Ḫattuša

Situated in the central part of the Anatolian peninsula (160 km. east of Ankara), Ḫattuša (modern Boğazköy) was the capital of the Hittite Empire throughout the Late Bronze Age.

The ruins of Ḫattuša have been excavated by the German Archaeological Institute since 1907. The successive directors throughout the last century of excavations have been H. Winckler (who identified the site as Ḫattuša), K. Bittel, P. Neve, J. Seeher, and nowadays A. Schachner. The city experienced an impressive expansion in the final decades of the 13^th century, not long before its destruction.

Unfortunately, findings were poorly recorded and catalogued by the early archaeological missions and the ca. 10,000 tablets and fragments found in 1906–1912 are still being classified and joined. Therefore, the total number of clay tablets unearthed in the different archives and libraries of Ḫattuša—written in Hittite, Akkadian (Middle Babylonian), Hurrian, Luwian, Palaic, and Hattic—is uncertain.

Despite the problematic recordings, the texts have been gradually published in the priceless series KBo (Keilschrifttexte aus Boğazköy) and KUB (Keilschrifturkunden aus Boğazköy) for over a century. Emmanuel Laroche classified the published text in his famous Catalogue des textes hittites (CTH, 1971) and, additionally, further editions of texts can be found in series such as BoSt, StBoT and THeth.