Postcards From Susan: HATTUSAS

Day two of our Road Scholar tour was a long bus ride to Cappadocia, punctuated by a visit to Hattusas, an ancient capital of the Hittites. These bus rides, by the way, look long and tedious on the written schedule, but were not. Our guide Yesim chose part of each ride to tell us about some aspect of Turkish life or culture, from ancient history to art to village life to current social issues and controversies. We also had plenty of time to get to know our fellow travelers and share experiences of other travels and tours. So we felt entertained and enlightened during our bus rides, even though they might be long.

This bus ride took us to the ancient Hittitite capital of Hattusas.

The entrance to the area is next to a reconstruction of what the city gates would have looked like. The reconstruction is not entirely for show, however. Here, as in other places we visited, reconstructions have been made out of different materials and in different techniques so that archaeologists can study how they age and degrade over time, to understand better how the ruins were originally built, and how they came to their current condition. Hattusas, like other sites we visited, is an active archaeology site.

The ruins looked like this from a distance.

Hattusas was very large, and it took our bus a while to make the circuit, with stops to see various features of the city. Our first stop was the site of a temple and storerooms.

The green stone at the center of the photo above is the source of much speculation. Some say it was part of ancient rituals, or perhaps where women went to give birth. Guide Yesim called these "guide stories", stories made up by guides to please tourists hungry for colorful backstories. She speculated that there was a large green stone available, so the Hittites used it.

Interestingly, there is no estimate for the number of people who lived in Hattusas in its time. Not enough has been excavated, and not enough remains to determine how many homes were there. There is no way to estimate from the number of size of the storerooms, since we can't know how much food was stored for the community. It is known that the climate changed, and crops failed, since there is a communication from the king of the Hattusas to another king begging for food as a result of the crop failures.

We could see where doors had been hinged to the walls,

and even where heavy doors had scraped the rock floors underneath their lower edges.

Our second stop was a ceremonial gate to the city, through two magnificent, if reconstructed lions.

Details of the lions' fur, although reconstructed.

Intrepid guide Yesim herding us back to the bus.

Our third stop was on top of a hill, at a wall with a narrow tunnel leading outside of the city. Looking back into the city....

and into the tunnel.

The outside entrance to the tunnel. Again, no one knows the purpose of the tunnel. Some speculate that it allowed priests to exit the city for ceremonies, or perhaps for messengers to arrive.

The fourth stop was another grand ceremonial entrance, with even larger figures on either side.

Our final stop in Hattusas was a religious site, which wended through narrow passages carved with figures. See the horizontal band along the passage walls.