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Inscribed on the small, pillow-shaped tablet is a 3,000-year-old warning to Idanda, king of Qatna, from the Hittite general Hanutti, telling him to prepare for war. A small Bronze Age Syrian city-state, Qatna was once under Hittite control, but had been conquered by the Mitanni people from the north. The clay tablet, like others found with it, was fired twice--once just after it was written, to preserve it, and again when the ancient city was sacked and burned to the ground in 1340 B.C. by the Hittites, who ruled an empire that stretched from northern Turkey to Mesopotamia and Syria......

French explorer's bad luck in Syria avenged at last Tue 17 Oct 2006 11:45 AM ET By Khaled Yacoub Oweis ALEPPO, Syria, Oct 17 (Reuters) - First the 1920s French archaeologist ran out of money to uncover the treasures he suspected hidden under a Syrian castle, and then he ran out of time to see others finish the work. Twelve years too late for Georges Ploix de Rotrou, a German team has now revealed the full glory of the 500 square metre (5,400 sq ft) Temple of the Storm God that lay under the vast citadel in Aleppo. Ploix de...

Ancient Hittite dam inaugurated after 32 centuries Wednesday, September 20, 2006 ANKARA - Turkish Daily News A Hittite-era dam located in the central Anatolian province of Çorum and believed to be one of the oldest in the world to have survived to date has been restored and is once again serving as a source of irrigation for local residents. The dam, located at the Alacahöyük archaeological site, was built by the Hittites in 1240 B.C. The dam's inauguration was marked with a ceremony over the weekend attended by Professor Aykut Çýnaroðlu, who heads the team excavating Alacahöyük, Ankara University Rector...

An exhibition titled "The Hittite Winds" by sculptor and ceramic artist Erdinç Bakla opened on Tuesday at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum in Topkap› Palace. The exhibition, which interprets Hittite artifacts in various materials, features 35 pieces of marble, bronze, plexiglas and fiberglass as well as a golden dinner set and silver tea set. The exhibition will run until May 28 and will also be on display in Ankara in June, reported the Anatolia news agency.

Amazon Warrior WomenThis painting on a Greek vase depicts an Amazon woman warrior on horseback engaged in battle.Amazons in myth: History's first mention of a race of warrior women comes in Homer's ILIAD, an account of the Trojan War, probably written in the 8th to the 7th century B.C. Homer's Amazons, a race of fierce women who mated with vanquished male foes and kept only the female children they bore, were believed to occupy the area around the Black Sea. Amazon women also crop up in other Greek myths. One of the labors of Hercules, for example, required him to...

Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent 19 January 2003 Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago. Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years. Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to...

February 25, 2002 Recent finds prove that Homer's stories were more than myth By Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent A CYNICAL scholar once noted that the reason that academic disputes were so bitter was that the stakes were so small. In the real world maybe, but Troy has been a battleground for 3,000 years not because of mundane matters of funding and status but because of its grip on our imaginations. There may or may not have been a decade’s siege on the edge of the Dardanelles around 1100BC, pitting Late Mycenaean Greeks against their neighbours and possible distant kin: but ...

Archaeologists rewrite timeline of Bronze and Iron Ages, including early appearance of alphabet FOR RELEASE: Dec. 19, 2001 Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr. Office: 607-255-3290 E-Mail: bpf2@cornell.edu ITHACA, N.Y. -- Using information gleaned from the sun's solar cycles and tree rings, archaeologists are rewriting the timeline of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The research dates certain artifacts of the ancient eastern Mediterranean decades earlier than previously thought. And it places an early appearance of the alphabet outside Phoenicia at around 740 B.C. Writing in two articles in the forthcoming issue of the journal Science (Dec. 21), archaeologists from Cornell University ...

Mysterious Collapse of a Great Ancient Empire. From his capital, Hattusa, in central Anatolia, the last-known Hittite king, Suppiluliuma II (1207 B.C.-?), ruled over a people who had once built a great empire—one of the superpowers (along with Egypt, Mittani, Babylon and Assyria) of the Late Bronze Age. The Kingdom of the Hittites, called Hatti, had stretched across the face of Anatolia and northern Syria, from the Aegean in the west to the Euphrates in the east. But now those days were gone, and the royal capital was about to be destroyed forever by invasion and fire.

A monastery hewn from the rock has been found during excavations and cleaning works in an underground city that was discovered in 2014 in the Central Anatolian province of Nevsehir... Excavation and cleaning works have been continuing on an area of 400,000 square meters that includes 11 neighborhoods around Nevsehir Castle, which is situated in the city center and has been declared a third-degree archaeological area. At the beginning of the year, a historic church was discovered in the underground city. The church features frescoes depicting the ascension of Jesus to heaven as well as other important objects for the...

