İnandıktepe is an archaeological site located in
Cankiri Province,
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
, about 50 miles northeast of
Ankara
Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, maki ...
. In 1965 workers found there potsherds of the famous
İnandık-vase. Thereafter excavations took place.
Overall five levels could be identified. Most of them dating to the
Hittite Age. A complex of about 2000 sq. m. was unearthed extending over the entire ridge of the mound. It was preserved only in parts since it was destroyed in a great fire. The excavators supposed this building to be a temple. Nevertheless, this is controversial - it has also been suggested to be an estate.
Most of the archaeological finds were ceramics. Among them there were small vessels, jugs, a figurine of a bull, a temple-model as well as a tub. In addition there was found a
clay tablet
In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian ) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age.
Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylu ...
with an
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
inscription. It documents a land-gift of the official Tutulla. It is sealed by the
Tabarna seal
{{Orphan, date=April 2014
In the ancient Hittite empire, the Tabarnas meant the highest dignitary, by degree similar to the Roman emperor: though, differently from it, the Tabarnas was not an absolute monarch, but a kind of a council (the panko) ...
which was in use till the reign of great-king
Alluwamna
Alluwamna was a king of the Hittites (Middle Kingdom) in the 15th century BC. He might be a successor of Telipinu as his son-in-law,''The Kingdom of the Hittites'' by Trevor Bryce, p. 119. after the reign of Tahurwaili.
Family
The wife of Alluw ...
. Comparable finds date to the reign of
Telipinu
Telipinu was the last king of the Hittites Old Kingdom, living in 16th century BC, reigned c. 1525-1500 BC in middle chronology. At the beginning of his reign, the Hittite Empire had contracted to its core territories, having long since lost all ...
. Hence it can be assumed that this tablet and the layer it was found in date to the late 16th century BC.
[Mielke 2006, 263.]
See also
*
Cities of the Ancient Near East
The earliest cities in history were in the ancient Near East, an area covering roughly that of the modern Middle East: its history began in the 4th millennium BC and ended, depending on the interpretation of the term, either with the conquest by ...
*
Hittites
The Hittites () were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing first a kingdom in Kussara (before 1750 BC), then the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom (c. 1750–1650 BC), and next an empire centered on Hattusa in north-centra ...
Notes
Bibliography
*
*
* Mielke (2006). ''İnandıktepe un Sarissa''. In: Mielke, Schoop, Seher (ed): ''Strukturierung und Datierung in der hethitischen Archäologie''. Istanbul, pp. 251–276.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Inandiktepe
Anatolia
Former populated places in Turkey
Hittite cities
Hittite sites in Turkey