Togarmah (Part 3/3)

Digging into an Anatolia that has yet to be dug

While we have so far followed the Turkic and Tocharian lines of exploration there is one more route to take: Anatolian. As has been established previously the Anatolian branch of languages was closely related to Tocharian despite being separated by a massive distance. This is surprising because Persian languages show more affinity with Latin than they do to their neighbors Tocharian, and likewise Greek has more affinity to Latin and Persian than its neighbor Anatolian. The trigger for this was more than mere distance since the proximity of geographic factor clearly was not relevant. The geographic component that did influence their development was chiefly social isolation from competing groups.

Looking at Tocharian we know from our lengthy analysis that the Tocharians were the most sophisticated bronze working people in east Asia - thus the only ones capable of military sized metallurgy - for much of the bronze age. In fact, the traditional view of “Ages” for metal cultures can really only be limited to the zones of contact in the ancient world. There is debate if East Asia - including China, Korea, and Japan - ever had a transition from Bronze to Iron age as the working and usage of Bronze tools stayed consistent throughout later periods.¹ Furthermore, in East Asia the use of bronze was extensive for tools, vessels or ritual purposes, but has less importance in military settings. It is very probable that the early dominance of the Indo-Europeans was this precise complex development of a functional military bronze culture giving their warrior elite an immense edge. Effectively, Tocharian never faced external pressure - at least until the later period when it was wiped out - helping it retain more “ancient” features common to Indo-European.

This shows how the ability for a language family to “retain the features of the original language it split from” comes more from pressures relating to isolation of a group. Non isolated groups would therefore retain less of the original features as a result of morphological change overtime. Tocharian’s lack of relative change contrasts with Persian’s complex change resulting from dynamically evolving social pressures. Thus it would follow that Hittite’s relative similarity to Tocharian stems less from temporal distance and more from a lack of social pressures.

Unlike Tocharian, the Anatolian languages such as Hittites, Luwic, Lydian, and Palaic were all in an intensely populated and militarily contested region. Nearly all of the surrounding people had access to Bronze weapons, and would often use them in combat against the Hittites. This is usually seen as a contributing factor to the relatively short lived period for the Hittite Empire which became extinct over 2000 year's before Tocharian. This seemingly contrasts with everything set forward previously as military contests would be the exact opposite of a lack of social pressure. Let us break this down.

Contrasting with the vast majority of Indo-European groups which seemingly operate linguistically assimilating states, the Hittite Empire was founded by a warrior elite who had taken over a native anatolian people group called the Hatti. In fact, the very name of the “Hittites” was never a name used by the Hittites, and the proper term for their people and language is Nesite, from the endonym for their group “Nesa”. Attached is a map of their empire, albeit from their zenith of power during the New Kingdom period, but it still gives a good overview of their regional influence.

When these Nesites moved into Anatolia, rather than supplanting, or displacing the indigenous groups the Hittites more-or-less continued business as usual, layering themselves onto the population as a ruling class. In effect this created a heavily isolated social elite who spoke nothing like the majority of their Empire. In fact, Hattic was still often used as a liturgical language centuries later and may have survived in the form of descendant groups like the Kartveli in the nearby Caucasus mountains. There are even theories relating Hattic to the distant Yeniseian languages in Siberia which may provide a link between this group and the Turkic groups previously discussed.² Whatever the case may be, Hittite was much more socially isolated within the Hittite Empire than the name would imply.

Even the Torah failed to differentiate between Hittites and Hatti, using “Heth” interchangeably for both people with the clear lack of an ancient demarcation line between what was an obvious well known world super power. The Torah calling all “Hittites” as “Heth” or “Children of Heth” would be comparable to referring to “Native Americans” and “Americans” all with a singular term “American” despite one group's political existence before the other. We will further dig into this theory later as the Table of Nations actually includes a “Heth” as the son of Canaan, himself a son of Mizraim rather than Japheth. There was a “Hittite son of Japheth, the Indo-European”, but also a separate Hatti people. Indeed, Heth is likely a candidate for the Hatti, who were, like most of the Mizraim, more ancient than the people that supplant them from Japheth and Shem.

