Hittite Empire period". Many changes were afoot during this time, not the least of which was a strengthening of the kingship. Settlement of the Hittites progressed in the Empire period. However, the Hittite people tended to settle in the older lands of south Anatolia rather than the lands of the Aegean. As this settlement progressed, treaties were signed with neighboring peoples. During

12240-513: The foreign, and especially the Eastern policy of Great Britain, and we cannot wonder at their difficulty, for it seems a mass of contradictions to Englishmen themselves ... At one moment we are bringing about the independence of Greece by sending the Turkish fleet to the bottom of the bay of Navarino. Twenty-seven years later we are spending immense sums and wasting thousands of lives in order to protect

12376-456: The globe in or contiguous to the former British Empire and the neighboring colonies of the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Germans. They fit together as a pair based on the opposites of far and near, suggesting that they were innovated together. They appear together in the journals of the mid-19th century. Both terms were used before then with local British and American meanings: the near or far east of

12512-551: The identification with Pteria remains correct. But rather than being a Median city, Pteria really was founded and belonged to the Phrygians . According to him, these Phrygians would have been natural allies of Media in its conflict with Lydia. For the Phrygians, Lydia was a long time opponent, which would explain the Lydian attack on Kerkenes. Numerous cultural similarities link Kerkenes with

12648-540: The island of Cyprus , before that too fell to Assyria. The last king, Šuppiluliuma II also managed to win some victories, including a naval battle against Alashiya off the coast of Cyprus. But the Assyrians, under Ashur-resh-ishi I had by this time annexed much Hittite territory in Asia Minor and Syria, driving out and defeating the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I in the process, who also had eyes on Hittite lands. The Sea Peoples had already begun their push down

12784-468: The kind partly preserved later in Anatolian," and that their descendants later moved into Anatolia at an unknown time but maybe as early as 3000 BC. J. P. Mallory also thought it was likely that the Anatolians reached the Near East from the north either via the Balkans or the Caucasus in the 3rd millennium BC. According to Parpola, the appearance of Indo-European speakers from Europe into Anatolia, and

12920-576: The lands of ancient Greece, but could not gain Constantinople. The Ottoman Porte was continuously under attack from some quarter in its empire, primarily the Balkans. Also, on a number of occasions in the early 19th century, American and British warships had to attack the Barbary pirates to stop their piracy and recover thousands of enslaved Europeans and Americans. In 1853 the Russian Empire on behalf of

13056-525: The lapse of approximately 1,500 years. That "east" in turn was only an English translation of Latin Oriens and Orientalis , "the land of the rising Sun", used since Roman times for "east". The world map of Jodocus Hondius of 1590 labels all of Asia from the Caspian to the Pacific as India Orientalis , shortly to appear in translation as the East Indies. Elizabeth I of England , primarily interested in trade with

13192-533: The lower Anti-Taurus Mountains as well. To the north lived the mountain people called the Kaskians . To the southeast of the Hittites lay the Hurrian empire of Mitanni . At its peak during the reign of Muršili II , the Hittite empire stretched from Arzawa in the west to Mitanni in the east, and included many of the Kaskian territories north as far as Hayasa-Azzi in the far north-east, as well as south into Canaan near

13328-542: The mountains south of Kussara . The founding of the Hittite Kingdom is attributed to either Labarna I or Hattusili I (the latter might also have had Labarna as a personal name), who conquered the area south and north of Hattusa. Hattusili I campaigned as far as the Semitic Amorite kingdom of Yamkhad in Syria , where he attacked, but did not capture, its capital of Aleppo . Hattusili I did eventually capture Hattusa and

13464-484: The name of freedom with the expectation of being rescued by the intervention of Christian Europe , he states "but her hope was vain." England had "turned her back." Norman concluded his exhortation with "In the Balkans, one learns to hate the Turk." Norman made sure that Gladstone read the article. Prince Nicolas of Montenegro wrote a letter thanking him for his article. Throughout this article, Norman uses "Near East" to mean

13600-501: The natives of the Balkans, they were "a semi-civilized people". The planned book was never published, however Norman published the gist of the book, mixed with vituperation against the Ottoman Empire, in an article in June 1896, in Scribner's Magazine. The empire had descended from an enlightened civilization ruling over barbarians for their own good to something considerably less. The difference

13736-586: The naval vulnerability of the trade routes in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean , commented in 1902: The middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar; it does not follow that either will be in the Gulf. Naval force has the quality of mobility which carries with it the privilege of temporary absences; but it needs to find on every scene of operation established bases of refit, of supply, and, in case of disaster, of security. The British Navy should have

