The Dark Lords of Hattusha
- Episode aired Sep 6, 2006
IMDb RATING
7.5/10
32
YOUR RATING
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Mark Halliley
- Self - Narrator
- (voice)
Gürhan Elmalioglu
- Theodor Makridis
- (as Gurhan Elmalioglu)
Trevor Bryce
- Self - University of Queensland
- (as Prof Trevor Bryce)
Andreas Schachner
- Self - German Archaeological Institute
- (as Dr Andreas Schachner)
Theo van den Hout
- Self - University of Chicago
- (as Prof Theo van den Hout)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
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Featured review
Basically A Collection of False Claims and Historical Inaccuracies
It is often said that history and fiction are two sides of the same coin. This is certainly true of this (re-)construction of Hittite history, which creates a picture of the kingdom that it not only inaccurate, but consciously omits some of the relevant evidence. The Hittite empire did not immediately die out as a result of internecine conflict; there was a second Hittite Empire that lasted well into the second century BC. The tablets of the Hittite Kingdom were not discovered in the early twentieth century, but unearthed at least two decades earlier; and the first person to translate them was not the Czech scholar - as the program claims; they had been translated a lot earlier, both by foreign as well as Ottoman scholars. The program manages to be consciously orientalist in tone by claiming that the Hittites were some kind of Mschiavellians, as opposed to the 'good' Egyptians. The program also claims that Hattusa was in a remote part of Central Anatolia, when in truth it was situated at the crossover between two main trade routes in northern and southern Anatolia, in which is now contemporary Turkey. All of these details can be verified by Gurney's book on the Hittites, published several years ago by Penguin in the US and the UK. The program manages to credit all the western European authorities, but omits to give any credit to the Dincol family, who are portrayed as being the leading scholars in the Hittite language. It's a shame that this kind of documentary appears on television, giving a misleading picture of what were a fascinating and (until the late nineteenth century) little-known race.
helpful•10
- l_rawjalaurence
- May 29, 2014
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