The history of Amasya before the present city lies in the mounds of the Yeşilırmak valley and the plains around it. Their Hittite and Phrygian layers show that the region had a past long before the Roman and Ottoman ages. Hittite written records name the area, while the traces of the peoples who followed the Phrygians can now be read layer by layer in the excavations at Oluz Höyük. The first settlement in Amasya is generally thought to have begun around 5500 BC and to have continued without a break from the Hittites to the Ottomans.

Before the Hittites: The Land of Hatti

To understand the Hittite age, one must look at what came before it. Among the settlements of the Chalcolithic (5000-3000 BC) within Amasya's borders are Hamam Tepesi Mound at Ovasaray, Sarımeşe Künbet Höyük, Koşapınar Höyük at Keşlik, Ayvalıpınar Mound, Devret Höyük at Kanatpınar in Suluova, and the Yoğurtçu Baba mounds at Deveci. In the Early Bronze Age (3000-2500 BC) settlement became denser: Oluz Höyük, Sallar Höyük in Gümüşhacıköy, the Delicik Tepe and Kayadüzü mounds in Merzifon, and the Gediksaray and Türkmenlik Tepe mounds in Göynücek were all inhabited.

In the later Bronze Age, Amasya lay within the borders of the civilization that Mesopotamian records call the "Land of Hatti". One important settlement of this early Anatolian culture is Mahmatlar Höyük, attached to the central district. The mound was destroyed by illicit digging in 1949, and the gold, silver and bronze objects found there were later recovered by the authorities. They are counted among the important works of Hatti civilization. After the Hittites ended Hatti rule, they continued to draw on the religious heritage of the region; the fact that the Storm God Teshub was worshipped among the Hattians under the name Tarru is the best-known sign of this.

Amasya in the Hittite Period

The Hittites, who called themselves Nesili, meaning speakers of Nesite, built a large political union in Anatolia. Their capital, Hattusa, lies southwest of Amasya. Amasya stayed on the northern edge of this union, and the city appears in Hittite texts under the name Hakmiş. According to the texts, in the reigns of Muwatalli and Mursili III, Hattusili III acted there like an independent ruler and drove back the attacks of the Kaska, forcing them to withdraw to the north. The Kaska lived in the mountain belt along the Black Sea and troubled the Hittite state for centuries. For this reason the Amasya region was both a frontier zone and a religiously significant area for the Hittites.

The most important center of the Storm God cult was Nerik. When Kaska attacks intensified, the Storm God was, according to Hittite records, moved to the city of Hakmiş. Recent views on where Hakmiş lay converge on the possibility that it was within Amasya's borders. One of the important Hittite settlements in Amasya is Doğantepe (Zara), attached to the central district. The bronze figurine of the Storm God Teshub found there, dated to 1400-1200 BC, is among the important Hittite works to have survived. Some researchers equate Doğantepe Höyük with Nerik and cite this figurine as the strongest support for the proposal. The equation is not settled; even so, it is clear that the figurine shows the place of the region in Hittite religious geography.

Teshub stood at the head of the Hittite pantheon. A god of Hurrian origin, he ruled the sky and the storm, and in Hittite and Luwian texts he is also called Tarhu, Tarhuna or Tarhunt. Because the Hittites added the god of every kingdom they brought under their rule to their own pantheon, they are known as the "People of a Thousand Gods". The bull was Teshub's sacred animal, and the god to whom a temple was dedicated can often be recognized from such symbols.

Oluz Höyük

The settlement that has opened up Amasya's ancient history most widely is Oluz Höyük, about 25 km west of the city. The mound lies about 5 km east of Toklucak (formerly Oluz) village, 4 km north of the Çekerek River, on the western edge of the fertile Geldingen Plain. Rising about 15 m above the plain, it measures 280 x 260 m, forms an almost circular plan and covers close to 45 decares. Surveys were carried out in 1997-1999 by a team from Istanbul University led by Şevket Dönmez; systematic excavation began in 2007 and has continued since. The excavation director speaks of a history reaching back about 6,500 years. In Dönmez's words, mounds are like a history book, and each layer is a page of that book.

