Merchant carrying a pair of scales for weighing metals. Funeral stele from Northern Syria. Neo-Hittite, 8th century BC. The Hittites were an Ancient Anatolian people who established an empire at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around the 18th century BC. This empire reached its height during the middle of the 14th century BC under Suppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Asia Minor as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. The empire came to an end during the Bronze Age collapse, splintering into several independent, Neo-Hittite city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BC. The oldest evidence for the existence of weighing scales dates to circa 2400-1800 BC in the Indus River valley.