Hattusa

Hattusa was the capital of the Hittite Empire in central Anatolia. Its extensive ruins near modern Boğazkale include monumental gates, temples, fortifications, and archives of clay tablets.

Hattusa city walls: The fortifications that enclosed and defended the Hittite capital. Their massive circuits and gates reveal the city’s defenses and planned entrances.
Hittites: An ancient Anatolian people who established a kingdom and empire during the second millennium BCE. They made Hattusa their political center and shaped its monumental landscape.
Hittite language: An extinct Indo-European language recorded in cuneiform and used by the Hittite kingdom. Its tablets from Hattusa preserve royal, legal, religious, and diplomatic texts.
Yazılıkaya: A rock sanctuary near Hattusa with reliefs of Hittite deities carved into natural stone chambers. Its nearby processional setting extends the sacred landscape beyond the city walls.
Bronze Age collapse: The widespread political and economic disruption affecting eastern Mediterranean societies around the end of the Bronze Age. Hattusa was abandoned amid the upheavals that ended the Hittite Empire.
Lion Gate: A monumental southern entrance to Hattusa, named for the carved lions flanking its passage. Its sculpture and construction show how a defensive opening became a royal monument.
Hittite Old Kingdom: The early Hittite state, conventionally dated from the seventeenth to the early fifteenth century BCE. Hattusa became the dynasty’s capital during the kingdom’s early expansion.
Cuneiform: A writing system made from wedge-shaped impressions pressed into clay or other materials. Hattusa’s archives used cuneiform to record administration, treaties, and ritual.
Sphinx Gate: A monumental entrance at Hattusa decorated with carved sphinxes. Its imagery shows how the capital’s gateways displayed protective and royal symbolism.
Suppiluliuma II: The last known Hittite great king, who ruled during the empire’s final years. His reign belongs to the period before Hattusa’s royal center ceased to function.

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