Hattusa

Hattusa (also Ḫattuša or Hattusas or Hattusha) was the capital, during two periods, of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. Its ruins lie near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, (originally Boğazköy) within the great loop of the Kızılırmak River (Hittite: Marashantiya; Greek: Halys). Hattusa was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 1986.
History
The earliest traces of settlement on the site are from the sixth millennium BC during the Chalcolithic period. Toward the end of the 3rd Millenium BC the Hattian people established a settlement on locations that had been occupied even earlier and referred to the site as Hattush. In the 19th and 18th centuries BC, merchants from Assyria, centered at Kanesh (Neša) (modern Kültepe) established a trading post there, setting up in their own separate quarter of the lower city.
A carbonized layer apparent in excavations attests to the burning and ruin of the city of Hattusa around 1700 BC. The responsible party appears to have been King Anitta from Kussara, who took credit for the act and erected an inscribed curse for good measure:
though in fact the city was rebuilt afterward, possibly by a son of Anitta.
In the first half of the 2nd Millenium BC around the year 1650 BC the Hittite king Labarna moved the capital from Neša to Hattusa and took the name of Hattusili, the "one/man from Hattusa". After the Kaskians arrived to the kingdom's north, they twice attacked the city and under king Tudhaliya I, the Hittites moved the capital north to Sapinuwa. Under Muwatalli II, they moved south to Tarhuntassa but the king assigned his son, the future Hattusili III as governor over Hattusa. In the mid-13th century BC Hittite ruler Mursili III returned the seat to Hattusa, where the capital remained until the end of the Hittite kingdom in the 12th century BC (KBo 21.15 i 11–12).
At its peak, the city covered and comprised an inner and outer portion, both surrounded by a massive and still visible course of walls erected during the reign of Suppiluliuma I (–1322 BC (short chronology)). The inner city covered an area of some and was occupied by a citadel with large administrative buildings and temples. The royal residence, or acropolis, was built on a high ridge now known as Büyükkale (Great Fortress). The city displayed over of walls, with inner and outer skins around 3 m of thick and 2 m of space between them, adding 8 m of the total thickness.
To the south lay an outer city of about , with elaborate gateways decorated with reliefs showing warriors, lions, and sphinxes. Four temples were located here, each set around a porticoed courtyard, together with secular buildings and residential structures. Outside the walls are cemeteries, most of which contain cremation burials. Modern estimates put the population of the city between 40,000 and 50,000 at the peak; in the early period, the inner city housed a third of that number. The dwelling houses that were built with timber and mud bricks have vanished from the site, leaving only the stone-built walls of temples and palaces.
The city was destroyed, together with the Hittite state itself, around 1200 BC, as part of the Bronze Age collapse. Excavations suggest that Hattusa was gradually abandoned over a period of several decades as the Hittite empire disintegrated. It has been suggested that a regional drought occurred at that time. The site was subsequently abandoned until 800 BC, when a modest Phrygian settlement appeared in the area.
Archaeology
In 1833, the French archaeologist Félix Marie Charles Texier (1802–1871) was sent on an exploratory mission to Turkey, where in 1834 he discovered monumental ruins near the town of Boğazköy. Texier made topographical measurements, produced illustrations, and composed a preliminary site plan. The site was subsequently visited by a number of European travelers and explorers, most notably the German geographer Heinrich Barth in 1858. Georges Perrot excavated at the site in 1861 and at the nearby site of Yazılıkaya. Perrot was the first to suggest, in 1886, that Boğazköy was the Hittite capital of Hattusa. In 1882 German engineer Carl Humann completed a full plan of the site.
Ernest Chantre opened some trial trenches at the village then called Boğazköy, in 1893–94, with excavations being cut short by a cholera outbreak. Significantly Chantre discovered some fragments of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform. The fragments contain text in both the Akkadian language and what later was determined to be the Hittite language. Between 1901 and 1905 Waldemar Belck visited the site several times, finding a number of tablets.
In 1905 Hugo Winckler conducted some soundings at Boğazköy on behalf of the German Oriental Society (DOG), finding 35 more cuneiform tablet fragments at the site of the royal fortress, Büyükkale. Winckler began actual excavations in 1906, focusing mainly on the royal fortress area. Thousands of tablets were recovered, most in the then unreadable Hittite language. The few Akkadian texts firmly identified the site as Hattusa. Winckler returned in 1907 (with Otto Puchstein, Heinrich Kohl, Ludwig Curtius and Daniel Krencker), and briefly in 1911 and 1912 (with Theodore Makridi). Work stopped with the outbreak of WWI. Tablets from these excavations were published in two series Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazkoi (KB0) and Keilschrift urkunden aus Boghazköi (KUB). Work resumed in 1931 under prehistorian Kurt Bittel with establishing stratigraphy as the major focus. The work was under the auspices of the DOG and German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut) and lasted 9 seasons until being suspended due to the outbreak of WWII in 1939. Excavation resumed in 1952 under Bittel with Peter Neve replacing as field director in 1963 and as director in 1978, continuing until 1993. The focus was on the Upper City area. Publication of tablets was resumed in the KUB and KBo. In 1994 Jürgen Seeher assumed control of the excavation, leading there until 2005, with the focus on the Büyükkaya and non-monumental areas including economic and residential spaces. From 2006 on, while some archaeology continued under new director Andreas Schachner, activities have been more focused toward restoration and preparation for tourist operations.
