Hattusa, written Hattuşa in Turkish and also found as Hattusas, was the capital of the Hittite Empire between the seventeenth and the thirteenth centuries BC. Its ruins are in the Boğazkale district of Çorum province, four kilometres east of the town of Boğazkale and more than eighty kilometres south-west of the city of Çorum, and they have been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1986. The site lies inside the Boğazköy–Alacahöyük Historical National Park, whose principal monuments include the city walls, the Lion Gate, the Yer Kapı and Yazılıkaya. Finds from the excavations are shown in the Boğazköy Museum in the town and in the Çorum Museum, and two more Hittite sites in the same province, Alacahöyük and Şapinuva, can be visited as well.
A capital with a long history before the Hittites
People were living on this ground as early as the sixth millennium BC. In the third millennium the Hatti settled here and called the place Hattush. In the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BC Assyrian merchants, whose trading colony had its centre at Kültepe, built a quarter of their own in the lower part of the city. Around 1700 BC Anitta, king of Kussara, set the city on fire and destroyed it, and later the Hittite king Hattusili I made it his capital.
Hattusa did not stay the capital without a break. A people from the north, named the Kaska in Assyrian and Egyptian archives, attacked the city, and for that period the Hittites governed from Sapinuwa. In the thirteenth century BC Mursili III brought the capital back to Hattusa, and it stayed the seat of the state until the empire collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age. After that, life in the city broke off until the Phrygian period; the Galatians later used part of the settlement, but the place never again had the importance it had held under the Hittites.
What you see at Hattusa
The city covered about two square kilometres of mountainous ground and was enclosed by walls built under Suppiluliuma I, who reigned from 1344 to 1322 BC. Inside them stood the administrative centre of the state, the houses of the nobility, temples and military buildings. The royal family lived in the upper city, where a citadel stood inside the fortifications, while the lower areas held houses built mostly of timber and mudbrick, fields and storerooms for the city's supplies. Set your expectations by what has lasted: of the temples and palaces, only the stone foundations remain.
The national park around the ruins was registered in 1988 and covers 2,634 hectares. It carries two separate UNESCO listings that are easily confused: the site has been a World Heritage property since 1986, and the cuneiform tablet archives found within the park have been on the Memory of the World register since 2001. Walking routes cross the area, and the park contains an open-air museum of the Hittite empire and an archaeological museum. Survey has recorded 215 plant species here, thirty-nine of them endemic. The park is 86 kilometres from the centre of Çorum on asphalt road all the way, and 155 kilometres, about two hours by car, from Merzifon airport.
The Boğazköy Museum and the sphinxes
The Boğazköy Museum, also called the Boğazkale Museum, is in the centre of Boğazkale and is given over mostly to finds from the excavations at Hattusa. It opened on 12 September 1966 and its displays were rearranged in 2011, by theme and by period. The ground floor begins with the Chalcolithic, the Early Bronze Age and the age of the Assyrian trading colonies and carries on through the Phrygian, Galatian and Roman periods to the Eastern Roman.
The two sphinxes from the Sphinx Gate at Hattusa have a history of their own. Badly damaged by fire, they were taken to Berlin for restoration in 1907. One came back to the İstanbul Archaeological Museums in 1924; the other remained in Berlin until 2011. Since 26 November 2011 both have been on display here. Beyond the gate where they stand is the Hittite hall, which presents the Hittite state and society through objects and illustrated panels and includes a reconstruction of a Hittite stonemason at work. Upstairs, panels cover Hittite religion, the army and the writing system, beside models of Hattusa and of the Great Temple, and the garden holds a Hittite sphinx and hieroglyphic inscriptions.
Alacahöyük: the Sphinx Gate and the royal tombs
Alacahöyük is in the Alaca district of Çorum, 49 kilometres from the city and eight from the Çorum–Ankara road. Excavation began there in 1935 on the order of Atatürk, for the Turkish Historical Society and under the direction of R. O. Arık, and the Ministry counts it among the first national excavations in Türkiye. It has revealed four levels of settlement. The Hittite level contains a temple, large buildings, houses, streets, water channels and a city wall, and its monumental entrance to the great temple is the Sphinx Gate: ten metres wide, built of andesite blocks on a limestone base, with sphinxes carved into the blocks on each side and relief orthostats on the towers. On the western tower a bull stands for the storm god of the heavens.
Below that lies the Early Bronze Age, around 2500 to 2000 BC, and its royal tombs are what give the site its weight in the history of Anatolia. They throw light on the Hatti, the native culture that fed most strongly into Hittite culture. The graves were rectangular, lined with stone, roofed with timber beams and topped with the heads and legs of sacrificed cattle. Thirteen of them, thought to belong to princes and princesses, held ornaments, sun discs, statuettes of deer and bulls, daggers, swords and axes, worked in gold, silver, electrum, copper and bronze. The site museum, first opened in 1940 and in its present building since 1982, names its halls after the directors of the excavation.
Şapinuva, a royal city
Şapinuva, in the Ortaköy district, is three kilometres from Ortaköy and sixty from Çorum. It was one of the main administrative centres of the Hittites, as well as a military and religious one. A letter of the great king found at Maşat Höyük in Tokat shows its weight: it orders 1,701 soldiers to be sent from Ishupitta at once and brought to Sapinuva within two days. Most of the letters found at the site were addressed to the king and queen, so a royal couple lived here. The queen beside the great king Tudhaliya III was Taduhepa, who after his death ruled together with Suppiluliuma I. Excavation has identified two temples for two storm gods, a queen's palace and an army command.
The Çorum Museum
In the centre of Çorum, the Çorum Museum brings together finds from Alacahöyük, Boğazköy-Hattuşa, Ortaköy-Şapinuva and other excavations in the province, with the Hittite and Phrygian cultures at the heart of the collection. It occupies a building finished in 1914 as a hospital and has been open there since 11 March 2003. Pieces to look for include Hittite relief vases; a bronze sword inscribed in cuneiform for King Tudhaliya II and dated to about 1430 BC; the Hüseyindede vase, which the museum describes as carrying the oldest known harp motif; and the Hittite cuneiform tablets, which UNESCO has taken into its Memory of the World register, shown with clay sealings from Boğazköy-Hattuşa and Ortaköy-Şapinuva. An interactive display lets visitors explore the Hittite capital from a Hittite chariot.
The Hittite Trail
The Governorship of Çorum laid out the Hittite Trail, a network of waymarked routes along old roads between Hattusa, Alacahöyük and Şapinuva, and finished it in October 2010. Its seventeen walking routes add up to 236 kilometres, or 385 with the alternative paths, and six mountain-bike routes cover another 406 kilometres.
In Ankara: the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations
The Museum of Anatolian Civilisations, below Ankara castle, was founded to be a Hittite museum and is still known by that name, although it later took in the other civilisations of Anatolia. The German Hittitologist Hans Gustav Güterbock oversaw the restoration and display of finds from Alacahöyük, among other sites. The figure on the Hatti Monument in Sıhhiye Square is a 1974 copy of a 24-centimetre ritual object found at Alacahöyük and kept in this museum. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism points out that although it is known as the symbol of the Hittites, it belongs to the Hatti of the Early Bronze Age.
Entry fees, opening hours and directions for Hattusa and each of the other places are on their own pages, linked below.
