Yazılıkaya Hittite Sanctuary and Lunisolar Calendar. By  Etruscan Corner

In the 13th century BC, during the 66 years of his reign, Pharaoh Ramses II found himself facing a powerful political counterweight in Asia Minor: the Hittites. In the Amarna Tablets (14th century BC), the Egyptians indicate the Hittites as one of the major powers, alongside the Assyrians, Mitanni, and Babylonians. Then, suddenly, around 1190 BC, this Anatolian power disappeared from the scene. The capital Hattusha was abandoned, control of the country collapsed, and Hittite culture was subsequently forgotten for almost 3000 years.

Based on the findings, the region of Bogazkale, the center of the Hittite Kingdom, was already inhabited during the Paleolithic, but it was only later, with the discovery of ancient Assyrian and Hittite texts, that another part of history became known. In 1909, a team of German archaeologists discovered the ruins of Hattusha and its library with thousands of clay tablets. In these documents written in cuneiform, mention is made of the city of Hattush founded by the Hatti culture (from the 26th to the 18th century BC).

During the second half of the 17th century BC, the Hittites descended from the north and defeated the Hatti, incorporating much of that culture into their own. They conquered the city of Hattush, renaming it Hattusha, and made it the capital of their Kingdom. The excavations at Hattusha revealed a great and powerful culture, governed by written laws, which had created palaces and fortifications, enjoyed a fixed monetary system, and had developed a religion with its own gods and goddesses. The records of Hattusili, the first Hittite king who resided in Hattusha, tell of temples dedicated to a Sun Goddess of Arinna and to her daughter Mezulla, as well as to a Storm God called Teshub.

Charles Texier

In 1834, the French archaeologist Charles Texier visited the area of the former capital, a fortified area of two hundred hectares, over one hundred times the size of the citadel of Troy.

Texier was led by local farmers to a place near the remains of Hattusha, towards a natural limestone outcrop. Here there was a rock sanctuary from the Hittite period with over 90 well-preserved reliefs of human figures, animals, and chimera.

This was the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya ("Inscribed Rock"), one of the most important sacred sites in Anatolia that offers us a glimpse into the Hittite belief system.

For nearly two hundred years, archaeologists have questioned the meaning of the reliefs and the interpretation of the entire site.

The sanctuary consists of two rock chambers, later named Chamber A and Chamber B by archaeologists. Hypotheses include that one of the chambers was used for annual ceremonies, a place to celebrate the arrival of the new year each spring with ceremonies held outdoors in front of the Hittite Pantheon, and that the other was a mausoleum for a Hittite king.

At Yazilikaya, no building was erected, but the images of the Gods and the Cosmos were "projected" onto the natural environment.

The walls of each chamber are covered with the richest and most surprising examples of Hittite relief art, for a total of 83 images, 66 in Chamber A and 17 in Chamber B.

Human activity at the site likely began in the 16th century BC, although what we see today is probably the result of modifications made at the end of the 13th century BC, not long before the Hittite empire began its steep and mysterious decline.

The Two Chambers

The Yazılıkaya Rock Sanctuary consists of two chambers communicating with each other through a narrow passage and surrounded by natural rock formations. There is no indication that the top of the chambers was ever covered. On the rock walls are bas-reliefs depicting the gods of the Hittite pantheon. Most of the reliefs date back to the restorations commissioned by King Tudhaliya IV and King Suppiluliuma II at the end of the 13th century BC.

Among the reliefs, the three main units of the Cosmos stand out: Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld, where the sun spends the winter and the nighttime hours. Some of these reliefs have received little attention, such as the two chimera at the entrance of the narrow passage to Chamber B.

Archaeologist Kurt Bittel interprets them as demons protecting the entrance from malicious visitors. For others, they symbolize liminality, i.e., the crossing of a boundary in space and time, and their placement in the passage between Chamber A, which represents Earth and Heaven, and Chamber B, which depicts the Underworld, fits perfectly. 

Chamber A is 30 meters long and about 20 meters wide. Its walls are almost entirely decorated with reliefs running horizontally.

These two rows are two long processions of divine figures (63 in total): on the West, the Gods; on the East, the Goddesses, who meet in the center of the North wall in a large scene. The male deities on the left side of the walls and the female ones on the right are led by the Storm God Teššub and the Sun Goddess Hebat.

The name of each deity is given in Luwian hieroglyphs above their raised hands, but due to natural deterioration, some parts of these names have disappeared.

The enigmatic Chamber B is accessible via a narrow passage between vertical limestone walls, with winged demons on both sides.

