Yazılıkaya Rock Sanctuary

Yazılıkaya is the great open-air rock sanctuary associated with Hattusha, the capital of the Hittite Empire near modern Boğazkale in Çorum Province. UNESCO describes the sanctuary as an open-air temple about two kilometres northeast of the capital, formed by two natural rock chambers whose walls carry an exceptional series of Hittite reliefs.

The processions depict gods and goddesses of the Hittite and Hurrian pantheon, together with the figure of Great King Tudhaliya IV. The sanctuary belongs to the religious landscape of the Late Bronze Age Hittite state and is inseparable from the political and ceremonial life of Hattusha. It is included within the UNESCO World Heritage property “Hattusha: the Hittite Capital,” inscribed in 1986.

Yazılıkaya is not a surviving modern place of worship, and Templestan does not assign present-day devotional practices to it. Nor are individual reliefs described as evidence for miracles or supernatural events. Instead, its sacred character is established archaeologically through the setting, iconography and relationship to the Hittite capital.

Visitors should approach the chambers as a protected archaeological monument, where the relief surfaces themselves are the principal evidence for ancient religious practice and royal ideology.