What this shows is the ability for languages to maintain their primitive features through time comes from social isolation. Despite retaining ancient features from Indo-European, both Hittite and Tocharian were wiped out, while the more socially fluid Latin, or Greek maintained an identity. It was precisely this social isolation that caused their eventual demise, but also enabled both of them to retain similar phonological features. Hattic on the other hand might still exist in the form of Kartvelian due to its comparative lack of social isolation even though they maintained little discernible political control, or ever had a state of their own.

This effect is seen in two of the most socially isolated languages on earth, Korean and Hebrew. The Korean peninsula shut itself off for over 500 years, and the Jewish people were socially separated from competing groups and thus able to maintain their language. In contrast, the Hittites were afforded no opportunity of language preservation and as a result are a now extinct family making purely linguistic analysis attempting to link these people fraught with difficulties. To drive home this point, there are a total of 4-5 experts who speak Luwian in the world which doesn’t give us a very wide pool of data regarding the language; so even if there was a mountain of well preserved records we have no one to translate.

Looking into archeological dating, competing theories exist regarding the origin for Hittite and Tocharian migration out of the native Indo-European homeland. Some see this at earliest around 3000 BCE, while others see it closer to 2200 BCE.³⁴ This dating is unimportant as there was clearly a shared cause propelling both of these peoples migration from their homeland - most obviously due to too large a population for the constrained resources of the steppe. While Tocharians were a larger population perhaps owing to their ethnic fusing with related Turkic people groups, the Hittites were realistically hardly even a group.

As previously established, Hittites were an elite caste that overtook the native Hattic peoples, often imposing their language, but many times the elites didn’t even use Hittite and instead used the related Luwian, or even Hurrian. The earliest usage of Hititte comes from the ‘kingdom’ of Kusara, which was a small nation centered around the capital city Kusara on the periphery of Hattic territory. Later Hittite Kings all descend from the royal dynasty of Kusara whose exploits are known to us through the Anitta text, which is one of the earliest extant inscriptions in the Hittite language.⁵ This is corroborated by the writing of the first king of the Old Hittites Empire, Hattusili I (as well as his son Hattusili III) where he records his title as “man of Kussara . . . Great King Tabarna, Hattusili the Great King, King of the land of Hatti.”⁶ No other record of Hittite origins is ever supposed, so we must presume Kussara was the actual origin for the Hittites and all the cultural expansion is downstream of this original kingdom.

Sadly, there are almost no records of Kussara’s origin, and we aren’t even left any bread crumbs to follow.⁷ We are hardly sure of Kussara’s location and only have guesses to go on as Turkish archeology academia has made a concerted effort to prevent uncovering any further Hittite information. A presumed location in the south-east of the Hittite core territory is the most likely location for the city, depicted on the attached map of major Hittite cities and regional settlements. We are unable to trace the development of Luwian or Hittite without a plethora of information and expert analysis, which we simply lack presently.

Returning to why this “Anatolian” theory for Togarmah is relevant, we must remember the important regional city of Tegarama which had a tacit link to the Hittite kings, and was often a trade partner of both Hittite Empire and the Old Assyrian Kingdom.⁸ Troubling for our purposes is that no archeological location for Tegarama has been discovered - again due to Turkish archeology interests - and only a generalized location in the Syro-Hittite states has been suggested. We know the city is near Carchemish, as the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I (I know, fantastic name) stopped his march in Tegarama to inspect his forces before attacking and capturing Carchemish.

We know a lot more about Carchemish than we do Tegarama as it’s known from a fairly important biblical reference found in Jeremiah chapter 46:2 where it says “Concerning Egypt, concerning the army of Pharaoh-Neco, the king of Egypt which was on the Euphrates in Carchemish, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah the king of Judah.” This massive ‘Battle of Carchemish’ includes a list of multiple allies of the various kings, and is often one of the most important biblical sources for historical context as a result of this engagement. This reference helps us place the battle fairly close to the border of Egypt and Babylon, which would have been roughly near the Syro-Hittite states in the furthest bend of the Euphrates river. As implied by the battle between world powers, this region was usually disputed territory for kings and went through diverse eras of cultural influence from Egyptians, Babylonians, and Hittites, but even the lesser known, yet culturally distinct, “Yamhad” kingdom or the Mitanni kingdom.

