Hittite Blood in the Clay

[Intro] Yeah Mm-hmm

Bronze age

Let me tell it

[Verse 1] Hattusa rising from the Anatolian stone

I was born in the highlands where the iron never sleeps

Anitta burned the throne before my name was known

Now the Lion Gate remembers what the mountain keeps

[Chorus] Hittite blood in the clay

Hittite blood in the clay

Empire of the iron and the storm

Hittite blood in the clay

Hittite blood in the clay

Kings who carved their names into the warm

[Verse 2] Suppiluliuma swung the sword across the map

Mitanni fell quiet when the chariots came

I wrote the first treaty and I sealed the gap

Ramses shook my hand and we both kept the flame

[Chorus] Hittite blood in the clay

Hittite blood in the clay

Empire of the iron and the storm

Hittite blood in the clay

Hittite blood in the clay

Kings who carved their names into the warm

[Bridge] Tudhaliya

Muwatalli

Hattusili

Names I carry

Kadesh burning on the Orontes side

Two great armies standing where the rivers collide

[Verse 3] Then the Sea People came and the sky went gray

My cities crumbled like a law I couldn't keep

Nobody sang for me when I slipped away

Just tablets in a fire and a thousand years of sleep

[Chorus] Hittite blood in the clay

Hittite blood in the clay

Empire of the iron and the storm

Hittite blood in the clay

Hittite blood in the clay

Kings who carved their names into the warm

[Verse 4] Wake me up a thousand years on a Georgia porch

Somebody diggin in the dirt found a tablet in the torch

Carbon date the message, it's a king talkin to me

Treaty with the Egyptians, that's a contract, not a plea

I ain't never met a pharaoh but we shook across the sea

Kadesh wasn't victory, it was both of us agree

That's diplomacy in blood, that's a handshake in the sand

I was building civilizations when they couldn't understand

[Verse 5] Iron in the furnace, I was sharper than the rest

Everybody swingin bronze and I was puttin em to rest

Anatolian highlands, that's the mountain and the mud

Puduhepa on the throne, she was speaking for the blood

Queen beside the king, that's a power you don't see

She was writing to Ramses like a boss on the marquee

Equal in the treaty, put her name up on the stone

A thousand years of silence and she still ain't been dethroned

[Chorus] Hittite blood in the clay

Hittite blood in the clay

Empire of the iron and the storm

Hittite blood in the clay

Hittite blood in the clay

Kings who carved their names into the warm

[Verse 6] Hattusa had a thousand gods, I kept em in the wall

Every city that I took, I brought they gods, I took em all

That's a policy of heaven, that's a strategy of fear

You can worship what you want as long as you belong in here

Now the Sea People comin and they movin like a plague

Every coastal city burnin, ain't nobody left to save

I ain't go out swingin, I just faded from the page

Left a library of rock and let the scholars turn the page

[Verse 7] Now they call me a footnote in a textbook they don't read

But the iron that I smelted is the reason you succeed

Every sword that ever cut, every plow that ever turned

Started with a Hittite and a lesson that I learned

I ain't askin for a statue, I ain't beggin for a crown

I just want the record straight before the curtain come down

Bronze Age titan, you can call me what you please

But the alphabet of power got my fingerprints on these

[Bridge] Hattusa

Tarhuntassa

Carchemish

Can't outlast us

Kadesh written in the stone, the oldest peace on record

Two empires in the dust and I'm the one that they respected

[Outro] Yeah

A thousand years of sleep

Mm-hmm

And I'm still in the clay

Still in the clay

Tell em Suppiluliuma

Tell em Muwatalli

Tell em Hattusili

We was here

We was here

(We was here)

(We was here)