Alaca Höyük

Listen first. Wind moves across open wheat fields, and somewhere a tractor hums in the distance. Underfoot, the path is dry earth and pale stone. Ahead of you, two great carved blocks rise from the ground. They are worn soft by thousands of years of weather, but they still have faces. You are standing at the edge of a mound in central Anatolia, and that mound holds layer upon layer of human life.

The word höyük means mound in Turkish. A mound like this is not a natural hill. It grew slowly, as people built houses, let them fall, and built again on top of the ruins. Over many centuries, the ground rose under their feet. Archaeologists at Alaca Höyük found settlement layers that reach back to the Copper Age, long before the Hittites. Then come the Early Bronze Age, the Hittite period, and later occupations above them.

Those two carved blocks are the Sphinx Gate, the grand entrance to the Hittite town. Walk closer and look at the faces. Each sphinx has a human head, a heavy curled hairstyle, and a body that merges into the stone of the gate. Scholars often compare the hairstyle to images of the Egyptian goddess Hathor. That suggests ideas travelled a very long way in the second millennium before Christ. But the carving style here is clearly Anatolian. It is solid, broad, and confident.

Now here is a detail many visitors miss. Go to the inner side of the right-hand sphinx and look low on the stone. There is a relief of a double-headed eagle. In its talons, it holds two small animals, usually read as hares. Some scholars suggest that a figure once stood on top of the eagle. The double-headed eagle later became a powerful symbol for many empires. Here, you are looking at one of its very early appearances.

On either side of the gate, a row of carved stone slabs lines the wall. These slabs are called orthostats, which means upright stones set into the base of a building. The ones you see on site are casts. The originals are kept in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. Even so, the copies show the scenes clearly, and they are some of the liveliest images from the Hittite world.

Follow the slabs slowly, like a comic strip in stone. A king and queen raise their hands before a bull on a pedestal. The bull stands for the Storm God, the most powerful deity in Hittite religion. Further along, musicians play instruments. One figure climbs a ladder that seems to stand on nothing. Another appears to swallow a sword. These are performers at a festival, and they make the gate feel less like a fortress and more like a stage.

Hunting scenes appear too. Look for a lion, a stag, and a wild boar facing a hunter's spear. The Hittites ruled from their capital, Hattusa, which lies not far from here in the same province. Alaca Höyük was an important town within that world. Its ancient name is still debated. Some scholars link it to Arinna, a holy city of the Sun Goddess, and others suggest Zippalanda. No inscription has settled the question.

But the most famous discovery here is older than the Hittites by many centuries. Walk toward the area of the royal tombs. In the 1930s, Turkish archaeologists uncovered a group of graves from the Early Bronze Age, dated to the third millennium before Christ. The excavation was led by Hamit Zübeyr Koşay together with Remzi Oğuz Arık. It was one of the first major digs carried out by archaeologists of the young Turkish Republic.

The tombs were rectangular pits, lined with stone and roofed with timber. Inside lay the dead with extraordinary goods. There were gold vessels, gold diadems, jewellery, and weapons. Some objects were made of iron, which was rare and precious at the time. Above several tombs, the excavators found the bones of cattle. Archaeologists read this as a sign of funeral feasts. The heads and hooves were placed on the roof, perhaps as a final offering.

Then there are the bronze standards. Some are open discs, crossed with a lattice and edged with small birds or flowers. Others are figures of stags and bulls, their bodies inlaid with silver. Nobody knows exactly how they were used. They may have topped poles, or decorated funeral carts. A large version of one of these standards now stands as a monument in Ankara. For many Turks, it became a symbol of ancient Anatolia itself.

Who were the people buried here? They lived before the Hittites arrived in power. Many historians connect them with the Hattians, an earlier people of central Anatolia. The Hittites later absorbed Hattian gods, names, and rituals. So when you stand between the Bronze Age graves and the Hittite gate, you see two chapters of one long story. One culture did not simply replace the other. It inherited and reshaped it.

Before you leave, look for the postern, a long stone tunnel that runs beneath the old town wall. Its walls lean toward each other and meet at the top in a pointed shape. A passage like this let defenders or townspeople move in and out without using the main gate. Walk through it if it is open. The air is cooler inside, and the light at the far end looks small and bright.

The small site museum near the entrance is worth a visit. It holds finds from the mound, including pottery, tools, and copies of some of the famous pieces from the tombs. Seeing the objects close up helps you picture the people who made them. Then step outside again. The fields around you are still farmed today, in the same wide, open landscape these people knew.

Take one last look back at the Sphinx Gate. The faces are blurred now, and the stone is pitted by wind and frost. Yet they still watch the road, as they have for more than three thousand years. Listen again to the wind across the wheat. Under your feet, the mound keeps its layers, one above the other. Every step you take here is a step across many centuries of the same ground.