Some 3,000 to 7,000 years BC there lived in southern Ukraine or perhaps northern Anatolia a people we now know as the Indo-Europeans.^1,2 They were the ancestors of most of the linguistically related nations of Europe and Western Asia, and eventually they split into Eastern and Western groups. The latter comprised the Hittites, a now extinct people who around 1600 BC established a kingdom in central Anatolia or present-day Türkiye. Their capital was the city of Hattusa, some 120 miles east of Ankara.³

After consolidating their rule over Anatolia around 1370 BC, the Hittites conquered northern Syria and Mesopotamia, establishing an enlarged empire that lasted until shortly after 1200 BC.³ Despite their Indo-European origins, they spoke a language they had learned from their Mesopotamian neighbors. Derived from Babylonian, Akkadian, and Sumerian, this language was based on the written cuneiform alphabet invented by the Sumerians.³

The Hittites came into contact and sometimes into conflict with neighboring Egypt, Assyria, and Mitanni. Much medical information comes from the preserved diplomatic correspondence between the rulers of these empires, who periodically would ask for help from each other on medical matters. Thus, around 1270 BC, the king of Babylon sent to the Hittites a physician—who unfortunately died there, and the Hittite king’s resulting letter is full of excuses for this unfortunate accident.³ Around the same time Ramses II asked the Hittite king to send a doctor to Egypt.³ We learn from these exchanges that the Hittite’s medical practices did not develop in isolation but were those of a well-connected empire that engaged in trade, diplomacy, and warfare with its neighbors. They were clearly influenced by the surrounding cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Aegean world.

It was generally believed in those days that illnesses were due to angered of gods or spirits and that treatment required appeasing them with sacrifices, rituals, and incantations. Religious texts were available to describe how this propitiation was to be achieved. Medical knowledge also comprised clinical predictions, as well as practical recommendations about using plants. Some were to be crushed and mixed with a liquid consisting of yeast dissolved in beer and water. A sick child’s mouth was to be washed out, then he had to swallow the mixture, and some of it was also to be poured on his head, on his whole body, and into his anus. After this, the child was to be bathed. In some cases, more plants were to be mixed with sheep’s fat and applied as an ointment or used as laxative, soothing medicine, or sweat producing agent.³

From their long history of warfare, the Hittites acquired practical knowledge of treating wounds, fractures, and battle injuries. They had laws on what was to be done if poisoning was suspected. During epidemics, “plague prayers” were to be offered to the gods.⁴ Rudiments of public health measures are to be found in that occasionally sick patients were isolated. Yet Babylonian medicine was considered more advanced, leaving Hittite medicine to still have much to learn from it.

References

1. Dunea G. Indo-European for health professionals. Hektoen International Winter 2020. https://hekint.org/2021/11/22/indo-european-for-health-professionals/
2. Dunea G. Indo-Europeans and medical terms. Hektoen International Fall 2020. https://hekint.org/2020/12/14/indo-europeans-and-medical-terms/
3. Güterbock HG. Hittite Medicine. Bull.Hist. Med 1962;(2):109-13.
4. Kimball SE, Lehmann WP, and Slocum J. Hittite Online, Lesson 8. University of Texas at Austin Linguistics Research Center. https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/hitol/80