Tegarama would be similarly not far, and culturally quite related to the rest of the Syro-Hittite states. Like Carchemish, Tegarama probably had multiple periods of influence from all these competing empires which isn't very different from the Syria we know today as a melting pot and meeting place of nearly all the Middle East's religions and cultures.

Related to the Hittite nation was the Luwian speaking state of Kizzuwatna which became roughly contiguous with the territory, specifically of the regional center known as Cilicia in later periods. Like much of the Hittite and Luwian territory, Kizzuwatna’s rulers were a Luwian speaking class that ruled over a separate population of Hurrian speakers - as well as a diverse population of minor ethnic groups. A significant portion of the Hittite Empire included a large population of Hurrians - who likely dominated the frontier regions of the Empire necessitating close integration - and their religion likewise closely influenced Hittite mythology.⁹

Hurrian speakers may have been related to their adjacent neighbors the Urartuians, who speak a similarly related language but actually share less religious commonality to each other than between the Hurrians and the Hittites. The Hurrians were probably native inhabitants of the region who were similarly related to the 1600 BCE Mitanni Empire - themselves also Hurrian. For a nearly 250 year period the Mitanni empire ruled much of the crossroads between Egypt, the Hittites, and Babylon. As a result of their position between these great empires their state eventually collapses under the pressure, leaving states like Kizzuwatna under control of the Hittites.

Kizzuwatna itself disintegrates as a unified political entity following collapse of the Hittite empire, separating into the previously discussed northern section of the Syro-Hittite states; states such as Que, Kammanu, Tabal, Hamath, or Carchemish. Carchemish was already discussed, but Hamath and Tabal are future names we will return to when looking at the descendants of Noah named “Tubal” and “Hamath” which may have a clear relation etymologically. Kammanu was a 12th-7th century Luwian speaking state that may have been named after the capital of Kizzuwatna “Kummani” most probably located near the modern site of Comana. Despite speaking Luwain, Kummanni was the site of a major cult center to the Hurrian chief deity Tesup, heavily implying these people were native Hurrians.

Interestingly, there was a fortified city in Kammanu mentioned in Neo-Assyrian royal chronicles dating to around the 9th, 8th, and 7th centuries BCE known as “Til-garimmu/e” which bares a striking resemblance to the Tegarama in Old Assyrian sources. Was Kammanu the location for the city potentially founded by a people being led in the region related to the Togarmah people, or potentially Togarmah himself had founded the city? More archeology is necessary to take this link any further.

Finally looking at the state of Que centered around Adana we are unsure which language these people spoke, or their genetic stock. The indigenous name for the state was likely read as “Hiyawa” and related to the state known as “Hume” in Babylonian sources.¹⁰ Based on etymology, questions arise if these Hiyawa were related to the name the Hittites used for the Mycenean Greeks. Saving a lengthy debate regarding the subject, the strongest evidence for this theory relates to a local dynasty founded by a so called “King Mopsos” known to us through Luwian inscriptions¹¹, but also through Greek mythology which discusses a well known King Mopsos. 

This is a subject we will return to under our identification for the Greeks since it doesn’t exactly relate to Togarmah, but for our purposes Que is relevant from the actual Torah. Taken from Kings I, Chapter 10 line 28 and 29 we are given an interesting section: 

“And the source of Solomon's horses was from Egypt and an assemblage. The agents of the king, would buy the assemblage privileges for a price. A chariot that went up and left Egypt went for a price of six hundred silver [pieces], and a horse for one hundred fifty, and so for all the kings of the Hittites and for the kings of Aram did they export them through them.” 

The “assemblage” in this reference is curiously called “Mikoovay” or “Mikoova” in Hebrew which is strikingly similar to how Quwe should be pronounced closer to “Keve”. Given that this “assemblage” is an export port of the Hittites, and Quwe was uniquely positioned on the coast as the province that exported for the Hittites, it’s extremely likely this Solomonic reference is referring to Quwe and might not actually translate to “assemblage” at all. While seemingly trivial, keep this concept that a “northern land exporting horses” existed in the Hittite Empire, with specific reference to it as Quwe.