The settlement consists of ten settlement layers built one on top of another. In the stratigraphy established in the first years of excavation, the Early Bronze Age, the Hittite Imperial Age, the Early and Middle Iron Age, the Late Iron Age, the Hellenistic period and the end of the Middle Ages follow one another from bottom to top. The excavation team holds that the settlement had a religious structure in every age. A stone seal, a bronze sickle, a clay loom weight and potsherds from the Hittite layer indicate that Oluz Höyük was an important Hittite settlement. This layer is dated to the 15th-13th centuries BC.

Bull Figures and the Question of a Storm God Temple

The religious character of Oluz Höyük in the Hittite period came to the fore again with a terracotta bull figurine found during cleaning work in the 2018 season. The figure is about 14 cm long and 9 cm high. A ring-shaped vessel with a bull's head, found in pieces in earlier seasons and put back together, points the same way. Because the bull was the sacred animal of the Storm God among the Hittites, the excavation team takes seriously the possibility of a sanctuary or temple of Teshub on the mound. Dönmez notes that the Hittite layer has not yet been reached in full, but that some objects from that period have been found. Aslıhan Yurtsever Beyazıt regards a Hittite-period temple as "highly probable".

The settlement's location is among the grounds for this view. According to Beyazıt, Oluz Höyük lies on the road coming from the south by way of Şapinuva, the main road from the Land of Hatti to the Kingdom of Hakmiş passes to the west of the settlement, and the mound is one of the largest in northern Anatolia. The absence of a fortification system in the Hittite layer also supports the impression of a center in which the religious side outweighed the military. The distance between Oluz Höyük and Doğantepe is about 7 km as the crow flies.

The question of which Hittite city the mound should be identified with has not been resolved. Dönmez links Oluz with Šanahuitta, located in the Upper Zuliya (Çekerek) Plain, which is associated with Zuliya in Hittite documents; Ahmet Ünal also supports this identification. Another proposal is Ištahara, a military base and cult station close to Nerik. Both proposals show the region's place in the Hittite religious network, but neither is accepted as certain.

Collapse and the Dark Age

The Hittite state lost its sovereignty around 1190 BC. There is no single view on the cause. According to one interpretation, the Hittites collapsed under pressure from the Kaska of the Black Sea mountains amid a crisis brought on by drought and famine. According to another, incursions by peoples coming to Anatolia from the Balkans, among them the Phrygians, brought the state down. A period known as the Dark Age, lasting more than 400 years, then began in Central Anatolia, including Amasya, and little is known about it.

Oluz Höyük sheds some light on this darkness. In deepening work carried out in 2021 at the northern end of the mound's largest excavation area, remains from the Collapse Period (1200-1150 BC), which witnessed the fall of the Hittite Great Kingdom, were uncovered. Among the remains in architectural layer 7B2 are charred seeds from a religious rite performed by burning wheat and vetch. The excavation team regards this find as the first concrete trace of the new religious practices of the Hittites during the collapse. For the post-Hittite period, a paper presented by Dönmez and Fatma Abazoğlu at a Hittitology congress also deals with Oluz's Dark Age layers.

The Phrygian Period

The Phrygians, who emerged as a political power after 750 BC, expanded their borders under King Midas (725-695/675 BC), and the Amasya region came within the Phrygian sphere. The architectural and ritual legacy of this age shows itself in the Kubaba sanctuaries within the Kızılırmak bend. In 676 BC the Phrygians could not withstand the attacks of the Cimmerians, who came by way of the Caucasus, and they soon lost power and entered a process of collapse. At Oluz Höyük, architectural layers 5 and 6 are assigned to the Classical and Early Phrygian periods, that is, the 9th-7th centuries BC. Architectural layer 4 (600-500 BC) shows the city as a Late Iron Age settlement under Phrygian cultural influence in the Land of Kašku. Undecorated and painted pottery with Late Phrygian features, an ivory stamp seal whose surface shows a lion fighting a gazelle, and the lower part of a stone Kubaba figurine establish the Phrygian character of this layer. The presence of Scythian-type arrowheads in the fill of the same layer suggests Phrygian and Scythian contacts in the region.

The Kubaba Altar and Temple

The most important structure of Oluz Höyük in the Phrygian age is the Kubaba Altar. Built around 600 BC, about 600 years after the Hittite collapse, the altar stands at the highest point of the settlement of that time. Leaving aside the statically motivated extensions to the west and east, it is a massive structure with a plan close to a square-ish rectangle. Kubaba was the mother goddess in the Phrygian religious world; she stood for fertility and protection and held a central place in Phrygian art and religion. Excavations around the altar since 2010 have yielded a fragment of a stone Kubaba figurine and many religious finds. Among them, perforated finger bones (phalanges) and knucklebones (astragali), thought to have belonged to whips, stand out. In 2021 a falcon idol made of bone was found southwest of the altar and was understood to have been left as an offering.

