{"it":{"id":"LEV-002","kind":"site","sub":"Levant and Anatolia","name":"Hattusa","place":"Turkey","lat":40.02,"lon":34.615,"date":"History  The earliest traces of settlement on the site are from the 6th millennium BC…","mat":"clay","nfacts":14,"tags":["Near East"],"sum":"Hattusa, capital of the Hittites in central Türkiye, kept an archive of clay tablets that includes the oldest known peace treaty, signed between the Hittites and Egypt after the battle of Kadesh.","why":"It is the capital of an empire that signed the oldest known peace treaty, then emptied out within a few decades.","src":[325,584,585],"nsrc":4,"yt":"Hattusa seems to have been emptied before it was destroyed. Does a slow departure change what we mean by collapse?","rel":["EGY-007"],"hook":"Near Hattusa's Sphinx Gate, diggers found a 5 kg metal tablet, chains still attached, bearing a treaty."},"S":{"325":["Wikipedia: Hattusa","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa"],"584":["UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Hattusha","https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/377"],"585":["United Nations Gifts: Replica of the peace treaty between Hattusili III and Ramesses II","https://www.un.org/ungifts/replica-peace-treaty-between-hattusilis-and-ramses-ii"]},"rec":{"id":"LEV-002","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"At its peak the city covered","a":"area","v":"1.8","u":"km2","o":"At its peak, the city covered 1.8 km2 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 c. 1344–1322 BC.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1578"},{"f":"The inner city covered an area of some","a":"area","v":"0.8","u":"km2","o":"The inner city covered an area of some 0.8 km2 and was occupied by a citadel with large administrative buildings and temples.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1579"},{"f":"REF10 The city displayed over","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"6","u":"km","o":"REF10 The city displayed over 6 km of walls, with inner and outer layers around 3 m thick and 2 m of space between, totalling 8 m.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1580"},{"f":"of walls with inner and outer layers around","a":"thickness","v":"3","u":"m","o":"REF10 The city displayed over 6 km of walls, with inner and outer layers around 3 m thick and 2 m of space between, totalling 8 m.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1581"},{"f":"and outer layers around 3 m thick and","a":"height","v":"2","u":"m","o":"REF10 The city displayed over 6 km of walls, with inner and outer layers around 3 m thick and 2 m of space between, totalling 8 m.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1582"},{"f":"thick and 2 m of space between totalling","a":"height","v":"8","u":"m","o":"REF10 The city displayed over 6 km of walls, with inner and outer layers around 3 m thick and 2 m of space between, totalling 8 m.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1583"},{"f":"the south lay an outer city of about","a":"area","v":"1","u":"km2","o":"To the south lay an outer city of about 1 km2, with elaborate gateways decorated with reliefs showing warriors, lions, and sphinxes.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1584"},{"f":"During the 1986 excavations a large 35","a":"plan dimension (pair)","v":"24","u":"cm","o":"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.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1585"},{"f":"1986 excavations a large 35 24 nbsp cm","a":"mass","v":"5","u":"kg","o":"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.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1586"},{"f":"2 attached chains inscribed metal tablet was discovered","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"35","u":"meters","o":"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.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381682685 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1587"},{"f":"city walls","a":"length","v":">6","u":"km","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Hattusa","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Hattusa","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3615"},{"f":"walls","a":"layers / gap / total","v":"~3 m each, 2 m gap, 8 m total","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Hattusa","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Hattusa","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3616"},{"f":"bronze tablet (1986)","a":"size / mass","v":"35 x 24 cm; 5 kg","u":"cm/kg","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Hattusa","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Hattusa","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3617"},{"f":"destruction","a":"date","v":"c.1190 BC","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Hattusa","yr":"2026","m":"derived","c":"Wikipedia Hattusa","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685","b":"S","bb":"","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M3618"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"History  The earliest traces of settlement on the site are from the 6th millennium BC during the Chalcolithic period.","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/377","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"40.01972222","lon":"34.61527778","src":"Wikidata P625 + UNESCO WHC list XML (agree ≤0.05°)","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0045 deg (~0.49 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1598209"},"src":[{"id":"S0309","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hattusa&oldid=1381682685"},{"id":"S0495","t":"Wikipedia: Hattusa","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa"},{"id":"S2585","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Hattusha","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/377"},{"id":"S2586","t":"United Nations Gifts: Replica of the peace treaty between Hattusili III and Ramesses