Devastating 'World War ZERO' destroyed ancient Mediterranean civilisations and plunged Europe into a dark age 11:41, 13 MAY 2016 UPDATED 11:44, 13 MAY 2016 BY JASPER HAMILL Controversial theory finally identifies mysterious 'Sea Peoples' blamed for cataclysmic series of events which changed the course of history It was a disaster which destroyed the ancient world's greatest civilisations and plunged Europe into a dark age that lasted centuries. Now one archaeologist think he's worked out who's to blame for sparking an event he calls "World War Zero", but which most academics refer to as the The Late Bronze Age Collapse ....

The Trojan War was a grander event than even Homer would have us believe. The famous conflict may have been one of the final acts in what one archaeologist has controversially dubbed "World War Zero" -- an event he claims brought the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age world crashing down 3200 years ago. And the catalyst for the war? A mysterious and arguably powerful civilisation almost entirely overlooked by archaeologists: the Luwians. By the second millennium BC, civilisation had taken hold throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The Egyptian New Kingdom coexisted with the Hittites of central Anatolia and the Mycenaeans of mainland...

Christians in Turkey have become a tiny minority. The few remaining Christian churches in Anatolia are also on the path to total annihilation. Christians in Turkey have – throughout the centuries -- been turned into a tiny, dwindling minority. The remaining few Christian churches in Anatolia are also on the path to total annihilation. Hagia Sophia in Trabzon: Church-mosque-museum and now mosque again. The Hagia Sophia, Greek for “Holy Wisdom,” was one of the many historic Orthodox churches located in the city of Trabzon. ... The city of Trabzon .. is located in the ancient land of Pontos, in the...

Demet Kara, an archaeologist from the Hatay Archaeology Museum, said the mosaic, which was called the “skeleton mosaic,” belonged to the dining room of a house from the 3rd century B.C., as new findings have been unearthed in the ancient city of Antiocheia. “There are three scenes on glass mosaics made of black tiles. Two things are very important among the elite class in the Roman period in terms of social activities: The first is the bath and the second is dinner. In the first scene, a black person throws fire. That symbolizes the bath. In the middle scene, there...

For the first time since the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922, a Greek Orthodox Epiphany celebration is set to take place in Izmir on January 6, 2016. The Greek Orthodox community has received permission from the Turkish authorities to perform the Diving for the Holy Cross ceremony on the local pier. "For the first year we will be performing the Blessing of the Waters at the port of Izmir. Officially, this is the first year. We had also done it around 10 years ago, but not officially. This time we have received a license from the Turkish government, the Ministry...

British scholar Timothy Mitford believes he has found the spot from which a Greek army first sighted the Black Sea during its flight from the forces of the Persian king Artaxerxes II in 401 B.C. Earlier that year Artaxerxes had defeated his brother Cyrus at Cunaxa on the Euphrates, crushing the latter's bid for the throne. Among Cyrus' forces was a contingent of Greek mercenaries known as the Ten Thousand, led by the Athenian general and historian Xenophon, who recounts the event in his Anabasis. After the battle Xenophon led his troops through the Tigris and upper Euphrates valleys,...

The excavation of a mountain castle in central Turkey has revealed a secret tunnel, built by the Hittites around 4,000 years ago. Geval Castle, on Takkel Mountain in Central Anatolia, sits over 5,500 feet above sea level and once offered a strategic 360-degree vantage point for a population that regularly faced assaults from the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Thracians throughout their history. As a result, Hittites were master underground builders, although the exciting discoveries at Takkel Mountain appear to be the first of their kind. "We have discovered secret tunnels in the castle. We have cleaned there and revealed a [328-foot...

'Using just a small hand trowel these archaeologists are painstakingly working to unlock the secrets of an ancient kingdom. Historians believe they have unearthed tombs dating back over 2,800 years in Van, eastern Turkey. The pithos burial chambers, which are like large ceramic jars, are thought to be from the Kingdom of Uratu, which ruled the country from the mid-ninth century BC until its defeat by the Medes. Historians at work in the Turkish town of Vans, which was the capital of the Urartian Kingdom. Vans was the capital of the Urartian Kingdom until it fell early in the sixth...

The paving over of a 3,000-year-old tumulus, a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave, in the eastern city of Van has prompted an outcry from the Provincial Culture and Tourism Directorate. Stating that the road was unnecessarily built, officials said: "We have halted the work on the road. The road and asphalt will be removed and the tumulus will be rehabilitated." Before the road was built by the municipality, the directorate had planned to start archaeological work in the historical tumulus, which dates from the Urartu period, along with work in the historical Van Castle. "A road...

Amid excavations at four different ancient sites in the Central Anatolian province of Yozgat, a cuneiform tablet has been unearthed in the Uflakle Mound at the Büyük Tafllek village. Thought to date back to around 2,000 B.C., the cuneiform tablet in the Sorgun district of Yozgat shows symbols of ishtar, known as the Hittite goddess of love, war, fertility and sexuality, more clearly than those on any other unearthed tablets. "Considering the intensity of archaeological materials on the surface and diffusion area, the mound tends to bear traces of Hittite Civilization. it is thought that the mound was affiliated to...