Follow the city through three kinds of evidence
At the threshold
Begin with the gap between two lions. Before trying to imagine a king entering the city, look at the stones around the opening: the size of the blocks, the narrowing passage and the way the carved animals belong to the architecture. This is a looking exercise. It does not require a fictional procession, a reconstructed speech or a guess about the person who last passed through the ancient gate.
Hattusha occupied sloping ground south of the Budaközü Plain, divided into a Lower and an Upper City. UNESCO describes an enclosure more than eight kilometres long and an Upper City fortification with over a hundred towers. A boundary here was a substantial system across a difficult landscape. The gate photograph offers one close view of that larger urban structure. [1]
A gate controls passage, but it also gives a city a face. We can ask how the lions framed an approach without claiming to know what every visitor felt. Try two sentences: one describing a feature visible in the photograph, another proposing its effect. The first is observation; the second needs an argument. This small distinction opens up the monument rather than draining it of drama.
The photograph was taken in 2019. Its surviving masonry is not a frozen moment from the Bronze Age. Conservation, weathering and the photographer’s position are part of the image we read today. The distance between those dates is a useful starting point: a photograph can make ancient work feel close while still belonging to a much later history. [7]
The state inside the tablet
Now change scale. Move from a passage large enough for people to an object covered with small signs. A capital is more than the appearance of authority. Someone must record obligations, communicate decisions and preserve words that can be consulted again. Written evidence lets us ask about those activities, even when the hands that made the signs have disappeared.
UNESCO’s Memory of the World entry describes nearly 25,000 clay tablets, including material on law, trade, religion, politics and literature. It also identifies texts of the treaty of Qadesh. This is an archival collection, not one continuous book about the city. Different kinds of writing illuminate different parts of life; none is automatically the voice of every inhabitant. [2]
The object photographed here is bronze, not clay. The Ministry’s online exhibition identifies it as a thirteenth-century BCE treaty between Tudhaliya IV and Kurunta of Tarhuntassa. It must not be labelled the Egyptian treaty of Qadesh. Its material and the parties to its agreement make it a particular object within a much wider world of written records. [4]
The archive also resists the idea of a capital speaking in only one language. A DAI report dated 25 September 2023 announced a previously unknown language preserved inside a Hittite ritual text, identified there with the land of Kalasma. This is a dated research announcement, not a claim that every line has now been translated. The interesting question is why a written ritual could preserve another language at all. [6]
A procession inside the rock
At Yazılıkaya, the surface changes again. Signs on a portable object give way to figures arranged on rock walls. Let your eye follow their direction before trying to name each one. A repeated gesture or a sequence of bodies can make an enclosed space feel like an ordered world. That is a way of reading the composition, not a reconstruction of a ceremony witnessed here.
The sanctuary lies about two kilometres northeast of the capital. UNESCO describes two natural rock chambers with reliefs of gods, goddesses and Tudhaliya IV. The carvings offer evidence for a religious and royal visual programme. They are not candid pictures of daily dress or a recording of an entire festival. [1]
The same city can therefore be approached through different media. A gate organises an entry; a treaty fixes terms; a relief gives figures a relationship in space. Keeping these roles distinct makes their connections more interesting. Ask what each medium can communicate readily, and what would be hard to learn from it alone. A name in writing and a repeated figure may answer quite different questions.
The 2013 photograph records the rock surface from a chosen viewpoint. It does not establish the exact movement of ancient participants or prove a modern astronomical interpretation. Before adopting an attractive theory, return to the figure, the caption and the source. The pleasure of looking comes first; the next step is to make the explanation answerable to evidence. [9]
Reading the city again
Charles Texier brought the ruins to European scholarly attention in 1834. The Ministry’s history identifies the systematic excavations of 1906 with Hugo Winckler and Theodor Makridi. Their work helped connect the place with its written records. Calling this a discovery should not make the surrounding inhabited landscape disappear from the story. It describes a stage in the history of research. [3]
The museum gives that research another scale. The Ministry describes chronological displays extending from the Chalcolithic through later periods to Eastern Rome. The Hittite capital is central to this place, yet it is not the beginning and end of everything that happened here. A site can lose one political role while its landscape continues to acquire other uses and meanings. [5]
The DAI’s September 2022 field account presents excavation alongside documentation and restoration. These activities make a useful counterpoint to the sudden revelation in a discovery story. What becomes visible must also be recorded and cared for. The account belongs to that field season; it is not evidence of today’s visitor conditions or a current work schedule. [10]
Leave the city with three entries in a notebook: something seen in stone, something learned from a text and a question that remains open. This is our proposed reading method. The walls and tablets need not compete to become the city’s true voice. Together, they show why understanding a capital requires changing both the scale of attention and the kind of evidence we ask to speak.
