Hattusa, the capital of the ancient Hittites:
One of Turkey’s lesser visited but historically significant attraction is the ruin of an ancient city known as Hattusa, located near modern Boğazkale within the great loop of the Kızılırmak River. The city once served as the capital of the Hittite Empire, a superpower of the Late Bronze Age whose kingdom stretched across the face of Anatolia and northern Syria, from the Aegean in the west to the Euphrates in the east.
The Hittite Empire is mentioned several times in the Bible as one of the most powerful empires of the ancient times. They were contemporary to the ancient Egyptians and every bit their equal. In the Battle of Kadesh, the Hittites fought the mighty Egyptian empire, nearly killing Pharaoh Ramses the Great, and forcing him to retreat back to Egypt. Years later, the Egyptians and the Hittites signed a peace treaty, believed to the oldest in the world, and Ramses himself married a Hittite princess to seal the deal.
The Hittites played a pivotal role in ancient history, far greater than they are given credit for in modern history books. The Hittites developed the lightest and fastest chariots in the world, and despite belonging to the Bronze Age, were already making and using iron tools.
Incredibly, as recently as the turn of the 20th century, the Hittites were considered merely a hearsay since no evidence of the empire’s existence was ever found. This changed with the discovery and excavation of Hattusa, along with the unearthing of tens of thousands of clay tablets documenting many of the Hittites’ diplomatic activities, the most important of which is the peace settlement signed after the Battle of Kadesh between the Hittites and the Egyptians in the 13th century BC.
This account tends to downplay the significance of the discovery, particularly concerning the subject of the historical reliability of the Bible. The problem, as usual, is the near-complete ignorance of even recent history on the part of Christians and atheists alike. For generations, the Hittites were, like the Assyrians, frequently cited by doubters as evidence that the Biblical account of history was false, since there were no archeological indicators that they had ever existed. They might as well have been elves, or fairies.
Then the ruins were discovered and the Biblical account was proven to be true in that particular regard. But did this cause one single atheist to change his mind and conclude that the Bible was, in fact, reliable documentary evidence?
Of course not. And that’s why I don’t bother engaging in discourse anymore with any atheist who claims there is “no evidence” for Christianity. They simply are not honest and there is absolutely nothing that is capable of changing their mind. No matter what logic or evidence destroys their arguments, they will simply move the goalposts and continue to refuse to believe.