On the Memory of the World List, the ancient capital of the Hittites keeps company with famous cities such as Venice and Toledo, Damascus and Jerusalem, Rome and Carthage, Lübeck and Versailles, and Teotihuacan and Macchu Picchu. (J. Seeber Hattusha Guide. A Day in the Hittite Capital, Ege Yayınları, Istanbul, Turkey, 2002).
Before 1905 little was known about the Hittites, once the rulers over a vast empire in the Middle East who conquered Babylon and, at the peak of their power, challenged the Egyptians and Assyrians, more than 3000 years ago, for control over the land of Israel. Although the Bible prominently makes over 40 references to the great Hittite Empire and its importance is noted in Egyptian chronicles, no archaeological evidence had ever been found that it really did exist. In 1834, Charles Texier stumbled on the ruins of the Hittite capital of Hattusa (also written as Hattusas or Hattusha) near the village of Boğazköy (present Boğazkale). In 1905 excavations started and uncovered the long lost capital of the Hittite Empire, together with a pile of stone tablets that completely documented its history.
The Hittites, who spoke an Indo-European language, swept into Anatolia around 2000 BC where they conquered the Hatti. From the Hatti they borrowed their culture and name. They made Hattusha, the Hatti capital, theirs and enlarged and beautified it. At the end of the second millennium BC, the Hittite empire disappeared under still unclear circumstances, leaving behind it the remains of a powerful and intellectually brilliant civilization. The destruction of the Hittite empire was so complete that only the tiniest pieces of a large mosaic remained, erasing their centuries-long rule over Asia Minor from the memory of man.
Our basis for visiting the Hattusa archeological sites was at Sungurlu, where we stayed at the Hitit Motel, Anakara-Samsun Yolu (Ankara-Samsun highway, 1 km outside the town centre). Breakfast is served at the cafe in the garden of the hotel. The owner of the cafe speaks French (used to live in Charleroi, Belgium) and provided us a car for the visit of Hattusha, Yazılıkaya, and Alacahöyük. Doing it this way, it took us about 5 hours to see all of the sights. Sungurlu is kind of a boring little town (the picture to the left is of Sungurlu's major attration, the town's clock tower) where nothing much can be done apart from arranging a visit to the archeological sites. The most sophisticated form of amusement in Sungurlu is a visit to the Baktat shopping center located 4 km out of town where one has the opportunity for a decent meal and some beer or raki. Therefore, we decided to head on to Ankara immediately after our visit of Hattusha.
The photos of the archeological excavations of the are contained in the following separate pages:
