A capital on a rocky slope
Hattusa lies near the modern village of Bogazkale (formerly Bogazkoy) in central Turkey, on steep, rocky ground some distance inland from the Black Sea. It served as the Hittite capital for most of the period from the seventeenth to the early twelfth century BCE, and the settlement’s name goes back to the earlier Hattian people, who lived there before the Hittites. Tradition among Hittite texts credits King Hattusili I (whose name means “man of Hattusa”) with choosing it as his seat.
The site is a reminder that being “marvellous” for ancient builders often meant adapting to difficult terrain. The city climbs a slope, and its defences follow the ridges and gullies. It was formally recognised as a World Heritage Site in 1986.
Walls and gates
The most visible remains are the fortifications. Over time the city expanded from an older lower town to include a large upper city to the south, and the whole area was enclosed by a stone wall, several kilometres long in total. The lower parts were of stone, and the upper parts are generally thought to have been mudbrick, which is why the stone base survives while the superstructure does not.
Three gates in the southern stretch are especially well known:
- The Lion Gate, where two carved lion figures flank the entrance.
- The King’s Gate, where a relief of a striding figure in a short kilt and helmet was once taken for a warrior; it is now generally interpreted as a deity or a king in divine guise, and the original relief is in a museum, with a copy on site.
- The Sphinx Gate, near an artificial rampart, which was decorated with sphinx figures.
Beside these stands the Yerkapi rampart, a steep man-made bank faced with stone, pierced by a long corbelled tunnel through which defenders or messengers could reach outside the walls. The tunnel is a good example of the Hittite use of the corbel arch, where each course of stone projects slightly beyond the one below. Similar corbelled construction appears in the Mycenaean palaces of the Aegean, a region with which Hittite kings had diplomatic contact, though how far the two traditions influenced each other is uncertain.
Temples and the royal citadel
The city centre contained a number of temples. The largest, often called the Great Temple or Temple 1, was dedicated to the Storm God and the Sun Goddess of Arinna, the leading deities of the state. It was a rectangular complex built around an open courtyard, with storerooms along the sides, and it appears to have been both a religious centre and an economic institution holding goods, offerings and tablets. A great many smaller temples in the upper city are also known, which fits with the Hittite habit of speaking of a “thousand gods.”
On a ridge to the east was the royal citadel, known by its Turkish name Buyukkale. This was a palace and administrative complex with terraced buildings. Excavators have found the remains of audience halls and rooms for archives there.
Yazilikaya
About two kilometres from the city lies Yazilikaya (“inscribed rock”), an open-air rock sanctuary formed by natural outcrops. Two main chambers are decorated with carved reliefs. In the larger Chamber A, two lines of deities march toward each other, male figures in one direction and female in the other, meeting at a central scene in which the Storm God and the Sun Goddess stand on their animals or attendants.
The smaller Chamber B contains a relief of a sword-god and a figure interpreted as Tudhaliya IV, a king of the thirteenth century BCE, and the complex is usually associated with his building programme. Specialists differ on how exactly the sanctuary was used. It is often linked to festivals of the new year or to rituals for the dead, but the details are not fully understood.
The tablet archive
Hattusa’s best-known contribution to modern knowledge is its set of texts. Excavations since the early twentieth century have yielded many thousands of clay tablets, in estimates often quoted at around thirty thousand fragments, in cuneiform, along with some inscriptions in Anatolian hieroglyphs. Most are in Hittite, but the archive also includes texts in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the era, as well as Hattian, Hurrian, Luwian and Palaic, along with Sumerian word lists used in scribal training.
The contents are varied: ritual instructions, festival descriptions, prayers, oracle questions, treaties, laws, letters, annals of kings and scholarly texts. A Hittite copy of the treaty with Egypt, concluded in the time of Ramesses II, was among the finds, and its Egyptian counterpart survives in temple inscriptions. In 1986 a bronze tablet recording a treaty between Tudhaliya IV and a ruler named Kurunta was found near the Sphinx Gate, a rare case of such a text in metal. The archive reflects the same cuneiform writing tradition used in Mesopotamia, adapted to a different language family.
Decline and abandonment
Around 1200 BCE Hattusa was abandoned, and the buildings in the city centre show signs of burning. The dating and cause are debated. Some scholars point to a general disruption of the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Bronze Age, while others suggest that the court had already left the city before it was destroyed, as indicated by evidence that important objects and records were removed. The site was later reoccupied on a smaller scale, including a period linked to Phrygian culture, but it never regained its role.
Excavation history
The site was identified for scholarship in the nineteenth century, and systematic excavation began in 1906 under Hugo Winckler of Germany, with the German Archaeological Institute continuing work, with interruptions, in the decades since. Careful reconstruction has been carried out on part of the wall using mudbrick and traditional techniques, in order to test how the fortification might have looked. Hattusa’s value lies not only in its architecture but in the combination of monuments and written sources found together in one place.