CCS Research Seminar 1

The city of Hattusa in central Anatolia was the capital of the Hittite kingdom from the 17^th century BCE to the early 12^th century BCE. The sprawling city, which covers some 180 hectares, has long been thought to have had a sizable population of between 10,000-40,000 residents. However, in 2025, Jürgen Seeher—former director of excavations at Hattusa—published an article arguing that the population probably numbered only 2,300—4,600. Seeher's figures prompt a reconsideration of the nature of Hittite kingship, its relationship with Hattusa, and the spaces of the empire. Seeher has already suggested we may be looking at an itinerant court, as in Medieval Europe. In this paper, I will take up Seeher's challenge, examining what we know about the travels of the Hittite kings and their court, as well as the geographical and political obligations and constraints placed on the kings in their dual roles as military leaders and priests. I will then examine the results in the context of different patterns of cosmic/heroic and fixed/itinerant kingship proposed by Alan Strathern and Jeroen Duindam, respectively, with the aim of illuminating the place of Hittite kingship in pre-modern world history.

Speaker:
Professor Caillan Davenport is Head of the Centre for Classical Studies at the Australian National University. He is the author of A History of the Roman Equestrian Order (Cambridge, 2019) and Behind Caesar's Back: Rumor, Gossip, and the Making of the Roman Emperors (Yale, 2026), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on ancient courts and monarchies, with a special focus on comparative history. He is currently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, leading the project 'Why Monarchy Endures: Answers from the Ancient Mediterranean World' (FT240100071).