In one of the display cases of the Amasya Museum stands a bare bronze torso no taller than twenty-one and a half centimetres. Its arms and legs have not survived, but the pointed headdress, the heavy eyebrows and the almond-shaped eyes leave no doubt about what it is: Teshub, the Storm God and chief deity of the Hittites. Known in the archaeological literature as the Amasya Figurine or the Doğantepe Figurine, it came to light in 1962 in the village of Doğantepe, in the course of house building rather than excavation. More than sixty years later, museum officials still describe it as having no equal anywhere in the world.

The Story of the Discovery

According to the Amasya Museum and to statements reported in the press, the figurine turned up in 1962 in Doğantepe, in the hands of a villager who was preparing mud brick for his house. Some accounts put the find spot at about four metres below the surface of the mound. The finder did not know the value of the object and handed it over to someone else in exchange for a packet of cigarettes. The figurine later fell into the hands of the police and was delivered to the Amasya Museum. Museum Director Celal Özdemir told the story in detail to the local press in 2021, adding that the figurine is among the most precious pieces in the museum and is displayed in a special case.

The story also points to a scholarly shortcoming. The figurine was not recorded within a stratified excavation together with accompanying finds. As a result, no published stratigraphic data exists that would tie it to a particular building, a particular layer or a particular year. Dating and interpretation rest on the object's own form and on comparanda in Hittite art. Seals found by chance at Doğantepe are also cited as indirect evidence of a Hittite presence in the region.

In the following years the figurine was sent to a number of exhibitions at home and abroad. Today it is the best-known piece representing the Hittite period in the Amasya Museum. The museum's own history, collection and mummies are a subject for a separate article. What is considered here is this single object and the questions that surround it.

Doğantepe

Doğantepe is a village about twenty-seven kilometres from the centre of Amasya, at an altitude of 527 metres. In the records of 1928 the village appears under the name Zara. It acquired municipal status in 1971 and lost it in 2013 when its population fell below two thousand. The mound where the figurine was found lies to the south-west of the village. According to some sources it was inhabited from the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic periods down to the Ottoman era. That an important settlement stood here at least in the Hittite age is apparent from the seals found at the same place and from the bronze figure of the god.

The Amasya Municipality's account of the city's history lists Doğantepe among the important Hittite settlements in Amasya and dates the Teshub figurine to 1400-1200 BC. In the first report on the excavations that began in 2007 at Oluz Höyük, about five kilometres to the south, the village is likewise named as a place where a strong and important Hittite presence was already known, thanks to the bronze figurine of a god found by chance there and to its seals. The same report considers that Doğantepe may be connected with Virasia, a place that appears on the Tabula Peutingeriana sixteen Roman miles west of Amaseia in the Late Byzantine period. Some publications give the distance between the two mounds as seven kilometres as the crow flies; the difference may stem from the choice of measuring point.

Structure of the Figurine

The figurine is cast in bronze and stands 21.5 centimetres tall. Its weight is given as 1,340 grams in some publications and as 1.5 kilograms in others. The figure stands upright and wears a pointed, conical headdress. The eyebrows are thick, the eyes almond-shaped and the face calm; some accounts draw attention to a faint smile on the lips. The now empty sockets of the eyes are said to have held inlays of lapis lazuli, the deep blue stone. Director Özdemir likewise says that the eyes should contain this stone. The empty sockets suggest that the inlay was lost over time, but this too is an inference, and no published analysis of the stone is known.

One of the most striking features of the piece is what is missing. The arms, the legs and some parts of the torso have not been found. The museum's label text suggests that post-Hittite communities may have destroyed the lower half of the body in order to wipe out belief in this god. That view is a possibility. No published study is known that shows whether the damage was deliberate or the result of burial conditions and later settlement activity. Some accounts say that the arms were made movable. Since the arms have not survived, the workings of such an arrangement cannot be known in detail.

The technique of bronze casting shows the level that metalworking reached in the Hittite age. Figures of gods and animals, cult vessels and weapons from this tradition, which drew on Anatolia's copper resources, have come down to us. Some publications describe the Doğantepe figurine as the largest known metal human figure of the Hittite age. The museum director likewise calls it the largest sculpture belonging to the Hittite Empire. This claim should not be read as a firm verdict until every comparable find has been reviewed one by one.

The Problem of Dating

The dates proposed for the piece differ from source to source. Compilations such as the Amasya Municipality's city guide and Wikipedia place it in 1400-1200 BC. Some publications presenting Anatolian museums, and descriptions on photo-sharing sites, give the range 1450-1200 BC. An account relayed from the museum's label gives the fifteenth century BC outright. These three ranges are not far apart, and all of them cover the Hittite Empire period of the Late Bronze Age. Yet the span from 1450 to 1200 takes in nearly all the major phases of the Hittite kingdom. The range given is therefore not enough to say in which ruler's reign the piece was made.