In the 2024 excavation season, work focused solely on this sanctuary and was supported within the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Heritage for the Future Project. The team uncovered the sanctuary's sacred chamber and, inside it, the sacred stone representing Kubaba. According to Dönmez, the structure can now be called a Kubaba temple. The temple was exposed in the layer they call "4-B" and is dated to the 600s BC. Dönmez states that the sheep finger and vertebra bones found around the temple were probably tied to a whip, and that priests performing rites for the mother goddess struck their bodies with them. The rites were performed by dancing and circling around the sacred space. For this reason Dönmez says that a lost temple of Anatolia has come to light.

The Cimmerian, Scythian and Persian Periods

The Cimmerians posed a threat to the states of Anatolia and also influenced the art of the societies they came into contact with. In this period Amasya and its surroundings lay within the Cimmerian sphere. Few works of the Cimmerian age are found in Amasya; the metal weapons taken from a kurgan in İmirler village in Gümüşhacıköy and brought to Amasya Museum belong to this period. The Cimmerians and Scythians, influential in Anatolian history roughly between 675 and 585 BC, then gradually lost their influence. As Herodotus also notes, the Scythians mostly settled on the sites of the Cimmerians; for this reason Scythian rule is seen around Amasya after Cimmerian rule.

When the five-year war between Lydia and the Medes ended in 585 BC, the Kızılırmak was accepted as the boundary, and until the Persian conquest Amasya remained within the borders of the Medes. After Cyrus defeated the Lydian king Croesus in 547/546 BC, the region came under Persian administration and for about two hundred and fifty years lay within the eastern borders of the Cappadocian Satrapy. Oluz Höyük was an important Persian center in this age. According to research published by Dönmez and Mona Saba, a fire temple and an associated multi-columned house of worship were built on the mound in the mid-5th century BC. These structures are regarded as the first temple of the Iron Age in the Kızılırmak Basin. The excavation team notes that after the Hittite age there was a break in the tradition of enclosed temples in the region, and that apart from the Kubaba sanctuaries within the Kızılırmak bend, no enclosed temple building has been found across the Iron Age. The fire temple and house of worship are interpreted as indicating a new belief system that replaced the Kubaba cult in the same area. The team finds it appropriate to call this belief Early Zoroastrianism. This interpretation belongs to the excavation team and remains open to debate in archaeological circles.

Continuity of Cultures

The Hittite and Phrygian traces in Amasya do not form an unbroken chain. Between the Hittite collapse and the Phrygian age there is a gap of about six centuries, and the phase that fills it is still under study. Even so, the vertical section of the mounds shows that the same places were held sacred again and again. At Oluz the bull figures recall the Storm God, the altar and sacred stone the mother goddess, and the fire pit the Persian religion. That a sacred place persisted on the same hill for more than a thousand years points to a strong religious memory in the region.

Some of these finds are kept in Amasya Museum. The region's mounds have been excavated only in part; questions such as the locations of Hakmiş, Nerik and Šanahuitta depend on the results of future seasons.

Chronology

Around 5500 BC: First settlement in Amasya.

3000-2500 BC: Dense settlement at Oluz Höyük and other mounds in the Early Bronze Age.

15th-13th centuries BC: Hittite settlement at Oluz Höyük.

1400-1200 BC: Date of the bronze Teshub figurine found at Doğantepe.

1200-1150 BC: Rite remains of the Collapse Period at Oluz Höyük.

Around 1190 BC: End of Hittite sovereignty.

725-695/675 BC: Reign of King Midas; the Amasya region under Phrygian rule.

676 BC: Cimmerian attacks and the fall of the Phrygians.

Around 600 BC: Kubaba Altar and temple at Oluz Höyük.

585 BC: The Kızılırmak accepted as the Lydian-Median boundary.

547/546 BC: Cyrus defeats Croesus; Persian rule begins.

Around 450 BC: Fire temple and house of worship built at Oluz Höyük.

2007: Systematic excavation begins at Oluz Höyük.

2018: Terracotta bull figurine found.

2024: Kubaba sacred chamber and sacred stone uncovered.

Bibliography

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