ANATOLIA
1. Context
The Three devastating quakes of 7.8, 7.6 and 6.0 hit Turkey's southern regions on 6th February causing widespread destruction in Turkey and neighbouring Syria.
2. About Anatolia
- Anatolia or Asia Minor Turkish Anadolu, Peninsula forming the western extremity of Asia.
- It is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the South and the Aegean Sea to the west.
- Its eastern boundary is generally marked by the Southeastern Taurus Mountains.
- Anatolia is roughly contiguous with the Asian portion of the modern Republic of Turkey.
- Because of its location at the point where Asia and Europe meet, it has long been the scene of numerous migrations and conquests.
- It was the original location of the kingdom of Hittites (c 1700-1180 BCE).
- Later, Indo-European peoples, possibly Thracian, established the Phrygian kingdom.
- In the 6th century BCE, the Persian Achaemenian dynasty came to rule the area; it was conquered by Alexander the Great in 334-333 BCE.
- Beginning in the 1st century BCE, the area was absorbed into the Roman Republic and Empire.
- When the empire split in 395 CE, Anatolia became part of the Byzantine Empire.
- The area endured invasions by Arabs, Turks, Crusaders, Mongols and the Turkic army of Timur before the Ottoman Empire established full control in the 15th century.
- From 1923 its history was that of modern Turkey.
Image Source: Britanica
3. Prehistoric Cultures of Anatolia
- In most prehistoric periods the regions to the south and west of Anatolia were under the influence of Syria and the Balkans.
- The evidence of the earliest cultures of Anatolia may have been lost owing to the large rise in sea levels that followed the end of the last Ice Age and to the deposition of deep alluvium in many coastal and inland valleys.
3.1. Palaeolithic Period
- The signs of human occupation in cave sites from at least the Upper Paleolithic Period and earlier Lower Paleolithic remains are evident in Yarimburgaz Cave near Istanbul.
- Rock engravings of animals on the walls of caves near Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast, suggest a relationship with the Upper Paleolithic art of western Europe.
- The stratified occupational debris has the potential to clarify the transitional phases between cave-dwelling society and the Neolithic economy of the first agricultural communities.
3.2. Neolithic period
- In the Middle East, the first indications of the beginning of the Neolithic transition from food gathering to food producing can be dated to approximately 9000 BCE; the true Neolithic began about 7300 BCE, by which time farming and stock breeding were well established and lasted until about 6250 BCE.
- The houses were symmetrically arranged; the discovery there of a striking collection of semi-naturalistic figurines shed new light on Neolithic art and symbolism.
3.3. Chalcolithic Period
- During this period metal weapons and tools gradually took their place beside their stone prototypes and painted pottery came generally into use.
- This period ended in the middle of the 4th century millennium BCE when the invention of writing foreshadowed the rise of the great dynastic civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia and was followed by periods of the Early and Middle Bronze ages.
4. Bronze Age
The period following the Chalcolithic in Anatolia is generally referred to as the Bronze Age.
Archaeological convention divides the Bronze Age into three subphases: early, middle and late.
4.1. Early Bronze Age
- The Early Bronze Age itself is customarily divided into the first, second and third phases.
- The beginning of the Bronze Age, in the mid-4th millennium BCE, corresponds in Egypt to the predynastic period and in Mesopotamia to the early Protoliterate; it lasted until late in the 2nd millennium.
- Several factors combined to produce a period of economic growth. Cultivation of the grape and production of wine brought greater agricultural prosperity.
- The adoption of the wheel increased the production of pottery and more importantly, improved transport. Seafaring seems to have increased.
| Metallurgical skills previously developed became more visible and were in wider use, attested in particular by such finds as the so-called Priam's Treasure from Troy and grave goods from royal tombs. |
- The metals used included copper, bronze, silver, gold, and electrum lead and iron was then far more valuable than gold.
- All these metals were obtainable in Anatolia, although the tin needed to make bronze may have been imported.
- Semiprecious stones and other materials used in association with them included rock crystal, carnelian, jasper, nephrite and obsidian, all native to Anatolia along with imported ivory, amber and lapis lazuli.
- The citadel of Troy had heavy stone walls with a mud-brick superstructure, a clay-covered glacis and projecting gates with inner and outer sets of doors.
- The number and variety of weapons found daggers, swords, spears and battle axes suggest a culture given to warfare.
- Temple had a heavily built T-shaped plan and walls decorated with painted and impressed designs. The most important technical innovation in ceramics was the introduction of the potter's wheel, which was the beginning of the third phase.
- The wheel-made plates and two-handled drinking vessels together with other western styles in pottery and architecture.
- The greater universality of styles likely is attributed simply to increased contact through trade and improved transport.
