Sacred Sex in the Hittite Temple of Yazilikaya

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Cut into rocky pinnacles just two miles northeast of Bogûazko¬y, Turkey (the site of the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusha), are some dramatic, if puzzling, rock reliefs. These carvings at Yazilikaya (see plan and photo of sanctuary at Yazilikaya), which in Turkish means “inscribed rock,”¹ wind around two natural galleries and present what is probably a cosmic narrative depicting the renewal of all creation and the continuity of the Hittite royal line.² The Hittites, an Indo-European people, established a presence in Anatolia (modern Turkey) as early as 1900 B.C. By the 17th century B.C. they consolidated their power in an imperial dynasty; a century later, they were powerful enough to invade Babylon.³ In the following centuries, the other Near Eastern superpowers, Egypt and Assyria, were forced to defend their frontiers against the conquest-hungry Hittites. The Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (1279–1213 B.C.), for example, fought the Hittites in a famous battle at Qadesh, on the Orontes River in what is now Syria. Although Ramesses stopped the Hittite invaders, Egypt lost some of her northern territories; the pharaoh then commemorated this “victory” (as he described it) on the walls of the Ramesseum in Thebes, as well as across the Nile at the Temple of Luxor.

The Hittites built Hattusha, about 125 miles east of modern Ankara, in a natural stronghold on a tributary of the Halys River. By about 1520 B.C. the Hittite capital had massive ramparts that enclosed temples, palaces, storerooms, living quarters and a library with 3,000 inscribed clay tablets. The imposing walls and gates of Hattusha—including the Lion Gate, a monumental portal flanked by sculpted lions—advertised Hittite political and military strength.

The religious shrine at Yazilikaya, however, lay outside Hattusha’s walls. On leaving the capital for the isolated hillside sanctuary of Yazilikaya, it was first necessary to pass through the hallowed burial grounds that flanked the route. The sanctuary was reached by a road that began at Hattusha’s principal religious complex, called the Great Temple (Temple I).

The slope leading from Hattusha to Yazilikaya is punctuated with a massive outcrop of exposed rock. Its high pinnacles are miniature mountains that enclose a complex of natural chambers and passages dominated by the two galleries where the reliefs were carved into the rock walls.

In Yazilikaya’s main chamber (Chamber A), the sculpted surfaces depict a procession of figures that approach the central panel from both sides as the two halves of the parade wind around the rocks (see photos of sculpted surfaces in Yazilikaya’s main chamber (Chamber A)). These figures are identified as gods in Luwian^a hieroglyphics. Curiously, however, 044the names of the gods are Hurrian—a non-Indo-European-speaking people (both Hittite and its close relative Luwian are Indo-European languages) who entered southern Anatolia and northern Syria in the third millennium B.C. and became briefly unified under the Mitanni Kingdom in the mid-second millennium B.C. Why would the names of Hurrian gods be inscribed in a Hittite national shrine? Although most scholars believe that the Hittite king Hattushili III (1275–1250 B.C.) built the Yazilikaya shrine, his queen, Puduhepa, was the daughter of a Hurrian priest. According to Hittite documents, she carried tablets listing the names of Hurrian gods to her new husband. Their son, Hattushili III’s successor, Tudhaliya IV (1250–1220 B.C.), also commissioned sculptures at the Yazilikaya shrine and is depicted in the reliefs.

The central panel of the shrine’s Chamber A is dominated by a carving of the weather and storm god—the Hurrian god Teshub, the Weather God of Heaven. Versions of this storm deity appear all over the Middle East, under a variety of names. The Babylonians called him Marduk and recognized his supremacy among the gods. In Assyria, he bellowed in the tempest as Adad. The Canaanite lord of lightning and cloudburst was Baal, while in other parts of Asia Minor thunder’s hammer was held by Tarhun. Throughout the ancient Near East, the storm god mated with the earth-mother goddess and fathered the new life she seasonally brought to term.^b

Facing Teshub in the central relief in Chamber A is Hepat, the Hurrian earth-mother goddess. As Teshub’s bride, she coupled with him to deliver the world’s seasonal cycles of birth, death and rebirth. In this depiction, she and Teshub participate in the ceremony of sacred marriage. All of the other gods shown on the chamber’s walls have convened to witness and ratify this ritual matrimonial bond between heaven (Teshub) and earth (Hepat). In this way, the Hittites assembled the legion of gods into a huge family headed by the cosmic couple,⁴ who joined the fertility of the sky with the fecundity of the earth to perpetuate the world.

