tribal confederation · Anatolia and the Levant

Kaska

1450 BCE – 1100 BCE (approx.)

The Kaska, tribal peoples of the Pontic mountains who for three centuries raided the Hittite heartland and once burned Hattusa.

Origins

The Kaska lived in the wooded mountains between the Hittite heartland and the Black Sea. They appear in Hittite texts from the 15th century BCE, when they overran the holy city of Nerik and pushed into central Anatolia.

Rule and society

They were not a state but groups of villages under local chiefs, living from herding and farming and raiding Hittite lands. Hittite kings made short-lived treaties with individual groups. Mursili II wrote that one chief, Pihhuniya, ruled not in the Kaska way but like a king.

Decline and legacy

Kaska raiders sacked Hattusa in the 14th century BCE, and Hattusili III only recovered Nerik in the 13th. After the Hittite collapse they moved south-east, where Tiglath-Pileser I of the Assyrian Empire fought them c. 1100 BCE; then they vanish.

Few sources survive for this state; details are uncertain.

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Cite this page
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Kaska. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kaska
MLA
“Kaska.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kaska. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Kaska.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kaska.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Kaska’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kaska (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