Hattusas, the Foundation City, the Breathtaking City

Yesterday we went to the Anatolia Archeological Museum and to Alaca Hoyuk. At the museum I was struck by the continuity of the animals in the different cultures. Many had stags and lions, and all the cultures featured a bull in their art or sculpture or practice, going back to the Neolithic times, through the Hittite, and until the Roman period. I spent much of my time at the section of the museum dedicated to cave painting because that was a type of art I had rarely encountered before. I was struck by the visceral, vivid nature of each painting, and I had so many questions about them, many of which cannot be answered. I wondered why the animals were depicted as 10 times the size of the people in all the paintings, and why the people had tails of sorts attached to them. I also realized that these paintings would most likely not have been crafted by the same artist, so the differences between works could be simply that different artists made different paintings. Did the paint these for sympathetic magic over the animals in the hunt? Did they paint them to deify the spirits of the animals? Was this just some sort of grafitti by children (I doubt that one)? Why choose to paint exclusively hunt scenes? A limited guess is that the hunt was vital to the survival of the culture, so the culture produced art that reflected this. At the same time, people have always been people, and always wanted to express themselves culturally, and that sort of reductionistic approach to the necessity of the art of ancient peoples does not seem convincing to me, mainly because it assumes that people today have more complex needs and desires than people "back then." I tend to think that humanity has been essentially the same throughout our history and pre-history--the technology may become more advanced, the philosophy may become more convoluted, but the cycles from boom to bust, from plenty to scarcity, are still the same.

Those were just a few of my reflections from the museum. At Alaca Hoyuk, a mound settlement that contained mutliple cultures within its layered stratigraphy, I walked on the same road which the Hatti and Hittite peoples crossed. I saw the Sphinx's gate with its two creatures staring out into the distance. I wondered at the various ancient burial techniques throughout history. Some sort of veneration for the dead appears to be constant, but the methods are far different. The Hatti at Alaca Hoyuk buried their dead in squat mudbrick structures above ground with wooden beams covering them. The Lycians buried their dead in sarcophogi, in house-style tombs in the rock itself, and in architecture that resembles temples. The Greeks buried their dead in sarcophogi, while late Hellenistic peoples in Cyprus buried their dead in underground complexes.

Today (May 7) we went to Hattusas (pronounced either "Hat-too-sas" or "Hat-too-sha," scholars are not certain), the capital city of the Hittites, a major empire during the Bronze Age that was mostly forgotten until the 19th century. A significant portion of the city has been excavated, something that not all sites can boast; however, Hattusas has no reconstructions, just the building foundations. There is little to see if you come there looking for a Pompeii or an Ephesus, both cities either preserved or reconstructed extensively.

The first stop we made was to a major temple in Hattusas. I spent much of my time staring at the foundations, trying to reconstruct what the building could have looked like. That was one of the things I realized about archeology. Before the trip I thought of archeology as a strict science. They found things, documented them, and then interpreted them rightly. When I read a conclusion from an archeologist, I took them at face value for the most part. In talking to archeologists, including our own Dr. Moore, I came to the understanding that archeology is more like an art based on scientific methods. They make their best guess as to what the artifact or architecture means based on the information they have at the time, but that guess could change completely after we discover more about that culture or as better techniques are developed to test those theories. Because of this trip, I am in a better place to evaluate a vital primary source critically: archeology.

The Hittite architects were incredible. They built stone walls that stand today independent of any archeologists' supports, without mortar. They chiseled the stones to fit together perfectly, and these walls still jut from the Hattusas hillside. Above these stone walls, the Hittites had built mud-brick walls on top, making these already formiddable walls even more so. It was incredible to feel these stone walls and to imagine the Hittite city at its height.

One of the entrances to the Hittite city seems designed to inspire awe in the person entering. You can't approach the gate straight on; rather, you approach from the side, walking along a fake (as in, constructed) mound of dirt that melds into a magnificant pyramid in the hillside. On top of the pyramid the city wall slices across your view. In order to enter the city, you have to walk alongside the pyramid, then climb a narrow staircase up the side of the pyramid in order to get to the gate. Once you are through the monumental gateway, the first sight your amazed eyes will see is a massive complex of temples. Hattusas was called the "city of a thousand gods" because they housed many gods, and right through that main gate was one of the primary places for the temples. If you were a merchant, you would be impossibly awed by this magnificent show of architectural prowess.

Later in the day we began our visit to Cappodoccia. Cappodocia, wıth its jutted landscapes carved out by the wind over incredıble time. Think Arizona but wıth vulcanic rock that sculpts like potter`s clay. The wind sculpts the rocks into points, so there are a thousand spears pointıng upward into the sky. The difference in the toughness of the rocks allows the top to be wider than the spear section below.

Ancient peoples carved churches and monasteries, houses and even entire underground cities. They built them because they wanted isolation from the world and because they wanted safety, depending on the time. Some built cavernous cities with elaborate ventillation systems and storerooms, with churches standing side by side with living quarters.

It was there that I began my appreciation for natural wonders. I have always been a "culture guy," in the sense that I enjoy natural wonders, but things built by humans have always held a stronger pull for me. They still do, but I began to appreciate the natural wonders of Cappodoccia here, and that wonder only increased as we headed into the Mediteranean, but that is another post.