These divine parents are accompanied by Sharruma, their son and heir. He attends his mother and leads a retinue of female deities curving around the walls on the east side of the gallery. Sharruma and his mother Hepat each stand upon the back of a lion, a symbol of sovereignty, and the first two goddesses that follow are supported by a double-headed eagle, a Hittite dynastic emblem. Teshub stands astride two human-shaped mountains, identified as the gods Nanni and Hazzi, emphasizing his command of the summits where the clouds brew and the storms stampede. In Hurrian lore, two bellowing celestial bulls stampede during the storm god’s tempests—and both appear in the Yazilikaya scene, one in back of Teshub and one in back of Hepat. Standing behind Teshub, on a pair of mountain peaks, is the storm god’s local incarnation, the Weather God of Hattusha—who seems to be performing the duties of best man. All along the west walls, male gods are lined up for the wedding. The only female in the troops is Shaushga, the Hittite goddess (with a Hurrian name) identified with the planet Venus. She is, however, a warrior goddess respected in the ranks of men. Among the other divine witnesses of the sacred 045marriage are the grain god, the god of the waters, the moon god, the Hittite king (deified with the name of the sun) and two bull-men who stand on an earth symbol and hold up an emblem of the sky.

Sometimes the Hittites also regarded the earth-mother goddess Hepat as a sun goddess—for example, as the Sun Goddess of Arinna, one of the holy cities of the Hittite Empire.⁵ Why the Hittites solarized her is still unknown, but the title connects her with celestial power and seasonal transformation. It puts her on a heavenly footing with her husband. Although the real meaning of her solar aspect is lost, it remains consistent with the program of seasonal change, the growth of flocks and herds, and the cultivation of orchards and fields. Partnered with the rain, the sun midwifes the pregnant earth.

The relief depicting the sacred marriage of Teshub and Hepat makes a cosmic matrimonial altar out of Yazilikaya. Here the nuptials of the procreative power of the sky and the reproductive capacity of the earth are celebrated in the main gallery, as an audience of gods witnesses the goings-on.

Such a ceremony had deep roots in the Near East. At least by 3500 B.C. a similar sacred marriage was ritually performed in Sumer as a seasonal ceremony of renewal. In the early second millennium B.C., this principle of divine renewal was mimicked by Babylonian rulers and their consorts in the akitu ceremony—which involved a ritual mating of king and queen. Performed during the New Year festival (Pallis), celebrated at the vernal equinox, the akitu ceremony ensured the turn of the seasons and the fertility of the land.⁶

Yazilikaya was very likely the stage of similar religious rituals celebrating continuity and growth. The German archaeologist Kurt Bittel, who excavated at Yazilikaya in the 1930s and 1960s, also recognized the imagery of sacred marriage in the reliefs. Bittel 048even echoed an earlier suggestion, made in 1918 by the German scholar H. Zimmern, that the Hittite New Year festival, sacred nuptials and all, took place at Yazilikaya.⁷ In 1956, the German epigrapher Heinrich Otten discovered at Hattusha an ancient Hittite account of the New Year ceremony:

In honor of the Weather God at (?) the beginning of the New Year a great festival of heaven and earth was celebrated. All the gods assembled and entered into the house of the Weather God. Whichever god harbors anger (?) in his soul shall chase the evil anger (?) from his soul. (Now) eat at this feast, drink! Satisfy your hunger and quench your thirst. The King’s and the Queen’s life hail! (Hea)ven’s and the earth’s (life) (?) hail! The grain’s life (hail!)⁸

The mountain-like character of Yazilikaya’s rocky pinnacles allowed it to function as the skyscraping “house of the Weather God.” We also know the small temples that fronted the sanctuary and restricted access to it were not designed for continuous occupation, suggesting intermittent or seasonal use.

