section_path: Near East/Anatolia
section_name: Anatolia
paragraph_text: Anatolia
  
  The Hittite Empire was established during the 18th century BC in Hattusa, northern Anatolia. At its height in the 14th century BC, the Hittite Kingdom encompassed central Anatolia, southwestern Syria as far as Ugarit, and upper Mesopotamia. After 1180 BC, amid general turmoil in the Levant, which is conjectured to have been associated with the sudden arrival of the Sea Peoples. The kingdom disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived into the 8th century BC.
  
  Arzawa in Western Anatolia, during the second half of the second millennium BC, likely extended along southern Anatolia in a belt from near the Turkish Lakes Region to the Aegean coast. Arzawa was the western neighbor of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms, at times a rival and, at other times, a vassal.
  
  The Assuwa league was a confederation of states in western Anatolia defeated by the Hittites under the earlier Tudhaliya I, around 1400 BC. Arzawa has been associated with the much more obscure Assuwa generally located to its north. It probably bordered it, and may even have been an alternative term for it (at least during some periods).