II","u":"https://www.un.org/ungifts/replica-peace-treaty-between-hattusilis-and-ramses-ii"},{"id":"VLEV-002-5","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Hattusha: the Hittite Capital","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/377/"},{"id":"VLEV-002-6","t":"Severe multi-year drought coincident with Hittite collapse around 1198–1196 bc | Nature","u":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05693-y"},{"id":null,"t":"Francesco G. Barsacchi, “The Administration of Sacred Time in Hittite Anatolia,” (Firenze University Press, 2023), pp. 77–91, CC BY 4.0.","u":"https://doi.org/10.36253/979-12-215-0042-4.07"},{"id":null,"t":"John Garstang, The Land of the Hittites (London, 1910), pp. 196–213. Internet Archive.","u":"https://archive.org/details/landofhittitesac00garsuoft"},{"id":null,"t":"Eberhard Zangger and Rita Gautschy, “Celestial Aspects of Hittite Religion: An Investigation of the Rock Sanctuary Yazilikaya,” Journal of Skyscape Archaeology 5, no. 1 (2019): 5–38, abstract.","u":"https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JSA/article/view/12232"},{"id":null,"t":"A. H. Sayce, The Hittites: The Story of a Forgotten Empire (London, 1888), chs. IV–V. Internet Archive.","u":"https://archive.org/details/hittitesstoryoff00saycrich"},{"id":null,"t":"UNESCO Memory of the World, “The Hittite cuneiform tablets from Bogazköy” (registered 2001).","u":"https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/hittite-cuneiform-tablets-bogazkoy"}],"sum":"\"We know nothing at present beyond what we can gather from the ruins.\" The Oxford scholar A. H. Sayce wrote that in 1888 about the Hittites of central Anatolia, a people half-remembered from the Bible and from Egyptian records. The ruins he meant lay outside a Turkish village called Boghaz Keui, near the Halys River. Within twenty years those same ruins had begun to speak, in a voice nobody could yet understand. Within a century they had given up the oldest known peace treaty in the world, and a sanctuary in the rock that some researchers now read as a calendar.\n\nThe city is Hattusa, capital of the Hittite empire, in what is now Boğazkale District of Çorum Province in central Türkiye. UNESCO places it on a slope rising about 300 metres above the valley, with a creek dividing the lower city in the north from the upper city in the south. People lived on the spot from the sixth millennium BC, long before any empire, but the Hittite capital at its height covered about 1.8 square kilometres, roughly 250 football pitches, with an outer city of about one more square kilometre to the south.\n\nIt was built to be seen and built to hold. UNESCO describes a \"monumental enclosure wall of more than 8 km in length\"; another account gives over 6 km. In the upper city the fortification was a double wall \"with more than a hundred towers,\" each layer about 3 metres thick with a 2-metre gap between, some 8 metres of masonry and air from face to face. Five gateways are known, among them the Lion's Gate, the King's Gate and the Sphinx Gate. When the archaeologist John Garstang walked the acropolis in the early twentieth century, he found its wall \"preserved in many places to a height of twelve feet or more.\" UNESCO calls the Great Temple in the lower city \"the best-preserved ruin of a Hittite Temple from the 13th century B.C.,\" and says the upper city \"mostly consisted of a temple city\" for Hittite and Hurrian gods. At Nişantepe is the longest known Hittite hieroglyphic inscription of the empire.\n\nThen the tablets came out. Hugo Winckler began digging in 1906 and recovered thousands of clay tablets, most in a language no one could yet read. Garstang reported in 1910 that they included \"fragments of diplomatic correspondence with the Pharaohs of Egypt.\" UNESCO's Memory of the World register now counts \"nearly 25.000 tablets,\" the \"only extant recorded material\" about the Hittite civilisation. A people the modern world knew from ruins and rumours turned out to have written down their own laws, treaties, prayers and myths.\n\nThe most famous document among them is a treaty. After the battle of Kadesh, the Hittite king Hattusili III and Ramesses II of Egypt agreed peace, and the Hittite copy of their agreement survived in this archive. A copper replica is now among the gifts at the United Nations, a Bronze Age agreement kept in the house of modern diplomacy.\n\nHere is where a student of power would sit up. The treaty was the act of two great powers each deciding that recognition was worth more than another war. Hattusa's archive, with its treaties and its diplomatic letters to the pharaohs, is the paperwork of an empire that ruled by agreement as much as by force. In 1986, about 35 metres west of the Sphinx Gate, excavators lifted another example out of the ground: a bronze tablet 35 by 24 centimetres, weighing 5 kilograms, its two chains still attached, carrying a treaty between the great king Tudhaliya IV and Kurunta, king of Tarhuntassa. It was the kind of document meant to be hung up and seen, a promise made heavy.\n\nAnd then, around 1190 BC, the capital ended. The city was destroyed, together with the Hittite state, as part of the wider upheaval historians call the Late Bronze Age collapse. What is striking is the sequence. Excavations suggest that Hattusa was abandoned gradually, over several decades, before the final destruction came. The end found a city already emptying.\n\nThe mainstream explanations are many and none is enough alone: drought, rebellion, raiders, the breakdown of long-distance trade. In 2023 a study in Nature reported a severe multi-year drought around 1198 to 1196 BC, which fits the timing closely. Nothing in the evidence rules out several blows landing together on a state already stretched. A kingdom that could make peace with Egypt could not, in the end, keep its own capital alive.\n\nTwo kilometres north-east of the city lies the place that keeps Hattusa's deepest silence. Yazılıkaya is, in UNESCO's words, \"an open-air temple with two natural chambers cut into the bedrock.