This text is a fragment of a guidebook to Hattusa: "The Secrets of Hattusa".

The steep slope of the hill that rises from the Grand Temple to the Royal Citadel (tr. Büyükkale) was part of the Hattusa Old Town. This quarter of the city was protected by fortifications, at least from the 16th century BCE. There were many buildings erected on this slope, on the artificial terraces, localized among the rocks protruding from the ground. The so-called House on the Slope (tr. Yamaç Evi) is one of the largest of these houses, but also the best-preserved buildings of this type. The building was probably an official building, possibly a scribe school.

History of research

During the early German excavations in Boğazköy by Hugo Winckler and Theodor Makridi at the beginning of the 20th century, the two scientists uncovered most of the foundations of the house in 1907 and 1911. They found a considerable number of clay tablets written in cuneiform and referred to the building as an archive.

Since they had not prepared any documentation of their work and the excavation was not completed, a new investigation began in 1937 as part of the excavation of the German Archaeological Institute under Kurt Bittel. The aim of the excavations was, among other things, to investigate the Hittite construction techniques for overcoming the rising terrain, which affected large parts of the city area. The building researcher Rudolf Naumann drew up a plan of the building.

In the 1960s, the building researcher and later excavation director of Hattusa, Peter Neve, undertook further excavations at the House on the Slope. While only around 600 tablets had been discovered during the work in the 1930s, this time there were over 1,400 fragments, much more than the ones found in the Winckler's excavations.

In 2022, the excavation team, led by Andreas Schachner, started to carry out a large-scale investigation of the northwest slope. In the course of this work, two areas south and southeast of the House on the Slope were initially excavated. A clay tablet was uncovered that contained a text in a previously unknown Indo-European language.

Daniel Schwerner, who was responsible for processing the cuneiform texts, reported that a ritual text written in Hittite contains a recitation in another language. The idiom is described in it as the language of the country of Kalashma, a land that is believed to be in the northwest of the Hittite heartland, in the area of ​​the present-day cities of Gerede or Bolu.

House on the Slope plan and design

In its heyday, the House on the Slope was a two-storey building, constructed on a rectangular plan with the sides 32 and 36 meters long. As with all buildings in Hattusa, only the foundations have been preserved, as the masonry was made of mud bricks and fell victim to the weather.

The house was entered through a small porch in the southwest, which was connected to a staircase and a long corridor to the left. To the left of the staircase, there were four rectangular rooms of equal size, arranged in a square. Above this, it is assumed that there was a hall that was the size of the four rooms and thus measured 13 by 17 metres. In the middle, it was equipped with a supporting column. It was entered via a long rectangular room to the southeast, into which the staircase leading from below led. Peter Neve observed clear similarities in the structure of the building to House D on Büyükkale.

The time of construction of the house cannot currently be determined, as the old town was built in the 16th century BCE. It probably already existed when it was fortified with the postern wall. At the end of the 13th century BCE, the house was destroyed by fire and not rebuilt. The fire preserved parts of the mud brick walls on the slope side, which are now strengthened with a modern wall to protect them from the weather.

It is also not yet possible to say anything certain about the function of the building. The archaeologists assume that it was not a residential house, but an administrative centre. This theory is supported by the size of the main lobby on the upper floor. Peter Neve suspected a function similar to that of the temples, or even as an independent sanctuary. Jürgen Seeher, head of the excavation from 1994 to 2005, described it more generally as a building with an official function. The Italian Hittitologist Giulia Torri talked about the House on the Slope as a scribe's workshop and school.