This uncertainty arises from the fact that the find has no context. There is no layer, no architectural structure and no written document, only style and iconography. The conical headdress and the upright stance fit depictions of the imperial age. An art-historical study based on these features might propose a narrower range, but what can be said with confidence for now is that the figurine belongs to the Hittite Empire period, roughly the fifteenth to the thirteenth centuries BC.

The Names of the Storm God

The Hittite pantheon is known for having absorbed the gods of the peoples brought under its rule. This is why the Hittites came to be called the people of a thousand gods. At the head of this crowd stands the god of storm and sky, but his name varies with place and period. The storm god, called Taru in the Hattic language, bears the name Tarhunna or Tarhunza in Hittite and Luwian texts. In Hurrian the same role is called Teshub. After the Middle Hittite period, when Hurrian influence grew stronger, the Hittites began to identify Teshub with their own weather god Tarhunna. The phrase "the Hittite Storm God Teshub" used in Turkish writing therefore reflects the shared use of names of different origin.

Some scholars have linked the entry of Hurrian gods into the Hittite ruling class to the time of Šuppiluliuma I, or to the rise of a new dynasty of Kizzuwatna origin. This is put forward as a possibility. Because the names of these gods were often written with the same cuneiform sign, the Sumerian logogram for wind and storm, it was context that decided which language's name the reader should pronounce. This explains why the figure from Doğantepe is called sometimes Teshub, sometimes Tarhunna and sometimes simply the Weather God.

In the agrarian Hittite society the Storm God was seen as the power that ensured rain, thunder, the fertility of the soil and the prevention of famine. His sacred animal was the bull. Bull figures in Hittite temple finds are therefore interpreted as a symbol pointing to the cult of the Storm God. The Hittites were also known for the great number of festivals dedicated to their gods, and part of these festivals were celebrated in spring, with the awakening of nature.

Iconography

In Hittite art, storm gods are shown in closely similar ways. A male figure with long hair and a beard wears a conical headdress decorated with horns, a short skirt or kilt, and shoes with upturned toes. In his hand he holds a mace resting on the shoulder or raised in a smiting position. In the central relief showing Teshub in the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, the god stands on the shoulders of two mountain gods and holds a three-pronged lightning bolt. Museum writers note the pointed headdress of the Amasya figurine as a feature recalling the divine figures in the Yazılıkaya reliefs.

In the Doğantepe example only part of this whole can be seen. The shape of the headdress, the expression of the face and the upright stance of the body have been preserved. The mace, the lightning bolt or other symbol held in the hands, and elements such as the mountain or bull beneath the feet, have not survived. This loss makes it hard to say exactly which type of storm god the figurine represents. The figure may show the Hurrian Teshub as well as the Hittites' own Tarhunna or the god of a local cult centre. Only the object held in the hand or an accompanying animal could have settled the question.

Temple and Cult Context

Director Özdemir says that Doğantepe was a Hittite settlement at that time and may have had a temple, and that the figurine may be one of the statues that Hittite kings and queens carried around at their spring festivals. This interpretation accords with what is known of Hittite religion, where statues of gods were carried in ceremonies. Because it is small, the figurine could be imagined both on the altar of a permanent temple and in a ceremonial procession. Some publications write that the piece may have been brought for worship to the cult place at Hakmiş/Doğantepe in the Upper Land of the Hittites, or may equally have been a statue belonging to the temple there. The existence of a temple at Doğantepe, however, has not been shown by excavation so far; it is a conclusion drawn from the discovery of the god's figure.

In Hittite sources one of the most important cult centres of the Storm God is Nerik. A Hattic written incantation in the Hattusa archive belongs to a festival held in this city. The Nesite-speaking Hittites took the city in the time of Hattusili I and maintained there a spring festival called Puruli in honour of the Storm God; at the festival the story of the slaying of Illuyanka was recited. When the city was destroyed by the Kaska in the time of Hantili, the festival was moved to Hattusa. Hattusili III retook the city around 1290 BC, during the reign of Muwatalli II, and restored it as its high priest. Nerik is today identified with Oymaağaç Höyük at Vezirköprü, where Rainer Maria Czichon and Jörg Klinger of the Free University of Berlin have been excavating since 2005. The fragments of cuneiform tablets found there form the basis of this identification.