The most impressive relief in Chamber B is 3.4 m high and shows Nergal, the Sword God and Lord of the Underworld. Next to it is depicted the Hittite king Tuthalija IV, guided by his protective deity Šarruma. Opposite is a group of 12 identical male deities of the Underworld.

The reliefs on the walls are better preserved than those in Chamber A, and it is believed that Chamber B was built as a memorial chapel for Tudhaliya IV, dedicated by his son Suppiluliuma II at the end of the 13th century BC.

The symbolic meaning of the sanctuary as a whole, however, remains unclear.

The Calendar

In 2019, archaeologists Eberhard Zangger and Rita Gautschy published a study arguing that most of the deities are arranged in such a way that they can be interpreted as a Perpetual Lunisolar Calendar.

Zangger argues that an important group of carvings in Yazılıkaya represents the circumpolar stars. "There are such images in Egypt," he says, "and the Hittites were influenced by many neighboring societies, including Egypt."

Another aspect of Hittite Cosmology was the "recurring renewal of life," Zangger says – for example, the day after night, the dark moon turned into a full moon, and winter turned into summer, and the carvings seem to reflect this cyclical view of Nature.

According to Zangger, the reliefs can be divided into groups of 12, 30, 5, and 19 figures.

The number 12 represents the number of lunar months per solar year; 30 represents the maximum number of days per lunar month; 5 could be seen as a symbolic reflection of the number of days missing in a schematic year (12 x 30 + 5 = 365), and 19 corresponds to the number of years in a solar cycle, useful for calibrating solar and lunar calendars.

With the help of this system, Hittite priests could determine when an additional lunar month needed to be introduced to synchronize the calendar with the seasons. Seven leap months should be inserted over a 19-year period; this would therefore correspond to what the Greeks later called the Metonic Cycle, a cycle based on the observation that 19 solar years correspond (almost) exactly to 235 lunar months and 6940 days.

With the help of such a calendar, the priests could ensure that the 165 days of the year when religious festivals took place fell in the right season. Hittite documents show that it was important for celebrations to take place at the right time of the year.

[If you,] Sun Goddess of Arinna, my lady, will descend [to me,] I will defeat the enemy and my sin
I will never again omit [the festivals] of spring
and [of autumn] I will no longer confuse, and [the festivals of spring] I will duly perform in spring,
[the festivals of autumn] I will perform in autumn, and for you in the temple
[I] will never again neglect [the festivals]…

Prayer of Tudḫaliya IV to the Sun Goddess of Arinna

This interpretation of the rock sanctuary attributes greater importance to the celestial elements in Hittite religion than had previously been hypothesized. However, many questions still remain unanswered.

Decoding the Symbolism

Already 20 years ago, the archaeo-astronomer E.C. Krupp, an expert in rock art of ancient societies, attributed a symbolic meaning to the landscape. Combining it with the patterns of thought introduced by the religious historian Mircea Eliade, he hypothesized that the natural features of Yazılıkaya reflect cosmic principles and may have assumed such meaning from time immemorial.

Krupp interpreted the carvings in the two galleries as a cosmic narrative depicting the renewal of creation and the continuity of the Hittite royal line.

"In front of Teshub in the central relief of Chamber A is Hepat, the Hurrian Mother Goddess. As Teshub's spouse, she united with him to deliver to the world the seasonal cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. In this representation, she and Teshub participate in the Sacred Marriage ceremony. All the other Gods depicted on the chamber walls have gathered to witness and ratify this ritual nuptial bond between Heaven (Teshub) and Earth (Hepat). In this way, the Hittites assembled the legion of Gods into a vast family headed by the cosmic couple, who united the fertility of the sky with the fecundity of the earth to perpetuate the world. Yazilikaya, therefore, was a fertile center of ritual renewal, a miniature mountain love nest where the divine wedding was celebrated above the Hittite capital. The ceremonies, timed with the New Year and the Spring Equinox, represented the beginning of time through the language of divine intercourse. But Yazilikaya is more than just a fertility sanctuary. The gods depicted there and the ceremonies held there long ago were not intended merely to bring some fecundity back into the world. Rather, the rock reliefs of Yazilikaya are the epitome of Hittite ideological art… Among the Gods, the Sacred Marriage culminates in a conjugal union that defines the hierarchy of cosmic power through divine lineage. When the king and queen ceremonially mated, much more than the fruits of the fields were renewed. There, copulation was political. Embodying the Gods, the king and his bride renew their sovereignty through sacred sex."