During the 1986 excavations a large (35 × 24 cm, 5 kg in weight, with 2 attached chains) inscribed metal tablet was discovered 35 meters west of the Sphinx Gate. The tablet, from the 13th century BC, contained a treaty between Hittite Tudḫaliya IV and Kurunta, King of Tarḫuntašša. It is held at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. During 1991 repair work at the site a Mycenae bronze sword was found on the western slope. It was inscribed, in Akkadian, "As Duthaliya the Great King shattered the Assuwa-Country he dedicated these swords to the Storm-God, his lord". Another significant find during the 1990-91 excavation season in the "Westbau" building of the upper city, was 3400 sealed bullae and clay lumps dating from the 2nd half of the 13th century BC. They were primarily associated with land documents.
Cuneiform royal archives
Forty mercantile documents written in the Old Assyrian dialect of Akkadian were found in the early 2nd millennium BC karum. By the middle of the 2nd millennium a scribal community had grown up in Hattusa based on Syrian, Mesopotamian, and Hurrian input. This included the usual range of Akkadian and Sumerian language texts.
One of the most important discoveries at the site has been the cuneiform royal archives of clay tablets from the Hittite Empire New Kingdom period, known as the Bogazköy Archive, consisting of official correspondence and contracts, as well as legal codes, procedures for cult ceremony, oracular prophecies and literature of the ancient Near East. One particularly important tablet, currently on display at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, details the terms of a peace settlement reached years after the Battle of Kadesh between the Hittites and the Egyptians under Ramesses II, in 1259 or 1258 BC. A copy is on display in the United Nations in New York City as an example of the earliest known international peace treaties.
Although the 30,000 or so clay tablets recovered from Hattusa form the main corpus of Hittite literature, archives have since appeared at other centers in Anatolia, such as Tabigga (Maşat Höyük) and Sapinuwa (Ortaköy).
Sphinxes
A pair of sphinxes found at the southern gate in Hattusa were taken for restoration to Germany in 1917. The better-preserved was returned to Turkey in 1924 and placed on display in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, but the other remained in Germany where it was on display at the Pergamon Museum from 1934 until it was moved to the Boğazköy Museum outside the Hattusa ruins, along with the Istanbul sphinx reuniting the pair near their original location.
See also
Ancient settlements in Turkey
Cities of the Ancient Near East
Short chronology timeline
Yazılıkaya
References
Further reading
Bryce, Trevor, "Life and Society in the Hittite World", Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002
Bryce, Trevor, "Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East: The Royal Correspondence of the Late Bronze Age", London: Routledge, 2003
Bryce, Trevor, "The Kingdom of the Hittites" Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005
W. Dörfler et al.: Untersuchungen zur Kulturgeschichte und Agrarökonomie im Einzugsbereich hethitischer Städte. (MDOG Berlin 132), 2000, 367–381. ISSN 0342-118X
Gordin, Shai, "The Tablet and its Scribe: Between Archival and Scribal Spaces in Late Empire Period Ḫattusa", Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 177–198, 2011
Kloekhorst, Alwin and Waal, Willemijn, "A Hittite Scribal Tradition Predating the Tablet Collections of Ḫattuša?", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, vol. 109, no. 2, pp. 189–203, 2019
Larsen, Mogens Trolle, "A Revolt against Hattuša", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 100–01, 1972
Plerallini, Sibilla, "Observations on the Lower City of Hattusa: a comparison between the epigraphic sources and the archaeological documentation", Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 325–358, 2000
Neve, Peter. “The Great Temple in Boğazköy-H ̮attuša.” In Across the Anatolian Plateau: Readings in the Archaeology of Ancient Turkey. Edited by David C. Hopkins, 77–97. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2002
Kuhrt, Amelie, "The Hittites" In The Ancient Near East, c. 3000–330 BC. 2 vols. By Amelie Kuhrt, 225–282. London: Routledge, 1994
Singer, Itamar, "A City of Many Temples: H ̮attuša, Capital of the Hittites", In Sacred Space: Shrine, City, Land: Proceedings of the International Conference in Memory of Joshua Prawer, Held in Jerusalem, 8–13 June 1992. Edited by Benjamin Z. Kedar and R. J. Z. Werblowsky, 32–44. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998
Torri, Giulia, "The phrase ṬUPPUURUḪatti in Colophons from Ḫattuša and the Work of the Scribe Ḫanikkuili", Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 135–144, 2011
Torri, Giulia, "The Goldsmith Zuzu(l)li and the Find-spots of the Inventory Texts from Ḫattuša", Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 43, no. 1–2, pp. 147–156, 2016
Weeden, Mark, "Back to the 13th or 12th Century BC?: The SÜDBURG Inscription at Boğazköy-Hattuša", in Devecchi, Elena and De Martino, Stefano - Anatolia between the 13th and the 12th century BCE, pp. 473–496, 2020
Yazıcı, Çağlan. The Hittite Capital Hattusa, Alacahöyük and Shapinuwa: A Journey to the Hittite World In Hattusa, Alacahöyük, Shapinuwa, Eskiapar, Hüseyindede, Pazarlı and the Museums of Boğazköy, Alacahöyük and Çorum. 1st edition. Istanbul: Uranus Photography Agency and Publishing Co., 2013
External links
New Indo-European language discovered during excavation in Turkey - Phys.org September 21, 2023
Excavations at Hattusha: a project of the German Institute of Archaeology
Pictures of the old Hittite capital with links to other sites
UNESCO World Heritage page for Hattusa
Video of lecture at Oriental Institute on Boğazköy
Photos from Hattusa
Populated places established in the 3rd millennium BC
Populated places disestablished in the 2nd millennium BC
1834 archaeological discoveries
Anatolia
Archaeological sites in the Black Sea Region
Archaeological sites of prehistoric Anatolia
Buildings and structures in Çorum Province
Former populated places in Turkey
Geography of Çorum Province
Hattian cities
History of Çorum Province
Hittite cities
Hittite sites in Turkey
World Heritage Sites in Turkey
Late Bronze Age collapse