13872-608: The nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire included all of the Balkans , north to the southern edge of the Great Hungarian Plain . But by 1914, the empire had lost all of its territories except Constantinople and Eastern Thrace to the rise of nationalist Balkan states , which saw the independence of the Kingdom of Greece , Kingdom of Serbia , the Danubian Principalities , and the Kingdom of Bulgaria . Up until 1912,

14008-603: The northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia , bordering the rival empires of the Hurri-Mitanni and Assyrians. Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC, the Hittites were one of the dominant powers of the Near East , coming into conflict with the New Kingdom of Egypt , the Middle Assyrian Empire and the empire of Mitanni . By the 12th century BC, much of the Hittite Empire was annexed by the Middle Assyrian Empire , with

14144-673: The northerners retained language isolate Hattian names, and the southerners adopted Indo-European Hittite and Luwian names. Zalpuwa first attacked Kanesh under Uhna in 1833 BC. And during this kārum period, when the merchant colony of the Old Assyrian Empire was flourishing in the site, and before the conquest of Pithana , the following local kings reigned in Kaneš: Ḫurmili (prior to 1790 BC), Paḫanu (a short time in 1790 BC), Inar ( c.  1790 –1775 BC), and Waršama ( c.  1775 –1750 BC). One set of tablets, known collectively as

14280-682: The occasion of the latter's violent demise. The last Roman emperor died fighting hand-to-hand in the streets of his capital, Constantinople, overwhelmed by the Ottoman military, in May 1453. The victors inherited his remaining territory in the Balkans. The Hungarian lands under Turkish rule had become part of the Habsburg monarchy by 1688. in the Great Turkish War . The Serbian Revolution , 1804–1833. created modern Serbia. The Greek War of Independence , 1821–1832, created modern Greece, which recovered most of

14416-502: The other. Having supposed that it was sick, he kills it off: "The Near East has never been more true to itself than in its lurid dissolution; past and present are fused together in the flare." To Toynbee the Near East was a spiritual being of a " Janus -character", connected to both east and west: The limits of the Near East are not easy to define. On the north-west, Vienna is the most conspicuous boundary-mark, but one might almost equally well single out Trieste or Lvov or even Prag. Towards

14552-615: The postdiluvian Old Testament history ..." By arrow-headed writings they meant cuneiform texts. In defense of the Bible as history they said: "The primeval nations, that piled their glorious homes on the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Nile, are among us again with their archives in their hands; ..." They further defined the nations as "... the countries lying between the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and

14688-611: The power of the Assyrians. The Assyrian king Shalmaneser I had seized the opportunity to vanquish Hurria and Mitanni, occupy their lands, and expand up to the head of the Euphrates , while Muwatalli was preoccupied with the Egyptians. The Hittites had vainly tried to preserve the Mitanni Kingdom with military support. Assyria now posed just as great a threat to Hittite trade routes as Egypt ever had. Muwatalli's son, Urhi-Teshub , took

14824-566: The region that is in Asia (ie., not including Egypt , the Balkans , and Thrace ) is "now commonly referred to as West Asia ." Later on in 2012, the FAO defined the Near East as a subregion of the Middle East. The Near East included Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syrian Arab Republic, and Turkey while the Middle East included the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus, and Iran. At the beginning of

14960-527: The remainder sacked by Phrygian newcomers to the region. From the late 12th century BC, during the Late Bronze Age collapse , the Hittites splintered into several small independent states , some of which survived until the eighth century BC before succumbing to the Neo-Assyrian Empire ; lacking a unifying continuity , their descendants scattered and ultimately merged into the modern populations of

15096-469: The rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya , which contains numerous rock reliefs portraying the Hittite rulers and the gods of the Hittite pantheon. The Hittites used a variation of cuneiform called Hittite cuneiform . Archaeological expeditions to Hattusa have discovered entire sets of royal archives on cuneiform tablets, written either in Akkadian , the diplomatic language of the time, or in the various dialects of

15232-411: The royal family were killed by Zidanta I , who was then murdered by his own son, Ammuna . All of the internal unrest among the Hittite royal family led to a decline of power. The Hurrians, a people living in the mountainous region along the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern south east Turkey, took advantage of the situation to seize Aleppo and the surrounding areas for themselves, as well as

