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Yazılıkaya

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Yazılıkaya (Turkish for “inscribed rock”) is an open-air rock sanctuary in the Boğazkale district, north-east of the Hittite capital Hattusa. The UNESCO record counts this sacred place, made of two natural rock chambers, as part of the Hattusa World Heritage property and gives its position as 2 km north-east of the capital; the Hittite Monuments website puts the distance at about 1.5 km.

Layout

According to UNESCO, Yazılıkaya is an open-air temple with two natural chambers cut into the bedrock on the slope of a mountain barrier. The walls of the chambers are covered with the richest and most striking examples of Hittite relief art, showing gods and goddesses and figures of the Great King Tuthaliya IV. The Hittite Monuments website notes that there is no indication that the tops of the chambers were ever covered.

The Türkiye Tourism Encyclopedia (Yılmaz, 2019) presents the site as one of the capital’s most important sacred places in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE, when the Hittites were at their strongest, and speaks of 64 reliefs of gods and goddesses in Chambers A and B.

Chamber A

In the larger Chamber A, Hittite gods and goddesses are carved on the rock in long facing rows. According to the Hittite Monuments website the male deities are on the left side of the wall and the goddesses on the right, led by the Storm-god Teššub and the Sun-goddess Hebat, who meet at the centre. The Tourism Encyclopedia writes that spring festivals and the Hittite kings’ accession rituals are thought to have been held in this chamber; the 2017 book of the Çorum Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism says festivals were celebrated in Chamber A and names the Crocus Festival (An-Tah-Sum-Sar) and the Purilliya Spring Festival among the most important festivals celebrated at Yazılıkaya.

Chamber B

The reliefs in the smaller Chamber B, reached by a narrow passage, are thought to relate to the funerary cult of Tuthaliya IV (Türkiye Tourism Encyclopedia). The Hittite Monuments website writes that the chamber was probably a memorial chapel for Tuthaliya IV, dedicated by his son Šuppiluliuma II at the end of the 13th century BCE, and that it contains a procession of twelve gods of the underworld and a relief of the god Šarruma embracing Tuthaliya. The Çorum Provincial Directorate’s book says Chamber B was used in ceremonies concerning life after death.

Discovery and research

According to the Türkiye Tourism Encyclopedia, the Yazılıkaya reliefs were what excited Charles Texier most at Boğazköy. Nermin Atila’s (2026) article, based on Ottoman archives, summarises the site’s research history:

  • 1855: Andreas Mordtmann and Heinrich Barth uncovered some buried parts of Yazılıkaya, and Barth redrew the plan using Texier’s engravings (the Tourism Encyclopedia dates these soundings to 1858).
  • 1882: Karl Humann took plaster casts of the reliefs and sent them to Berlin.
  • 1893-1894: Ernest Chantre excavated at Yazılıkaya (Türkiye Tourism Encyclopedia).
  • 1907: The Ankara Provincial Yearbook describes the reliefs carved on the white rocks at Yazılıkaya.

For the broader course of the excavations see the history of the Hattusa excavations.

Further sources: counts, dating and function

The number of reliefs varies by source. Tayfun Bilgin’s Database of Religious History entry (2021) counts 63 deities in the main relief group of Chamber A; Eberhard Zangger and Rita Gautschy (2019), drawing on Seeher (2011) and Bittel, give 64 deity reliefs in Chamber A and more than 90 reliefs in the whole sanctuary, made up of deities, humans, animals and composite figures (the number quoted above from the Turkey Tourism Encyclopedia was 64). The same article says Chamber A is about 30 m long, that all the figures face north, that Teššub is shown standing on the mountain gods Namni and Hazzi and Hebat on a leopard, and that behind them are their son Šarruma and her daughters Allanzu and Kunzišalli; Bilgin notes that the Luwian hieroglyphic labels identify the deities by their Hurrian rather than Hittite names, which shows the influence of Hurrian cult tradition at the Hittite court in the 13th century. According to Zangger and Gautschy, Chamber B is a cleft 18 m long (2.15 m wide at its southern end and 4.5 m at its northern end; the walls rise up to 12 m; the man-made passage at the entrance is only 80 cm wide at its narrowest); the height of the Sword God relief is given as 3.4 m in this article and 3.5 m by Bilgin. Bilgin also mentions a 2.60 m high relief of Tudhaliya IV in Chamber A. The 3D scanning of Marazzi and Schachner (2024) revealed a previously unknown female figure facing north on the east wall of Chamber B.

For dating, Zangger and Gautschy write that the reliefs visible today were cut during the reign of Tudhaliya IV (about 1236-1215 BCE in the article’s dates), while the building-phases section of the article associates the Chamber A reliefs with the reign of Hattusili III (about 1266-1236 BCE). Following Seeher (2011), they give the building complex in front of the chambers as three phases: the first (the gatehouse) possibly goes back as far as 1500 BCE, and the temple buildings were enlarged in two phases in the 13th century BCE; Bilgin likewise says the site was in use from at least 1500 BCE and gained importance with the carving of the reliefs. In relief 81 in Chamber B, Tudhaliya IV is shown with a round cap; according to the article some scholars take this as part of his usual priestly garb and others as an indication of the deified dead king, in which case the relief would date from the reign of his son Suppiluliuma II.

On function, Zangger and Gautschy report that Seeher (2011) writes that it is still not clear what function the sanctuary fulfilled, and they list the proposals made: the place where the itkalzi ritual was performed (Haas and Wäfler); Chamber A as the setting for coronations and Chamber B as a hekur where the royal ancestors were worshipped (Haas); and, according to a few specialists, the tomb of Tudhaliya IV. Bilgin writes that Chamber A was probably used for periodic cult festivals and Chamber B served as a memorial or mausoleum for Tudhaliya IV. As their own proposal, Zangger and Gautschy suggest that the relief groups of Chamber A served a calendrical function, tracking days, months and solar years. According to the same article the reliefs were first published by Charles Texier (1834), and excavations took place in 1931-1939 and 1966-1972 (Bittel et al. 1941; Bittel 1975).

Protection status

According to UNESCO, Yazılıkaya is protected under Law No. 2863 as a 1st degree archaeological site and is a component of the Hattusa World Heritage property (Hattusa as a UNESCO World Heritage Site). For the nearby Late Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age settlement see Yarıkkaya, for the other Hittite structures of the city see Hattuşaş, and for visiting see the Hattusa Visitor Guide.

Sources

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