The Hittites had chosen this elevated place (over 1400 meters above sea level) as a natural point of contact between Heaven and Earth and therefore as a center for the transmission of divine power.

Chamber A

Chamber A, which represents Earth and Heaven, is flanked by two walls, each with a row of carved figures of deities processing towards a main relief depicting the God Teššub, his wife the Mother Goddess Ḫebat, and their son, the Mountain God Šarruma. The reliefs consist of 64 figures and represent 63 deities of the Hittite pantheon.

Since this panel faces north, Zangger and Gautschy believe it is aligned with the celestial circumpolar region and the eternal stars, like the North Star, which never sets below the horizon. "We suggest that Chamber A as a whole can be seen as a symbol of everything on Earth and in Heaven, including the Sun, the Moon, the five visible planets, certain constellations and stars, the North Celestial Pole, and the Northern Circumpolar Realm," they explain.

The cosmic axis is anchored to the North Celestial Pole: the sky and the entire universe seem to revolve around it.

In traditional cosmology, this axis mundi stabilizes the cosmos and at the same time determines its behavior.

Teššub and the major Gods in the central relief are not the stars of the circumpolar sky, but appear to be associated with this region and therefore rule from the highest point of the sky. In the Hittite belief system, the circumpolar region of the northern sky seems to have had special significance, because the meridian determines the orientation of both Chamber A and Chamber B in Yazılıkaya.

But not only that: Yerkapı, the highest architectural structure in Hattuša, is also aligned on the north-south axis.

The names of the deities are often written above their heads. From the deciphered names, we find that these deities had Hurrian names, not Hittite (the Hurrians were a people living southeast of the Hittites and had a strong influence on Hittite culture, especially in the 15th-13th centuries BC).

Among the finely carved reliefs, even if very deteriorated, the Moon God Kusuh can be recognized.

Depictions of Teshuba, the Storm God, are found throughout the ancient Near East, under a variety of names (Babylonian Marduk, Assyrian Adad, and Canaanite Baal).

Remains of cremations in this area suggest that this part of the sanctuary may have been used for burials of Hittite royalty.

Benches carved into the rock beneath some reliefs seem to serve for the deposition of offerings.

There are also basins and channels for libations carved into the rock. Presumably each chamber was used for different ceremonies, but the exact nature of these rituals is unknown.

Chamber B

Bounded by imposing rock walls, Chamber B might represent the Underworld.

Lion-headed demons are shown guarding the chamber's entrance. A main relief features the 12 gods of the underworld, each with sickle-shaped swords (hàrpe). There is also an imposing 11-foot-high relief depicting Nergal, the god of the underworld.

The entrance to Chamber B was once marked by a small artificial waterfall. In Hittite culture, water symbolized the passage of purification. In this chamber, the entire vision of the cosmic world incorporates elements of death and rebirth, night and day, moon and sun, and the cyclical processes of nature including the seasons.

Death is transient: the sun setting into night, the time the sun spends in the south in winter, and the temporary disappearance of the Pleiades and other stars during their heliacal setting. It is a death that is ultimately overcome again and again through celestial cycles.

Two chimera are located at the entrance of the narrow passage to Chamber B. Both figures are winged and each wears a short skirt with a wide belt. Kurt Bittel interprets them as demons protecting the entrance from malicious visitors.

These demons are drawn from the ancient Babylonian repertoire of Istar and were widely known in Mesopotamia as "Lion-Headed Gods."

Representation of the Cosmos

The Sanctuary of Yazılıkaya symbolizes the cosmos in its entirety, extending around a center, a meridian or Axis Mundi, and reflects the paradigmatic work of the gods when order was created and space was divided – in this case into three cosmic levels with the distinct circumpolar constellations in the highest level of the sky.

Yazılıkaya even allows passage from one cosmic region to another: from sky to earth and from earth to underworld, similar to what is known from Sumerian cosmology.

There is a wealth of bronze age documents, most dealing with prayers and festival liturgies, as well as many studies on Hittite religion and the places where it was practiced, including sacred springs, caves, rocks, and mountains.

So far, however, little emphasis has been placed on identifying the Hittites' relationship with celestial deities, even though their highest-ranking goddess was the Sun Goddess of Arinna, and the Great King of Hatti was even accustomed to referring to himself as "My Sun."

Hattusa and Yazılıkaya were destroyed along with the Hittite Kingdom around 1200 BC, although archaeological evidence suggests they were gradually abandoned over a period lasting several decades, becoming completely deserted by 800 BC.