Hattusa Nişantaş, Sarıkale and Yenicekale
Nişantaş (Nişantepe), Sarıkale and Yenicekale are structures rising on rock masses in the Upper City of the ancient city of Hattusa, in the district of Boğazkale. UNESCO’s description says that the ruins of fortifications placed on rocky peaks in the centre of the Upper City bear witness to the complexity of Hittite rock masonry, and that the longest known Hittite hieroglyphic inscription of the empire is found at Nişantepe.
The Nişantaş inscription
According to the Ankara University lecture notes, Nişantaş takes its name from the inscription in Luwian hieroglyphs written on the rock. The inscription is 8.5 m long and has 11 lines; it was cut into a levelled rock face but, being exposed, has weathered badly and its content has not been fully understood. The notes say that what is certain is that it belongs to Suppiluliuma II, the last known Great King of Hattusa. It most probably speaks of a monument he had made in memory of his father (Chamber B of the Yazılıkaya open-air sanctuary) and of other deeds, such as a naval battle in which he landed on Cyprus (the Hittites’ Alashiya). The notes add that Alashiya was often raided because of its rich copper deposits.
Nişantaş, like Sarıkale and Yenicekale, is a rock block carrying a large structure. The notes say the direction of the walls can be traced from the foundation beds cut into the rock and a few surviving stone blocks. Beneath the rubble in front of the rock, blocks decorated with sphinxes from a gate were found; as on the outer sphinxes of the Sphinx Gate at Yerkapı, only the front part of the body is carved. The gate, at the top of a ramp leading upward, had a pointed arch, and the building complex on the rock block was entered through it. The notes write that, as with other structures on rock blocks, its function is not known.
To the north of Nişantaş, in the area directly in front of the Büyükkale royal palace, stood some official buildings. According to the notes only a few walls of the basement of the “West Building” survive; in these basement rooms more than 3,000 bullae, clay seal impressions of the Hittite Great Kings and their officials, were found. Everything burnt to ash in the fire, but the clay bullae, fired by it, have survived. For the palace see Hattusa Büyükkale.
Sarıkale
According to the Ankara University notes, the Sarıkale complex was entered from the rear, the south-east, where a bastioned wall can be seen. The rock lies almost in the middle of the city and stands out by its shape; the structure on it is said to have had a special function. The Hittite building on Sarıkale has been badly damaged by erosion and by building activity in the Byzantine period. The rock was reused in Byzantine times and surrounded by a new wall; the notes write that this later use can be seen as the residence of the lord of the Byzantine settlement on the plain to the south-east.
Yenicekale
The notes place Yenicekale below Temple 30, about 150 m north-east of the Lions’ Gate, on a rock mass. The top of the natural rock was worked and its sides walled up to create an artificial level platform. The surviving outer wall is 7 m high, and its stones are said to weigh more than two or three tonnes. On the rocky plateau of about 25x28 m a small cistern and wall foundations survive, which say little about the function of the complex. For the Lions’ Gate see Hattusa Lions’ Gate and King’s Gate.
Rock-top structures
The Ankara University notes say that Hittite texts often speak of “rock-top structures” connected with cult, especially the cult of the dead, and that structures such as those at Sarıkale, Yenicekale and Nişantaş may be what is meant. The same possibility is mentioned for Yenicekale, which is smaller than Sarıkale.
The Hieroglyphic Chamber
The Hattusa book of the Çorum Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism mentions Chamber 2 (the Hieroglyphic Chamber) south of Büyükkale, which had a cult function and whose hieroglyphic inscription calls it a gateway to the underworld. It was evidently built by the Hittite king Suppiluliuma II; the inscription on its walls tells of the king’s deeds and the function of the chamber. At the deepest point of the chamber the Sun God is shown holding a staff of power, and opposite the inscription is a relief of Suppiluliuma. According to the book, the water channels running beneath the chamber still keep their mystery.
