History

The tell of Alacahöyük preserves evidence of occupation from the Chalcolithic period (c. 4000 BCE) through the early Iron Age (c. 1000 BCE), but two episodes dominate the site’s historical significance.

The first and most extraordinary is the Early Bronze Age royal tombs, dug between approximately 2400 and 2200 BCE. The 13 shaft graves — rectangular pits cut into bedrock, lined in some cases with stone, and covered with heavy timber roofing — were identified as royal by their contents: ox skeletons sacrificed above the tomb lid and left in place, alongside extraordinary metalwork assemblages that have no parallels in any other Bronze Age culture in the Near East. The solar disc standards — circular bronze discs mounted on poles, their surfaces decorated with geometric openwork designs or radiating sun patterns — are the most distinctive and puzzling objects: they appear to have served as royal or ritual standards carried in procession, but no contemporary parallel exists. Gold and electrum jewellery includes diadems, hairpins, bracelets, and dress ornaments of exceptional technical sophistication, demonstrating mastery of lost-wax casting, filigree, and granulation that would not be surpassed in Anatolia for centuries.

The people buried in these tombs were not Hittites — the Hittites did not arrive in central Anatolia until approximately 400 years later. They belonged to an Anatolian culture, possibly related to the proto-Hattian people attested in later Hittite religious texts as the original inhabitants of the Hatti land, whose language (Hattic) was preserved by the Hittites for ritual purposes after the Hattians were culturally absorbed.

The second phase of significance is the Hittite Empire period (c. 1400–1200 BCE), when Alacahöyük became a royal ceremonial centre with monumental public architecture. The Sphinx Gate — the principal entrance to the Hittite city — consists of two large limestone sphinxes (human-headed, lion-bodied) flanking the gate passage, their faces weathered but their bodies largely intact, with carved relief panels on the outer gate faces depicting processions of worshippers, musicians, and acrobats. A large palace complex adjacent to the gate preserves stone foundations and floor surfaces. The site appears to have been used for royal religious ceremonies during the Hittite period, possibly related to the Hattian religious traditions of which the Hittites were consciously the inheritors.