- The beginnings of trade with Assyria are indicated by the pottery and small objects of Kultepe were developed strongly in the Middle Bronze Age.
4.2. Middle Bronze Age
- The Middle Bronze Age, beginning about 2000 BCE, seems to have been a period of prosperity and cultural progress in the cities of Anatolia.
- Assyrian merchants, interested in the mineral wealth of the country, built up a chain of trading stations that stretched from Ashur to the Konya Plain.
- By agreement with the indigenous rulers, to whom they paid taxes, the merchants established themselves in colonies in the suburbs of Anatolian cities.
- The karum itself, known as Kanesh resembled a chamber of commerce with authority to fix prices, settle debts and arrange transport.
- The history of the Karum falls into two periods. The first occupation was the longer and more productive of the two and must have covered the reigns of Erishum, Sargon I (c 1920-1850 BCE) and Puzur-Ashur while the second was contemporary with that of Shamshi-Adad I (c 1813-c. 1781 BCE).
- This second occupation probably ended in a fire in about 1740 BCE during the reign of Samsuiluna of Babylon.
- The successive occupations of the Karum are paralleled in contemporary building levels in the main city mound where the palaces of the local rulers were situated.
- The elaborate repertoire of figurative symbolism used for this purpose, together with that found in moulded lead figurines, provides clear evidence of the existence of an indigenous Anatolian culture that persisted through the vicissitudes of economic and political change; the same tradition reappears with little alteration in the art of the Hittites.
- The Middle Bronze Age sites of western Anatolia were largely unaffected by the Assyrian trade but show a gradual increase of contact across the Aegean with Crete and mainland Greece.
5. The rise and fall of the Hittites
5.1. The rise of the Hittites
- Hittite members of an ancient Indo-European people who appeared in Anatolia at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE; by 1340 BCE they had become one of the dominant powers of the Middle East.
- Originating from the area beyond the Black sea, the Hittites first occupied central Anatolia, making their capital at Hattusa.
- Early kings of the Hittite Old Kingdom, such as Hattusilis I (c-1650-c 1620 BCE), consolidated and extended Hittite control over much of Anatolia and northern Syria.
- Hattusilis' grandson Mursilis I raided down the Euphrates River to Babylon, putting an end (c 1590 BCE) to the Amorite dynasty there.
- After the death of Mursilis, a dynastic power struggle ensued with Telipinus finally gaining control about 1530 BCE.
5.2. Hittite occupation
- After Telipinus historical records are scarce until the Hittite New Kingdom (c1400-C 1200 BCE).
- Under Suppiluliumas I (c1380-c 1346 BCE), the empire reached its height.
- Except for a successful campaign against Arzawa in southwestern Anatolia, Suppiluliumas's military career was devoted to involved struggles with the kingdom of Mitanni to the southeast and the establishment of a firm Hittite foothold in Syria.
- Under Muwatallis (c1320-c 1294 BCE) a struggle for the domination of Syria with resurgent Egypt under Seti I and Ramses II led to one of the greatest battles of the ancient world, which took place at Kadesh on the Orontes in 1299 BCE.
- Though Ramses claimed a great victory the result was probably indecisive and 16 years later, under Hattusilis III (c. 1275c. 1250 BCE) a peace treaty, mutual defence pact and dynastic marriage were concluded between the Hittites and the Egyptians.
5.3. The fall of the Hittite empire (c. 1193 BCE)
- It was sudden and may be attributed to large-scale migrations that included the Sea Peoples.
- While the heartland of the empire was inundated by Phrygians, some of the Cilician and Syrian dominions retained their Hittite identity for another five centuries, evolving politically into a multitude of small independent principalities and city-states, which were gradually incorporated by Assyria until by 710 BCE the last vestiges of Neo-Hittite political independence had been obliterated.
- Hittite cuneiform tablets discovered at Bogazkoy in modern Turkey have yielded important information about their political organisation, social structure, economy and religion.
- The Hittite king was not only the chief ruler, military leader and supreme judge but also the earthly deputy of the storm god; upon dying, he became a god.
- Hittite society was essentially feudal and agrarian, the common people being either freemen, artisans or slaves.
- Anatolia was rich in metals, especially silver and iron.
- In the empire period, the Hittites developed iron-working technology, helping to initiate the Iron Age.
- The religion of the Hittites is only incompletely known, though it can be characterized as a tolerant polytheism that included not only indigenous Anatolian deities but also Syrian and Hurrian divinities.
- The plastic art of pre-imperial Hittite culture is scarce; from the Hittite empire, however, many examples have been found of stone sculptures in a powerful, though somewhat unrefined, style.
- The art of the Late Hittite states is markedly different, showing a composite of Hittite, Syrian, Assyrian and Occasionally, Egyptian and Phoenician motifs and influences.