Yazilikaya, then, was a fertile center of ritual renewal, a mini-mountain love nest where divine nuptials were performed above the Hittite capital. The ceremonies, timed with the New Year, and vernal equinox, reenacted the beginning of time through godly pillow talk.

But the Yazilikaya program is more than a fertility shrine. The gods portrayed there and the ceremonies performed there long ago were not intended just to coax a little fecundity back into the world. Rather, the Yazilikaya rock reliefs are the epitome of Hittite ideological art; they are “the most impressive of all Hittite religious structures,” according to one archaeologist.⁹ The Hittites carved other rock reliefs depicting divine and royal figures—for instance, at Gävur Kalesi, about 37 miles southwest of Ankara—but the Yazilikaya reliefs are the Sistine Chapel of Hittite religious art. And like the Babylonian akitu ceremony, the Yazilikaya program has a political dimension, as a ratification of royal power.

Among the gods, the sacred marriage culminates in a conjugal union that defines the hierarchy of cosmic power through divine lineage. The gods personify the revivifying forces of nature, and their pairing renews world order. Hepat’s acceptance of Teshub’s embrace advertises his license to her lap and his dominion over the gods. Hittite society, like the community of the gods, was feudal and rooted in rank and privilege. When the king and queen ceremonially coupled, they renewed far more than the fruit of the fields. Their copulation was political. Impersonating 049the gods, the king and his paramour renewed their sovereignty through sacramental sex. In heaven and on earth, bedroom politics promoted celestial sovereignty, and the Hittite royalty identified itself with the highest gods.

This apotheosis of Hittite royalty is suggested by other reliefs at Yazilikaya. Near the entrance of Chamber A, the Hittite king Tudhaliya IV is depicted as balanced on mountaintops like the storm god. “Tudhaliya” was also the name of a sacred mountain, regarded as divine by the Hittites. So the king is equated with the deified mountain, the sacred summit that brews the energizing fluid of life where earth touches heaven.¹⁰ The dignified Tudhaliya is attired in long, flowing robes, like a priest dressed to perform a ritual.¹¹

Tudhaliya’s outstretched right arm supports a Hittite cartouche that symbolizes royal sovereignty. (The same cartouche appears in the photo at the beginning of this article, behind the conical crown of the god Sharruma.) The cartouche is framed at left and right by symbols that look like Ionic columns with volute capitals; in Hittite hieroglyphics, this symbol means “Great King.”¹² These “columns” support two disks, one on top of the other, each carved as a star in a circle; from the lower disk stretches a pair of wings. These disks have generally been identified with the sun, that is, as winged sun disks common in the ancient Near East.¹³

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Throughout Mesopotamia, however, the star-in-a-circle pattern is used to represent Venus (as Ishtar, for example), who is often paired with the sun god (Shamash, for example); thus one of these celestial symbols may represent Venus. If so, the composition suggests a symbolic tradition that reaches back to Akkadian Mesopotamia (2360–2180 B.C.). An Akkadian cylinder seal in the British Museum, called the Seal of Adda, shows the sun god, Venus (Ishtar), the god of thundershowers and the god of the waters—all standing on a chain of mountains. This scene is thought to represent the sunrise of the New Year on the vernal equinox. Similarly, Tudhaliya’s cartouche may represent the celestial circumstances of Sumerian and Babylonian rituals of renewal.¹⁴ In any event, it certainly suggests the king’s association with the divine; right in the middle of the cartouche, for instance, is an image of the Weather God of Hattusha, the local avatar of Teshub, the Weather God of Heaven.¹⁵

That the gods were thought to give approval of the king’s authority is documented in a palace dedication prayer:

To me, the King, have the gods—the Sun God and the Storm God—entrusted my land and my house … (The gods) have taken care of the kings. They have renewed his strength and set no limits to his years.¹⁶

But Hittite kings did not just seek the gods’ approval: The purpose of the depiction of Tudhaliya IV in Yazilikaya’s Chamber A may have been to document his transformation into a god.¹⁷ The Hittites regarded the king’s earthly death as his induction into the company of the gods. This sculpture may have been carved shortly after Tudhaliya IV’s death, thus incorporating a funereal allusion.