The Hakmiş Question

According to Hittite documents, while the Kaska pressure continued the cult of the Storm God was moved to the city of Hakmiş. Recent proposals on the location of Hakmiş converge on the possibility that the city lay within the borders of Amasya. The Doğantepe figurine is the find most often invoked in this debate. In an archaeology news item introducing the work at Oluz Höyük, the bronze Storm God figurine from Doğantepe is presented as the greatest find supporting the matching of Doğantepe Höyük with Hittite cult centres. The report also mentions the name Nerik, but with the identification of Nerik at Oymaağaç this proposal has weakened; for Doğantepe the name Hakmiş is now put forward more often.

This identification is still an unconfirmed hypothesis. The geography of Hakmiş is disputed among Hittitologists, and a single bronze figure, however important, is not enough to determine the name of a city. Even so, the figurine suggests that Doğantepe was not merely a settlement on a transit route but possibly a centre with a religious function.

Neighbouring Finds: Oluz Höyük

The meaning of the Doğantepe figurine becomes clearer when it is considered together with the surrounding settlements. The excavations at Oluz Höyük directed by Şevket Dönmez and E. Emine Naza Dönmez have brought to light a Hittite presence in the layers of the second millennium BC. One of the most noteworthy finds of the first season was a button-shaped stone seal showing Hittite features. Aslıhan Yurtsever Beyazıt of the excavation team says that the terracotta bull figure found in later years, and the ring-shaped vessel with a bull's head, strengthen the idea that a sanctuary connected with the Storm God may have existed at Oluz. According to this view, the absence of a fortification system at the mound also shows that the settlement was religious rather than military in character. It is also stressed that Oluz lies on the road coming from the south by way of Šapinuva and close to the main route from the land of Hatti to Hakmiş. Among the identifications proposed for Oluz are Šanahuitta and Ištahara, but none of them has been confirmed.

In this context the Teshub figure from Doğantepe ceases to be an object standing alone. The Amasya area begins to appear as a region in which the cult cities named in Hittite written sources might be sought. The excavation report by Dönmez describes Amasya as one of the provinces most neglected archaeologically. Because the figurine is the most direct religious find in this neglected region, it has often served as a point of reference in research.

Significance and Limits

The importance of the Doğantepe figurine rests on three points. The first is its rarity. The discovery of a metal figure of an anthropomorphic god of this size and in this state of preservation is not a common occurrence in Hittite archaeology. The second is that it gives concrete form to the existence of Hittite religious life in the Amasya region, which for a long time remained in the shadow of research centred on Hattusa and Central Anatolia. The third is that, read together with excavations at places such as Oluz Höyük and Oymaağaç, it supplies data to the continuing debate on the location of places named in written documents, such as Hakmiş and Nerik.

The limit of the piece is also clear. An object found without context, in fragments and dated across a wide range, is not suited to settling matters on its own. A systematic excavation at Doğantepe and the discovery of a temple or Hittite architectural remains would fix the figurine's place and function. Until then the Amasya Teshub stands, with the name of its cult centre unknown and half of its body missing, as the clearest object showing the presence of the Hittite age in Amasya.

Chronology

Fifteenth-thirteenth centuries BC: The Hittite Empire period to which the figurine is dated; 1450-1200 or 1400-1200 BC according to the sources.

c. 1290 BC: Hattusili III retakes Nerik.

1962: The figurine is found by chance at Doğantepe during house building; after changing hands it is delivered through the police to the Amasya Museum.

2005: Excavations of the Free University of Berlin begin at Oymaağaç Höyük (Nerik).

2007: Systematic excavations begin at Oluz Höyük.

2018: A terracotta bull figure is found at Oluz Höyük.

2021: The Amasya Museum Director tells the press the story of the discovery and gives his assessment of the figurine's function.

Sources

Primary sources

Academic studies

  • Şevket Dönmez, E. Emine Naza Dönmez, "Amasya-Oluz Höyük Kazısı 2007 Dönemi Çalışmaları: İlk Sonuçlar", Belleten 73/267, 2009 (belleten.gov.tr/tam-metin/87/tur). belleten.gov.tr

Official sources

  • Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Amasya Museum information page (muze.gov.tr).

Other sources

  • "Oluz Höyük, Hitit Fırtına Tanrısı Teşup'a adanmış tapınak barındırıyor olabilir", Arkeoloji ve Sanat (arkeolojisanat.com). arkeolojisanat.com
  • "Teshub", "Nerik" and "Amasya Museum" entries, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org). en.wikipedia.org
  • "Doğantepe, Amasya", Vikipedi (tr.wikipedia.org). en.wikipedia.org
  • DHA news report, statement by Amasya Museum Director Celal Özdemir, 23 April 2021 (Hürriyet, Sözcü).
  • Objektif Amasya, "Amasya Müzesi'nin Minyatür Tanrısı: Teşup" and "Amasya'da Bir Paket Sigaraya Satılan Tanrı".
  • Turkish Archaeo News, "Amasya Museum" (turkisharchaeonews.net).

Online sources