Further sources
The Hittite Monuments website (entry BOĞAZKÖY 5) says the Nişantaş inscription is carved in relief on a flattened north-east-facing surface of the rock and measures roughly 9 m long and 2 m high (the value quoted above from the Ankara University notes was 8.5 m). A vertical crack, which appears to be original, divides it into two sections: 11 lines can be made out in the right-hand section (A) and only 5 in the left (B), and it is uncertain whether the two form one text or two. The entry says the better-preserved top lines of section A point to the reign of Suppiluliuma II, that the context is probably the military victories of this king and of his father Tudhaliya IV, and that a text of this king known from clay tablets mentions an “eternal rock sanctuary” and an inscription written there, which may refer to Nişantepe and Nişantaş. According to Marazzi and Schachner’s (2024) DAI report, 3D scanning and visualisation made it possible to “read” sign sequences that can no longer be made out with the naked eye because of erosion, and to reconstruct large parts of the inscription long considered unreadable. The ICOMOS evaluation prepared for UNESCO (1986) likewise mentions, at Nişantepe between Büyükkale and the Royal Gate, the stone inscription of Suppiluliuma II, the last Hittite king.
For the sealed finds from the 1990-1991 excavations in and around the “Westbau” at Nişantepe, Jared L. Miller’s review of the 2011 volume by Herbordt, Bawanypeck and Hawkins gives nearly 3,430 objects (the Ankara University notes say “more than 3,000 bullae”). For Yenicekale, the 2009 cosmogenic chlorine-36 study by Naki Akçar and colleagues (including Andreas Schachner) writes that Hittite masons flattened the top of a limestone knoll and built a circuit wall along its edges, that only about 3 m of rock was removed, and that some of the wall blocks differ in microfacies from the limestone beneath and may have been brought from elsewhere. The expected construction date of the building is about 3.2-3.7 thousand years ago; the measured exposure ages came out much older because of previously accumulated (inherited) chlorine-36, so the building could not be dated directly by this method.
The Hittite Monuments website (entries BOĞAZKÖY 20-21) describes the Hieroglyphic Chamber as “Chamber II” in the north corner of the Eastern Ponds embankment; it was excavated in 1988 and restored to its original state under Peter Neve. According to the site, the back wall carries a relief of a male figure in a priest’s robe beneath a winged sun disc (it may be the Sun-god or the king in a priestly role), the left wall a male figure holding a spear with a label reading “Great King Suppiluliuma”, and the right wall a long inscription on seven blocks. The inscription relates the king’s military campaigns, mainly in western Anatolia; its last sentence speaks of building a “divine earth road”, which has led to the reading of the structure as a symbolic entrance to the underworld. The site says most scholars take the king to be Suppiluliuma II, while an identification with Suppiluliuma I has also been suggested on the basis of archaic features of the writing.
Sources
- 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/
- 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
- Hittite Monuments, “Nişantaş Inscription (BOĞAZKÖY 5)”. https://www.hittitemonuments.com/bogazkoy/bogazkoy21.htm
- 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
- ICOMOS, “Hattusha (Boğazköy)”, Advisory Body Evaluation, World Heritage List no. 377, October 1986. https://whc.unesco.org/document/153313
- Jared L. Miller, review of S. Herbordt, D. Bawanypeck, J. D. Hawkins, “Die Siegel der Grosskönige und Grossköniginnen auf Tonbullen aus dem Nişantepe-Archiv in Hattusa” (Boğazköy-Ḫattuša XXIII, 2011), Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 77/1, 2014, pp. 196-198. DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X13000979. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X13000979
- Naki Akçar et al. (including A. Schachner), “First results on determination of cosmogenic 36Cl in limestone from the Yenicekale complex in the Hittite capital of Hattusha (Turkey)”, Quaternary Geochronology 4/6, 2009, pp. 533-540. DOI: 10.1016/j.quageo.2009.09.002. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2009.09.002
- Hittite Monuments, “Chamber II and the Inscription of Suppiluliuma (SÜDBURG / BOĞAZKÖY 20 and 21)”. https://www.hittitemonuments.com/bogazkoy/BOGAZKOY_21.htm