In the smaller chamber (Chamber B) to the east of Yazilikaya’s main gallery, the theme of divine patronage of the king is restated. Although the cast of characters carved into the stone is smaller, the script is more explicit. The god Sharruma, the son 051and designated heir of Teshub and Hepat, is shown embracing Tudhaliya IV. Sharruma personifies divine succession, and his protective embrace of the king represents royal succession; it also appears to suggest that the king is the primary agent of the gods’ will on earth.¹⁸

Another, very peculiar relief in Chamber B brings the theme of death and the underworld into the Yazilikaya program.¹⁹ To the left of the depiction of King Tudhaliya in Sharruma’s protective custody is an image known as the Sword God. This relief carving shows a giant upright sword with its point in the ground; the sword’s lion-ornamented hilt culminates in the head of a god. A Hittite ritual text recounts that the Weather God of Heaven deported eight unwelcome gods to the underworld by turning them into swords and sticking them in the ground. Other Near Eastern texts link both sword offerings and the “12 gods of the cross-roads” with the god of the underworld. On a rock wall almost directly across from the Sword God is a carving of 12 armed marching gods—possibly the “12 gods of the cross-roads.”

The entrance to the smaller sanctuary leads through a narrow tunnel, which conveys the impression of entering the earth. The chamber is guarded by reliefs of two fierce, lion-headed, winged demons cut at the entrance. Human skeletal remains were recovered from the chamber, along with the bones of birds, which seem to have been part of sacrificial offerings. This tight, enclosed chamber of the Yazilikaya shrine seems to have been, as Kurt Bittel wrote, “a temple of the dead, say the funeral temple for a king.”²⁰

It is curious that an imperial civilization at the height of its power and stability elected to house a national shrine on a hillside above the capital in a small complex of natural enclosures open to the sky. The Hittites were perfectly capable of engineering massive public works; they built great temples, palaces and walls at Hattusha. The choice to carve their shrine on natural rock was deliberate and is no doubt partly explained by the desire to operate ritually in an environment that echoes the mountaintop territory of the high gods.

As a locus for the creation and ritual renewal of power, Yazilikaya was a junction of worlds where the realms of heaven, earth and the underworld met in images of marriage, continuity, royal succession and death.

Mircea Eliade, the Romanian scholar of comparative religion, summarized the properties and fundamental meaning of such places.²¹ They operate as the center of the world, as the prime focus of sacred power and as the point of contact with spirits and gods. This center is often equated with a sacred cosmic mountain that permits heaven to consort with earth. The summit of the cosmic mountain is the navel of the earth, where world order is nourished by celestial power. Ceremonies performed there recapitulate the beginning of time, and the ruler, a terrestrial officer of cosmic order, participates in the rituals of renewal.

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His place is the center of the center, and his performance is a natural consequence of the centralization of power. With the assistance of the gods, he makes the world habitable by invigorating its life and establishing its order in harmony with the structure and rhythm of the universe.

The cosmic mountain, procreative nature and the gods—all these converge at Yazilikaya. There, the bedroom politics of royal ritual reignited dynastic authority as the new year began. Charged with mystery and majesty, under eternal sky and above fertile earth, the Yazilikaya shrine was the sacred omphalos of the Hittite Empire.²²

This article is adapted from a longer paper to be published in Proceedings from the Fifth Oxford Conference on Archaeoastronomy (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, forthcoming, Summer 2000).

Cut into rocky pinnacles just two miles northeast of Bogûazko¬y, Turkey (the site of the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusha), are some dramatic, if puzzling, rock reliefs. These carvings at Yazilikaya (see plan and photo of sanctuary at Yazilikaya), which in Turkish means “inscribed rock,”1 wind around two natural galleries and present what is probably a cosmic narrative depicting the renewal of all creation and the continuity of the Hittite royal line.2 The Hittites, an Indo-European people, established a presence in Anatolia (modern Turkey) as early as 1900 B.C. By the 17th century B.C. they consolidated their power in […]