Great Temple of Hattusa

The Great Temple, also known as Temple I, was built by the Hittites around 1600 BCE at their capital city Hattuša, located by the modern day town of Boğazkale in the central Anatolia region of Turkey. It is by far the largest of over 30 temples uncovered within the city. The Great Temple was probably referred to as the "Great House" in Hittite texts. Like all of the temples of Hattuša, it belonged to the Hittite state cult that served to the royal administration and was not open to the public. Without any major structural modifications, the temple was in use for four centuries until the end of the Hittite empire in the early years of the 12th century BCE. It appears to have been already emptied and abandoned prior to the destruction by fire. The temple complex is built on artificial terraces in the area called Lower City and is mainly composed of three structures: (1) the temple proper, (2) surrounding storerooms, and (3) an administrative building in the south area. All together they cover an area of 200 m by 130 m (about 6.5 acres). A building on the east side named "House on the Slope" may also have a functional association with the complex. Today, the only remains are the foundations, the human-high base blocks of the walls, and massive door thresholds. Nothing remains of the upper structures that were built of unfired mud-bricks enforced with wood. The temple was probably a single-story structure estimated to be about 5-meters-high, while the storerooms built on lower terraces for the most part had two-, and at the northern end probably three-stories. The temple had 49 rooms of various sizes that surround a courtyard which was entered through a gateway at the southwest end. The largest two rooms, the double adyta, at the northeast end of the temple were accessed from the courtyard by passing through a pillared portico and a couple of small auxiliary rooms, and are believed to have served as the cult rooms for the two top deities of the Hittite pantheon, the Storm God of Hatti and the Sun Goddess of Arinna. Built of dark green gabbro blocks, these two rooms are distinguished from the white limestone of the rest of the temple. While the west adyton is largely destroyed, remains of a stone base that can be seen in the eastern adyton must have been where the cult statue of the deity was placed. Furthermore, five or six other rooms of the temple were likely to have been cult rooms of other major deities of the pantheon. All cult rooms were innermost sanctuaries that could be accessed only by a select few that included the royal family and the priests. In contrast to the Mesopotamian or Egyptian temples, there were several windows that illuminated the cult rooms and the cult statues, although this was probably controlled with wooden shutters on them. The storerooms surrounding the temple numbered at least 200 with the upper stories and were mostly served as depots for various types of goods. Several large pithoi were found in situ, some with a capacity of 2000 liters. Thousands of inscribed clay tablets, mostly fragmented, were recovered from eastern storerooms. The annex building to the south must have been the administrative center of the temple. A text that has been associated with this structure refers to it as the "house of work" and lists over 200 personnel.