The Revenues of Hittite State, Storage and Redistribution

The economic system of Hittite Kingdom shows parallelism with a description of Polanyi about redistribution system, as “Tributes firstly flow to the capital of an emperor, and then from there to the provinces”. This system completely depended upon the social hierarchy. Tributes firstly flow to the capital of an emperor, and then from there to the provinces. This essay examines the tax collection system of the Hittite Empire, especially the aspect of redistribution of the taxes from the capital to the provinces. As the taxes flow firstly into Hattu a and later to the provinces, we are trying to draw the conceptional frame of the “redistribution in centralized system”. This will also make it possible to consider the management structure of the Hittite Empire as well.