\" Its walls carry processions of gods and goddesses and \"the figures of the Great King Tuthaliya IV.\" Sayce described two lines of figures meeting on the northern wall, male gods coming from one side and the great goddess, standing on a panther, from the other, and he saw it as \"a sanctuary too holy to be confined within the walls of the city.\"\n\nThe early scholars could not date it properly. Garstang's tentative table put the city's \"Period of Lion-sculptures\" at 1000 to 850 BC, and he warned that \"any new item of evidence may profoundly modify\" it. It did. The reliefs are now dated to the second half of the thirteenth century BC, the age of Tudhaliya IV himself.\n\nIn 2019, Eberhard Zangger of Luwian Studies in Zurich and Rita Gautschy of the University of Basel offered a bolder reading in the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology. They start from the fact that numerous texts from Hattusa concern solar deities and celestial divination, \"reminiscent of Old Babylonian astronomical and astrological practices.\" Counting \"more than 90 rock-cut reliefs,\" they proposed that the figures in Chamber A \"are arranged in groups to mark the days, synodic months and solar years,\" and that with this system priests could tell \"when additional months were required\" to keep the moon's calendar in step with the sun's. If they are right, the holiest place in the kingdom was also a stone almanac, an instrument for tracking the sky.\n\nThe rebuttal is serious. Francesco Barsacchi, in a 2023 study of Hittite sacred time, finds the theory intriguing but \"not based, in my opinion, on sufficient archaeological and textual evidences.\" The references to a thirteenth month in Hittite sky omens, he notes, are translations of a Middle Babylonian original, and \"nothing, from the sources at our disposal, allows us to establish the existence of an intercalary month.\" For him, the Hittite year began by watching the weather and the plants, not by calculating the heavens. He also notes an \"almost complete lack of administrative and economic documents,\" probably because such records were kept on wooden boards. The very calendar that could settle the matter may simply have rotted away.\n\nSo the physical facts stand on the rock, and their meaning hangs between two careful readings. The figures are grouped as they are. Someone chose those numbers and carved them into the stone outside a city that recorded nearly everything else. A civilisation that put its treaties in bronze and its prayers in clay left its holiest place without a word of explanation. What did the priests of Yazılıkaya know about the sky that they never thought to write down?","qs":["Hattusa seems to have been emptied before it was destroyed. Does a slow departure change what we mean by collapse?","Drought, revolt, raiders, broken trade: is it more honest to name one main cause, or to say they struck together?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Lion_Gate%2C_Hattusa_13_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-Lion_Gate%2C_Hattusa_13_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lion_Gate,_Hattusa_13_(cropped).jpg","title":"Lion Gate, Hattusa 13 (cropped).jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany","cap":"The Lion Gate flanked by two towers, located at the southwest of the city, the lions were put at the entrance of the city to ward off evil, Hattusa, capital of ","alt":"The Lion Gate flanked by two towers, located at the southwest of the city, the lions were put at the entrance of the city to ward off evil, Hattusa, capital of"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Hattusa%2C_capital_of_the_Hittite_Empire_04.jpg/1280px-Hattusa%2C_capital_of_the_Hittite_Empire_04.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hattusa,_capital_of_the_Hittite_Empire_04.jpg","title":"Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire 04.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany","cap":"The area of the Great Temple with storerooms surrounding the temple proper, Hattusa, capital of the Hittite Empire"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Hattusa_Green_Stone_2019-12-08.jpg/1280px-Hattusa_Green_Stone_2019-12-08.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hattusa_Green_Stone_2019-12-08.jpg","title":"Hattusa Green Stone 2019-12-08.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Bangolicious","cap":"A green stone located in the ancient city of Hattusa (Çorum, Turkey today). Purpose of the stone is unknown but it is believed to have religious origins."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Hattusa_Yerkapi_rampant.JPG/1280px-Hattusa_Yerkapi_rampant.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hattusa_Yerkapi_rampant.JPG","title":"Hattusa Yerkapi rampant.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Rita1234","cap":"Yerkapi, rampant, Hattusa, Turkey"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Hattusa_magazzini_per_cereali.jpg/1280px-Hattusa_magazzini_per_cereali.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hattusa_magazzini_per_cereali.jpg","title":"Hattusa magazzini per cereali.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/","by":"The original uploader was Ernesto at Italian Wikipedia.","cap":"Storage jar magazine, large storage pottery, for grain-cereal"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"6th millennium BC","h":"The earliest traces of settlement on the site are from the 6th millennium BC during the Chalcolithic period","s":[78]},{"v":"Clay","h":"Made of","s":[78]}],"hs":{"78":["Wikipedia: Hattusa (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattusa"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/LEV-002.webp","w":1280,"h":864,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Lion_Gate%2C_Hattusa_13_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-Lion_Gate%2C_Hattusa_13_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}