Hattusa Lions' Gate and King's Gate
The Lions’ Gate (Aslanlı Kapı) and the King’s Gate (Kral Kapı) are two monumental gates in the Upper City walls of the ancient city of Hattusa, in the district of Boğazkale. UNESCO names the rich ornamentation of the Lions’ Gate and the Royal Gate, along with the city’s fortifications, among the grounds for inscribing Hattusa on the World Heritage List. Of the five gateways UNESCO describes, the Lions’ Gate is in the south-west and the King’s Gate in the south-east.
The Lions’ Gate
According to the 2017 Hattusa book of the Çorum Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, the Lions’ Gate is one of the two magnificent gates of the southern wall, in the south-western part of the Upper City. As at Hattusa’s other great city gates, the central gate chamber is flanked by two rectangular towers measuring 15x10 m. There is an inner and an outer passage framed by large stone blocks, and the passages were closed by large wooden doors covered in bronze sheet on the outside.
The gate takes its name from two lions carved on the outer jamb blocks (head, chest and forelegs). The book notes that in the Near East the lion was a motif often placed on gates for protection and decoration and a symbol of strength, and that in Hattusa lion sculptures were also used at the entrances of several temples and at the gates of the royal palace. The lions’ mouths are open as if roaring, and their tongues show. The Turkish Museums article calls the gate one of the symbols of Hattusa and says the wall enclosing the Temple District in a wide curve to the south has four gates.
The King’s Gate
The book places the King’s Gate in the eastern part of the great arc of the wall, as the counterpart of the Lions’ Gate in the west. In size and plan it is identical to the Lions’ Gate: two towers with two tall, pointed-arch passages between them. The towers measure about 10x15 m; the passages are 3.25 m wide at the base, were about 5 m high, and were closed by large two-leaf wooden doors. A towered wall was built on the outer side of the road leading to the gate, so that sentries could catch an attacking enemy from two sides. The Ankara University lecture notes explain that the aim was to keep the enemy as far as possible from the gate itself, since heavy wooden doors could still be broken with a battering ram or burnt.
The relief at the King’s Gate is not on the outside but on the inner face, looking toward the city. This high relief shows a warrior with his weapons, 2.25 m tall from the tip of the helmet to the sole of the foot. He wears a short, richly decorated kilt, carries a short sword with a crescent-shaped hilt in his broad belt and holds an axe. On his head is a helmet with large cheek-pieces and a crest, his long hair falls over his shoulders, and a curved horn rises at the front of the helmet. Because horns on helmets mark a god, the relief is taken to depict a deity. The Ankara University notes say the figure may be Sharruma, son of Teshub and Hebat and the protective god of Great King Tudhaliya IV, and that Tudhaliya IV may have set up a monument here in the name of his protective god.
“The places were sealed”
According to the Hattusa book, every evening all the city gates of the capital were closed and sealed. If the officials who came to open a gate in the morning found the seal broken, they knew a stranger had entered the city at night. The book says this practice survives in the saying “Yerler Mühürlendi” (“the places were sealed”), still used by local people. The Ankara University notes add that gates were considered sacred and that the seals were checked by the city governor, the hazzanu.
For the city’s other gates see Hattusa Yerkapı and Sphinx Gate. A general introduction to the city is on the Hattusa page.
Wall length and further sources
The 1986 ICOMOS evaluation behind UNESCO’s inscription says that in the 13th century BCE the city was surrounded by a system of double walls with a perimeter of roughly 8 km. Of the five original monumental entrances it names the Lions’ Gate in the west and the Royal (King’s) Gate in the east as the well-preserved remains, and it places the best-preserved stretches of the double wall in the southern section between these two gates. Sources give different values for the length of the walls: the German Archaeological Institute’s (DAI) Hattusa project page speaks of walls “about seven kilometres long”, the Çorum Directorate’s book gives 7 km, the Ankara University lecture notes 6 km, and the UNESCO website more than 8 km; the Hittite Monuments website says that in the 12th century BCE the city, covering 182 hectares, was surrounded by a wall 3.3 km long. The report on the 2022 excavation season by Schachner and colleagues (Archäologischer Anzeiger 2023/1) writes, on the basis of finds on the Western Slope, that the wall around the Upper City was not built in a single campaign, as has sometimes been assumed, but in several building phases at different times.
For the height of the warrior-god relief at the King’s Gate the sources give slightly different values: the Çorum Directorate’s book 2.25 m, the Hittite Monuments website about 2.35 m. That website says the horned headdress and bare feet suggest a god, that the early reading of the figure as a king gave the gate its name, and that the original relief was taken to Ankara at the beginning of the 20th century (it is now in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations) while a replica stands in the gate.
For the Lions’ Gate, the Hittite Monuments website writes that the broken head of the left lion was restored on the model of the other; the DAI project page likewise shows the gate after the reconstruction of the lost left lion head. The same website’s entry BOĞAZKÖY 16 records a short hieroglyphic inscription beside the head of the north lion, first noticed by Peter Neve in 1973; it is thought to refer to the gate itself and to have a ritual purpose. Marazzi and Schachner (2024) document it by 3D scanning on the outer face of the north jamb stone, above the lion’s head.
Sources
- Çorum Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, Boğazkale District Governorship, “İlkler İmparatorluğu’nun Başkenti Hattuşa” (Hattusa, Capital of the Empire of Firsts), 2017, ISBN 978-605-149-920-8. https://engelsiz.ktb.gov.tr/Eklenti/62253,turkcebaskikkkpdf.pdf?0
- Ankara University Open Courseware, “Konu 5: Boğazköy ve Hitit Mimarisi”. https://acikders.ankara.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/188851/mod_resource/content/1/5%20Bog%CC%86azko%CC%88y%20ve%20Hitit%20Mimarisi.pdf
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Hattusha: the Hittite Capital” (no. 377). https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/377/
- Turkish Museums (Ministry of Culture and Tourism), “Türkiye’nin UNESCO Alanları - Bin tanrılı şehir: Hattuşa”, 4 June 2021. https://turkishmuseums.com/blog/detail/turkiye-nin-unesco-alanlari-bin-tanrili-sehir-hattusa/10027/1
- ICOMOS, “Hattusha (Boğazköy)”, Advisory Body Evaluation, World Heritage List no. 377, October 1986. https://whc.unesco.org/document/153313
- German Archaeological Institute (DAI), “Ḫattuša/Boğazköy – Die Hauptstadt des Hethiterreiches”, project page (project lead A. Schachner). https://www.dainst.org/en/research/projects/noslug/2280
- Hittite Monuments, “The God Relief at King’s Gate”. https://www.hittitemonuments.com/bogazkoy/bogazkoy31.htm
- Hittite Monuments, “Lion Gate Inscription (BOĞAZKÖY 16)”. https://www.hittitemonuments.com/bogazkoy/BOGAZKOY_16.htm
- Andreas Schachner et al., “Die Ausgrabungen in Boğazköy-Ḫattuša 2022”, Archäologischer Anzeiger 2023/1, pp. 1-210. DOI: 10.34780/e12d-4ac2. https://publications.dainst.org/journals/aa/article/view/4127
- Massimiliano Marazzi, Andreas Schachner, “Boğazköy, Türkei. 3D-Scanning in der praktischen Anwendung zur Erforschung architektonischer und topographischer Phänomene. Die Arbeiten der Jahre 2014 bis 2023”, e-Forschungsberichte des DAI 2024/1. DOI: 10.34780/k58ne658. https://publications.dainst.org/journals/efb/article/view/4638