15368-582: The same territories and are "generally accepted as comprising the countries of the Arabian Peninsula , Cyprus , Egypt , Iraq , Iran , Israel , Jordan , Lebanon , Palestinian territories , Syria , and Turkey ". Also, Afghanistan is often included. In 1997, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations defined the region similarly, but also included Afghanistan . The part of

15504-485: The site was visited by Emil Forrer In 1929 Erich Schmidt excavated at Kerkenes Dagh for around a week for the Oriental Institute of Chicago . The international Kerkenes Project, which started in 1993 and ran until 2012, was directed by the British archaeologist Geoffrey Summers and Françoise Summers, both from Middle East Technical University ( Ankara ). Current fieldwork is ongoing directed by Scott Branting at

15640-604: The so-called "Old Script" (OS); although most of the remaining tablets survived only as Akkadian copies made in the 14th and 13th centuries BC. These reveal a rivalry within two branches of the royal family up to the Middle Kingdom; a northern branch first based in Zalpuwa and secondarily Hattusa , and a southern branch based in Kussara (still not found) and the former Assyrian colony of Kanesh . These are distinguishable by their names;

15776-564: The southeast, the boundaries are even more shadowy. It is perhaps best to equate them with the frontiers of the Arabic language, yet the genius of the Near East overrides linguistic barriers, and encroaches on the Arabicspeaking world on the one side as well as on the German-speaking world on the other. Syria is essentially a Near Eastern country, and a physical geographer would undoubtedly carry

15912-416: The southern border of Lebanon . The ancestors of the Hittites came into Anatolia between 4400 and 4100 BC, when the Anatolian language family split from (Proto)-Indo-European. Recent genetic and archaeological research has indicated that Proto-Anatolian speakers arrived in this region sometime between 5000 and 3000 BC. The Proto-Hittite language developed around 2100 BC, and the Hittite language itself

16048-510: The southern branch of the royal family, against the northern branch who had fixed on Hattusa as capital. Another set, the Tale of Zalpuwa, supports Zalpuwa and exonerates the later Ḫattušili I from the charge of sacking Kanesh . Anitta was succeeded by Zuzzu ( r. 1720–1710 BC); but sometime in 1710–1705 BC, Kanesh was destroyed, taking the long-established Assyrian merchant trading system with it. A Kussaran noble family survived to contest

16184-584: The state-owned Etibank ("Hittite bank"), and the foundation of the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara , built 200 kilometers (120 mi) west of the Hittite capital of Hattusa, which houses the world's most comprehensive exhibition of Hittite art and artifacts. The Hittites called their kingdom Hattusa ( Hatti in Akkadian), a name received from the Hattians , an earlier people who had inhabited and ruled

16320-418: The strait rules still in effect in most Arabic-speaking countries. The demise of the political Near East now left a gap where it had been, into which stepped the Middle East. The term Middle East as a noun and adjective was common in the 19th century in nearly every context except diplomacy and archaeology. An uncountable number of places appear to have had their middle easts from gardens to regions, including

16456-476: The succession was not legally fixed, enabling "War of the Roses" -style rivalries between northern and southern branches. The next monarch of note following Mursili I was Telepinu ( c.  1500 BC ), who won a few victories to the southwest, apparently by allying himself with one Hurrian state (Kizzuwatna) against another (Mitanni). Telepinu also attempted to secure the lines of succession. The last monarch of

16592-532: The throne and ruled as king for seven years as Mursili III before being ousted by his uncle, Hattusili III after a brief civil war . In response to increasing Assyrian annexation of Hittite territory, he concluded a peace and alliance with Ramesses II (also fearful of Assyria), presenting his daughter's hand in marriage to the Pharaoh. The Treaty of Kadesh , one of the oldest completely surviving treaties in history, fixed their mutual boundaries in southern Canaan, and

16728-434: The timely arrival of Egyptian reinforcements prevented total Hittite victory. The Egyptians forced the Hittites to take refuge in the fortress of Kadesh , but their own losses prevented them from sustaining a siege. This battle took place in the 5th year of Ramesses ( c.  1274 BC by the most commonly used chronology). After this date, the power of both the Hittites and Egyptians began to decline yet again because of

16864-469: The town of Zippalanda, as mentioned in Hittite documents. The huge overlaying Iron Age construction at the site makes this very difficult to verify. The Iron Age city, apparently a planned urban space, was only briefly occupied and is extremely large. This has suggested to some that the city was an imperial foundation of non-local peoples. Although its historical context remains unclear, Phrygian remains have been found. The archaeological survey shows that