Different dates, different histories
- Before the Hittite capital
- Earlier settlement and an Assyrian trading presence form part of the site’s background. [3]
- Seventeenth century BCE, approximately
- Hattusha becomes a Hittite capital; published institutional summaries differ on a precise foundation date. Do not reduce its earlier history to one year. [3][4]
- Thirteenth century BCE
- Major temple remains and the bronze treaty belong to the imperial-period story. [1][4]
- After the Hittite period
- Later material belongs to the wider chronological sequence presented by the museum. [5]
- 1834
- Texier brings the ruins to European scholarly attention. [3]
- 1906
- Systematic excavations begin under Winckler and Makridi. [3]
- 1986 / 2001
- World Heritage inscription of the site / Memory of the World inscription of the tablet collection. These are different registrations. [1][2]
- 25 September 2023
- DAI announces evidence for the language of Kalasma in a ritual text; this is the report date. [6]
Fact, interpretation and tradition
Evidence: a capital in a landscape
Fortifications, temples and written records support the identification of Hattusha as a Hittite capital. [1][2]
Interpretation: an approach to power
Reading a gate as a staged approach is an interpretive question, not a transcript of an ancient visitor’s thoughts.
Object identity: bronze is not clay
The pictured Tudhaliya–Kurunta treaty must not be confused with Qadesh or described as a clay tablet. [4][8]
Tradition: the curse is a text
The Ministry recounts Anitta’s curse against rebuilding the city. Treat it as a transmitted royal claim, not proof of supernatural events. [3]
Three doors into the city
What can a gate actually tell you?
Name two visible stone features. Then propose one effect of the approach, labelling it as interpretation.
Are these the same treaty?
Compare the clay archive’s Qadesh reference with the bronze object’s named parties. Record the material and agreement separately.
Which date belongs to what?
Separate the object period, photograph date, heritage inscription and research announcement in four lines.
Film and image status
No verified Geçmişin Haritası Hattusha Reel or master video has been located for this edition. No video is embedded and no playback check is claimed. The three photographs are dated records, not reconstructed ancient scenes.
The existing Turkish publication dataset links this Hattusha Instagram post ↗. This is a post reference, not a verified Reel, video or performance ranking. No current views, likes, comments or private Insights are verified.
Reading files and delivery language
This complete English web story includes an original free worksheet. It does not claim that a paid Turkish PDF has been translated or made freely available.
Seventeen-city collection · Turkish ↗ · Troy in the Anatolian series · Turkish ↗ · Priene · Turkish ↗
Follow the evidence
Sources and photo-rights records checked 30 October 2026. Report dates and photograph dates are identified separately from ancient dates. No current visitor-access claim or new decipherment update is implied.
- UNESCO · Hattusha: the Hittite Capital
Urban organisation, walls, sanctuary and 1986 inscription.
- UNESCO Memory of the World · Bogazköy tablets
Historical register description, document types and 2001 inscription.
- Ministry e-book · Hattuşaş (Boğazköy)
Earlier history, Anitta tradition, Texier and the 1906 excavations. Its old excavation-director wording is not current staffing evidence.
- Ministry / Google Arts & Culture · Hattusha
Institutional exhibit, bronze treaty identity and approximate foundation chronology; not every date in this exhibit is adopted.
- Ministry · Boğazköy Museum Directorate
Museum chronology and object interpretation; no ticket or opening-time claim.
- DAI · New Indo-European language
25 September 2023 announcement, archive count and Kalasma passage; not a current decipherment update.
- Commons · Lion Gate
Photo author, date and CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Commons · Bronze tablet
Photo author, date and CC BY-SA 3.0; object and photograph dates are separate.
- Commons · Yazılıkaya
Photo author, date and CC BY-SA 4.0; calendar suggestion in metadata is not adopted as fact.
- DAİstanbul · 3,500 years of mystery
Dated 13 September 2022 field-season report; excavation, documentation and restoration context.
Photo licences apply to their identified images, not to the entire original story. Wikimedia’s resized copies are referenced; no local original, video master or paid file was modified.