While we are uncertain of the later genetic, or linguistic make-up of Quwe’s inhabitants, the existence of their neighbors speaking Luwian, but all having varying ethnic stocks implies that Quwe probably also spoke Luwian, and might have had some Greek admixture following the Ahhiyawans migration under Mopsos. 

In earlier periods, while the region was unified under Kizzuwatna, the collective Hittite term for this political region when combined with the Western Anatolian state of Arzawa was “Luwia”. Based on Luwian inscriptions found in this area, it’s highly probable the Hitttes viewed this as a separate, but related, ethnic group. The attached map shows sites associated with Luwian settlement and speakers, but does not suggest the people were “genetically Luwian/Hittite”. In later periods Arzawa becomes known as Lydia, mentioned in Jeremiah 46:9 as the “Ludim”(לודים) who are one of the more major Kingdoms during the early Iron Age. At some point the “LuWia” sound morphed into “Lu-Dia” getting us “Lydia”. A connection might potentially be drawn to the aforementioned “Hiyawa” of the Quwe state whose name is very similar to “Arzawa”.

While it is unclear how the Lydian language specifically developed, it clearly split off from an earlier Anatolian ancestry like the Luwian and Hittite languages, but shared more features similar to Greek to its close proximity. However, Lydia itself was a much later state dating to post 1200, after the Bronze Age transition to the Iron Age, and shared more characteristics with the Syro-Hittite states than the more ancient Hittite Empire.

Potentially interesting for the Lydian connection is a genetic study which suggests maternal lineages of Etruscans - the people of Tuscany, closely related to Latins - descended from Western Anatolian populations separated sometime between 8000-3000 BCE.¹² At first, the dating of this link seems far too distant to match up with the Indo-European migrations as we know they began at earliest around 3000 BCE. What this means is that Tuscans and Anatolians may not be related through their Indo-European ancestors - at least later than 3000 BCE - but might actually be related through the pre-Indo-European indigenous Early European Farmer populations of Anatolia.¹³ This is likely, and the fact maternal lineages, rather than paternal, reflect this shows how a dominant patriarchal elite invaded and married into the genealogies of the native women. This link is important, since it shows a similar effect occurring in Italy as Anatolia, where Hittite speakers overlaid onto the potentially indigenous Hattic population. Even more strangely is the fact Hittites, Latins, and Turks all share mythological origin regarding she-wolves. Was the mythology of the she-wolf a Pre-Indo-European story told by indigenous Hunter-Gatherer populations before they mixed with Indo-Europeans?

Finally, returning once again the Torah, looking at two references in Ezekiel might finally help us put a close to this investigation of Togarmah. Directly referenced as “Beth-Togarmah” - meaning “house” of Togarmah, or ‘dynasty’ potentially - we are given the line: “From Beth-togarmah they bartered horses, horsemen, and mules for your wares.”¹⁴ A few chapters later in Ezekiel we again get another similar reference: “Gomer and all its cohorts, Beth-togarmah [in] the remotest parts of the north and all its cohorts—the many peoples with you”.¹⁵

Now, what is clear from both of these references is Togarmah’s trade in horses and mules, lining up with earlier designations of Que as a major post of export for these specific wares. In the ancient world records corroborate these people around Que, and thus potentially Togarmah from the bible, as essentially being significant dealers in the horse trade. In fact the evidence for this is quite a bit more extensive, but one of the more important texts is one written by an ancient writer named Kikkuli.

Due to the importance of this text in deciphering Mitanni we know that Mitanni included a significant proportion of Indo-Aryan, and possibly Indo-Iranian loan words. The language was heavily influenced by Indo-Iranian implying these people were some kind of middlemen in the trade route stretching across the Scythian world. However, the Mitanni were not Indo-Europeans themselves despite the linguistic fusal of languages.

Complicating this is the fact Kikkuli was a “master horse trainer [assussanni] of the land of Mitanni”, but he himself was a Hurrian, and the text was written in Hittite no less. The story doesn’t end there, as the tablets include Indo-European loan words and symbols making it unclear the exact origin of much of the information and if it may have predated Kikkuli himself.