17000-450: The various archives of Assyria , Babylonia , Egypt and the broader Middle East ; the decipherment of these texts was a key event in the history of Indo-European studies . Cultural links to prehistoric Scandinavia have also been suggested. Scholars once attributed the development of iron- smelting to the Hittites, who were believed to have monopolized ironworking during the Bronze Age. This theory has been increasingly contested in

17136-459: The west as Persia. In 1900 Thomas Edward Gordon published an article, The Problem of the Middle East , which began: It may be assumed that the most sensitive part of our external policy in the Middle East is the preservation of the independence and integrity of Persia and Afghanistan. Our active interest in Persia began with the present century, and was due to the belief that the invasion of India by

17272-500: The widow of Tutankhamen . That son was evidently murdered before reaching his destination, and this alliance was never consummated. However, the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC) once more began to grow in power with the ascension of Ashur-uballit I in 1365 BC. Ashur-uballit I attacked and defeated Mattiwaza the Mitanni king despite attempts by the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I, now fearful of growing Assyrian power, attempting to preserve his throne with military support. The lands of

17408-401: Was considered the core of the Empire, and some Hittite laws make a distinction between "this side of the river" and "that side of the river". For example, the bounty for an escaped slave who had fled beyond the river is higher than for a slave caught on the near side. To the west and south of the core territory lay the region known as Luwiya in the earliest Hittite texts. This terminology

17544-406: Was credited for the foundation of the Hittite Empire. "Hattusili was king, and his sons, brothers, in-laws, family members, and troops were all united. Wherever he went on campaign he controlled the enemy land with force. He destroyed the lands one after the other, took away their power, and made them the borders of the sea. When he came back from campaign, however, each of his sons went somewhere to

17680-480: Was identical with the "kingdom of Kheta " mentioned in these Egyptian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Others, such as Max Müller , agreed that Khatti was probably Kheta , but proposed connecting it with Biblical Kittim rather than with the Biblical Hittites . Sayce's identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century; and the name "Hittite" has become attached to

17816-536: Was one of only two or three languages in the Hurro-Urartian family ). There were also Assyrian colonies in the region during the Old Assyrian Empire (2025–1750 BC); it was from the Assyrian speakers of Upper Mesopotamia that the Hittites adopted the cuneiform script . It took some time before the Hittites established themselves following the collapse of the Old Assyrian Empire in the mid-18th century BC, as

17952-577: Was perhaps William Miller (1864–1945), journalist and expert on the Near East, who did the most in that direction. In essence, he signed the death warrant, so to speak, of the Age of Empires. The fall of the Ottoman Empire ultimately enmeshed all the others as well. In the Travel and Politics in the Near East , 1898, Miller claimed to have made four trips to the Balkans, 1894, 1896, 1897 and 1898, and to be, in essence, an expert on "the Near East", by which he primarily meant

18088-515: Was replaced by the names Arzawa and Kizzuwatna with the rise of those kingdoms. Nevertheless, the Hittites continued to refer to the language that originated in these areas as Luwian . Prior to the rise of Kizzuwatna, the heart of that territory in Cilicia was first referred to by the Hittites as Adaniya . Upon its revolt from the Hittites during the reign of Ammuna , it assumed the name of Kizzuwatna and successfully expanded northward to encompass

18224-450: Was signed in the 21st year of Rameses (c. 1258 BC). Terms of this treaty included the marriage of one of the Hittite princesses to Ramesses. Hattusili's son, Tudhaliya IV , was the last strong Hittite king able to keep the Assyrians out of the Hittite heartland to some degree at least, though he too lost much territory to them, and was heavily defeated by Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria in the Battle of Nihriya . He even temporarily annexed

18360-592: Was the Hamidian Massacres , which were being conducted even as the couple traveled the Balkans. According to Norman now, the empire had been established by "the Moslem horde" from Asia , which was stopped by "intrepid Hungary ." Furthermore, "Greece shook off the turbaned destroyer of her people" and so on. The Russians were suddenly liberators of oppressed Balkan states. Having portrayed the Armenians as revolutionaries in

18496-589: Was used in conjunction with the Middle East and the Far East (China and beyond), together known as the "three Easts"; it was a separate term from the Middle East during earlier times and official British usage. Both terms are used interchangeably to refer to the same region. Near East and Middle East are both Eurocentric terms. According to National Geographic , the terms Near East and Middle East denote

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