The ancient Hittite sanctuary of Yazılıkaya is situated amid low hills a few kilometers east of Ankara, near the small town of Boğazkale. Meaning “inscribed rock” in Turkish, Yazılıkaya is an open-air natural rock sanctuary located at a site where a freshwater spring once flowed. The site shares characteristics with other Anatolian spring sanctuaries and may have served as a place of worship for hundreds or even thousands of years before the rise of Hittite power.

Based on discoveries of stone tools, it is evident that the Boğazkale area was inhabited during the Paleolithic era. However, the first concrete evidence of settlement dates back to the early 3rd millennium BCE. According to ancient Assyrian texts and later Hittite documents, a city called Hattush was founded around 1900 BCE by the Hatti culture. In the second half of the 17th century BCE, the Hittites descended from the north, defeated the indigenous Hatti people—likely incorporating much of their culture—and conquered the city of Hattush. They renamed it Hattusa and established it as the capital of their empire. The Hittites quickly rose to prominence, becoming a major power that rivaled Mesopotamia and Egypt. Trade objects, treaties, and archives of clay letters reveal that the Hittites were in contact with Mycenae, Troy, and dynastic Egypt. Hattusa remained the capital of the Hittite Empire until its mysterious decline around 1200 BCE.

It was not until 1909, when archaeologists discovered the city of Hattusa and its library containing thousands of clay tablets, that the lost Hittites could be rediscovered. Excavations of their city unveiled a vast and powerful culture governed by written laws, which constructed palaces and fortifications, used a fixed monetary system, and developed a religion with its own gods and goddesses. The Hittites were polytheistic, worshipping their own gods as well as deities from other Mesopotamian cultures. The archives of Hattusili, the first Hittite king to reside in Hattusa, mention temples dedicated to a sun goddess named Arianna and her daughter Mezulla, as well as to a weather god named Teshub.

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