Lacking any further clues, we must return to the final reference in Ezekiel mentioning the house of Togarmah “in the remotest part of the north and all its cohorts”, mentioned alongside Gomer and all its cohorts. This heavily implies Togarmah must have lived around Gomer, but that clue alone doesn’t exactly get us anywhere since previously we discussed how the Cimmerians invaded Anatolia, directly north of the Syro-Hittite states no less. However, the modifier of “remotest part of the north” would heavily imply something similar to Siberia at the furthest reaches of civilization. The inclusion of “many peoples” implies an extremely large geographic region for the location of Togarmah, but does not preclude the “double entendre” of the Torah referencing the “lesser Togarmah” or descendants of Togarmah that may have existed as an elite ruling class, trading in horses for the rest of their dynasty further north in the Turkic homelands where these horses would originally have been bred.

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We can finally complete our exhaustive analysis of Togarmah, as well as our search for Gomer’s descendants. Anyone who has read this far should hopefully have learned a few things, and deepened their understanding of the historic periods and evolution of modern human cultures. The goal was to not just provide an analysis of ancient peoples and civilization, but to look at how cultures mutate over centuries. Few, if any of these populations, still exist exactly in their original forms which makes it all the more special that something like the Torah can be retained in it’s purest form longer than the actual people mentioned in the text. The amount of information we can learn from the Torah is not just limited to spirituality, or self-improvement but through close learning can help us better understand topics as wide ranging as history, language, or genetics.

Over roughly the next year I will be publishing more of these sections relating to each descendant of Noah. Togarmah is easily one of, if not the most extensive discussion we will have, but there will be some nearly comparable sections later. Two weeks from now we will reach the Greeks, which will be broken up into much smaller parts than Togarmah but take place over a series of posts. Next week we will be discussing the eponymous “Magog” known through apocalyptical visions of the prophets and being strongly associated with a great battle causing the end of the world.

I once again thank you for reading, and if you have made it this far please feel free to contact me so we can bounce ideas off one another. Everything here is merely a table set for what could be understood through further research and archeological excavations.

1. The Rectangular Review, Volume 1 (1871), p. 408

2. Kassian, A. (2009–2010) Hattic as a Sino-Caucasian language // Ugarit-Forschungen. Internationales Jahrbuch für die Altertumskunde Syrien-Palästinas. Bd 41. pp 309–447.

3. Lazaridis, Iosif, et al., (2022). "The genetic history of the Southern Arc: A bridge between West Asia and Europe", in: Science, 26 Aug 2022, Vol 377, Issue 6609

4. Kloekhorst, Alwin, (2022). "Anatolian", in: Thomas Olander (ed.), The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective, Cambridge University Press, p. 75

5. Gonnet-Bağana, Hatice, (2015). "Anitta, CTH 1-30 (Proclamation of Anitta of Kussar) - CTH 1", Koc Universitesi Digital Collections.

6. Burney, Charles (2004). Historical Dictionary of the Hittites. Scarecrow Press. p. 108.

7. Barjamovic, Gojko (2011). A Historical Geography of Anatolia in the Old Assyrian Colony Period. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. p. 143–144.

8. Bajramovic, Gojko Historical Geography of Anatolia in the Old Assyrian Colony Period p.133, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2011

9.  [H. A. Hoffner, Jr., ed]H. A. Hoffner, Jr., ed, "Perspectives on Hittite Civilization: Selected Writings of Hans G. Güterbock.", Assyriological Studies 26 Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1997

10. Trevor Bryce, The land of Hiyawa (Que) revisited, Anatolian Studies 66 (2016): 67–79

11. Trevor Bryce, The land of Hiyawa (Que) revisited, Anatolian Studies 66 (2016): 74b

12.  (6 February 2013). "Origins and Evolution of the Etruscans' mtDNA"

13. Francesca Tassi; Silvia Ghirotto; David Caramelli; Guido Barbujani; et al. (2013). "Genetic evidence does not support an Etruscan origin in Anatolia". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 152 (1): 11–18.

14.  Ezekiel 27:14

15. Ezekiel 38:6