Arinna

Feel the air first. Up here on the Central Anatolian plateau it is thin and dry, and it carries the smell of grass and warm earth. The light is wide and clear. It falls on low hills and open fields that seem to run on forever. This is Sorgun, in the province of Yozgat, and the name you have come to see, Arinna, is one of the oldest sacred names this land has ever known.

Let us be honest from the start. The name Arinna reaches back more than three thousand years. It belongs to a holy city of the Hittites, who ruled a powerful kingdom in this part of Anatolia. Anatolia is the old name for the Asian heart of modern Turkey. Scholars still debate exactly where the ancient city stood. So the name here is an echo of that world. It is not a claim that the old temples sit beneath your feet.

So who were the Hittites? They built one of the great states of the Bronze Age, from roughly the seventeenth to the twelfth century before Christ. Their capital, Hattusa, lies in the neighbouring province to the north. Its ruins are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Hittites traded with Egypt and fought with Egypt. They kept their records on clay tablets in cuneiform, the wedge-shaped script of the ancient Near East.

Among all their cities, Arinna held a special place. It was the home of the Sun Goddess of Arinna. To the Hittites she was not a minor spirit. She stood at the top of the state religion, and she was honoured as the queen of the land itself. Next to her stood the Storm God of Hatti, her divine partner. Together they watched over the king, the harvest, and the fate of the kingdom.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. In Hittite belief, the king did not simply rule in the gods' name. He was their chief priest. The king and the queen travelled to holy cities like Arinna to lead festivals in person. Their texts describe long rituals, with music, offerings of bread and drink, and processions. The ruler's presence at these rites was seen as vital to keeping the country safe.

The second surprise is that we can still hear a Hittite queen speak. One of the most famous Hittite queens was Puduhepa. A prayer in her name, addressed to the Sun Goddess of Arinna, survives on clay. In it she asks the goddess to protect her husband, the king. Few voices from the Bronze Age reach us this directly. When you hear the name Arinna today, it carries that prayer with it.

Now turn back to the present. Look at the land around Sorgun. Ancient scholars describe the Hittite heartland as a country of high plains and rolling hills, cold in winter and hot and dry in summer. That is much the same land you see now. The fields of wheat, the open sky, the slow line of hills on the horizon. This was the world the old priests and farmers knew.

Sorgun itself is a quiet working town today. You will notice tea glasses on small saucers, men talking outside cafés, and the call to prayer floating over the rooftops. The town is also known across Turkey for its thermal springs. Warm mineral water rises from the ground here, and people have come for generations to bathe and rest. Water and earth matter in this place, just as they did in ancient times.

The district holds older stories too. In the hills nearby, on the mountain called Kerkenes, archaeologists have studied the remains of a large ancient city from the Iron Age. That was centuries after the Hittite kingdom fell. Its long stone walls run across the high ground. It is a reminder that people chose this region again and again as a place to build, to defend, and to worship.

Take a moment to think about the Sun Goddess herself. Some scholars connect her with the earth as well as the sun, a power over both light and land. For farmers on this plateau, that made sense. The sun warmed the soil, and the soil fed the people. When the Hittites prayed to her, they were really praying for a good year, for rain at the right time, and for peace.

The Hittite kingdom collapsed around the twelfth century before Christ, during a time of upheaval across the eastern Mediterranean. Over time, its language was forgotten. For thousands of years, nobody could read the tablets. Only in the early twentieth century did scholars decipher Hittite. They found it was an Indo-European language, a distant relative of English, Greek, and Persian. That discovery brought names like Arinna back into the world.

So when a place in Yozgat takes the name Arinna, it does something quiet but meaningful. It links a modern town to a chapter of its own deep past. The region was part of the Hittite world, and the people here are proud of that layer of history. You may find the old sun disc or Hittite motifs used in local design. Look for them. They show how this memory lives on.

Before you move on, stand still for a minute. Feel the sun on your face, and the wind that crosses the plateau without much to stop it. Listen to the sounds of the town around you. Three thousand years ago, people on this same high ground looked at this same sun and gave it a name and a queen. As you walk away, notice the light on the hills. It is the oldest thing here.