View through the King’s Gate, one of the main entryways into the old city of the Hittite capital, Hattuša, showing the barrenness of the surrounding countryside. Photo by Mark Baker.
A close-up of the relief etched into the side of the King’s Gate in Hattuša. Photo by via Wikimedia Commons by Carole Raddato.
Another view of the King’s Gate, which must have looked phenomenal back in the day. Very little of the former fortifications is still standing. Photo credit: Rita1234 via Wikimedia Commons.
The extent of the Hittite Empire, circa 14th century BCE. Hattusa can be seen toward the north-central part of region. The city of Kadesh is to the south, near the border with Egypt (marked in yellow). Credit: Ancient Encyclopedia.
“Now we will eat bread and drink water.”
By deciphering this simple sentence, practically the most banal thing one can write (and the title of this blog post in Hittite), the early-20th century Czech linguist Bedřich Hrozný helped to crack one of the most vexing riddles facing archeologists and orientalists of his day: how to read the pictograms etched on thousands of clay tablets stretching back more than 3,000 years that had been found in central Turkey.
The chance discovery of the cache of tablets, by French and German archeologists in the late-19th century, stunned the world and proved beyond doubt the existence of an obscure tribe — the Hittites — that until then had only been known from a few scant references in the Bible. Hrozný’s insights would flesh out this empire and show us how powerful and developed they really were.
I don’t want to get ahead of the story, though. I would never have learned anything about the Hittites or Hrozný if it weren’t for an invitation I received a few years back from an old friend and fellow journalist, Colin Campbell, who had recently retired from journalism and was working on a novel set in Turkey. Colin asked if I might have some free time to accompany him around the country to help get a better feel for the place and collect details for his book.
I had just left my own editing job at Radio Free Europe in Prague and had some free time on my hands. I happily accepted and we arranged to meet on a chilly late-autumn day in Istanbul. From there, we would embark on a road trip all around Turkey with nothing more on the agenda than to ride around and take the pulse of the place. One of the riddles Colin needed to solve for his book was to see how long it would take us to drive from the Turkish capital, Ankara, to Izmir (or something like that). The answer: longer than you think.
The Hittites were apparently a warlike people, and many of the reliefs depict marching warriors. Photo by Mark Baker.
Hattuša’s location, in a lifeless part of north-central Anatolia, seems an odd place from which to lead an enormous empire. No wonder archeologists couldn’t believe they stumbled onto the Hittite capital when they did. Photo by Mark Baker.
Colin standing in the doorway of one of the main gates at Hattuša. Photo by Mark Baker.
The hills surrounding Hattuša provided a natural barrier to external attack, but the city’s isolation may have hurt it in the longer run. Photo by Mark Baker.
We had fun on our days in Istanbul and, later, traveling around central Anatolia and Ankara (I’ve posted a few photos of Istanbul and Ankara below). All the time in the car gave us plenty of opportunities to chat and catch up. Colin is one of those guys you might call a polymath, with an interest in a wide — and eclectic — range of topics. These included, among other things, Turkish military coups (useful when riding around Turkey) and “Rebetiko,” a soulful style of Ottoman-influenced Greek music. For the purposes of this article, as it happens, he also knows reams about archeology and antiquity.
One of the places Colin especially wanted to visit was the small city of Boğazkale, about 120 miles (200 km) east of Ankara. While Boğazkale, itself, was nothing special, it was close to Hattuša (Hattusha), the ancient capital of the old Hittite empire. It was a place he’d always wanted to see.
I must have seemed dumbfounded at the time. Like everyone else, I simply assumed the Hittites were just another tiny, long-disappeared (or perhaps never-existed) tribe that pops up in the Bible or in church readings of some kind or another. I had never given them a second thought.
Our trip to Hattuša, though, opened up my eyes to a phenomenally advanced civilization for its day, and to a tale of linguistic cryptography worthy of an Alan Turing type story (and maybe even Benedict Cumberbatch treatment).
The featureless Anatolian countryside surrounding Hattuša. Photo by Mark Baker.
Colin (right) and I standing in front of a surviving relief of Hittite soldiers on of the walls of Hattuša. This photo was probably taken by our guide, but I can’t recall.
A typical Hittite relief carved into one of the walls of Hattuša. Hittite figures are often easily identifiable by the pointed hat and other costume details that widely repeated. Photo by Mark Baker.
This is one of the few decent places to stay in Boğazkale, close to Hattuša. In my notes, I’ve titled this photo ‘freezing pension,’ and I remember my room really was pretty cold. Photo by Mark Baker.
So, what was Hrozný’s act of genius in cracking the code of the clay tablets?
I’m no expert in linguistics, but the way I understood it was like
