ANATOLIA THROUGH THE AGES
Turkey has long been the traditional meeting place of the East and West.
The two continents that Istanbul, the nation’s largest and most exciting city, sits astride are now connected by one of the World' s largest singel-span suspension bridges, the Bosphorus Bridge. Due to the heavy traffic in Istanbul, another bridge at the narrow point on the Bosphorus was constructed between the years 1985 and 1988, the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Koprusu (Sultan Mehmet Bridge).
The Turkish people take pride in the progress their country has made since the final break with the Ottoman ruling family a short eighty years ago. They are proud, too, of traditions, some of which have lasted thousands of years. The progress that one sees in Turkey has turned the country into a land of contrasts. Here a modern highrise apartment complex towers over a 15th century mosque, a vintage model Packard touring car vies for right of way on the nation’s streets and highways with an E-Type-Jaguar alongside Turkish-made Kartal's. Counters full of ripe, juicy red watermelons are not at all uncommon sights, even in the busiest city traffic.
In Turkey you can observe the Moslem faithful at prayer, bowing toward Mecca and the East; a few steps away you can watch younger Turks dancing in a psychodelic disco. And you can talk to them, for many speak English. The largest English-language universitiy of the Middle East is in Ankara, the capital of the Turkish Republic. Nearly every student has studied English and is anxious to practice it. People who don’t speak English are most adept at sign language of whatever variety you care to practice, and communicating your ideas and needs never really poses much of a problem. The contrasts are here, the novelties which every visitor expects to find, but they are such that you can relax and enjoy the differents, yet never completely break from your familiar ways. Here you will always find that comforting orientation point in the easy balance of Eastern and Western cultures.
Anatolia, that vast land mass that represents the body of Turkey, has been the home of empire-builders since time immemorial, beginning with the earliest of these, the Hittites. From their capital Hattusas on the high central Anatolian Plateau, the Hittites ruled during the 2nd millennium B.C. They were contemporary with the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt and represented as powerful a military might and as able a system of administration. The Archaeology Museum of Ankara is considered to have the finest collection of Hittite articrafts in the world. The Hittites were followed in Anatolia by Phrygians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines and the Turks.
HITTITES
The Hittites had firmly entrenched themselves in Anatolia by the year 1700 B.C The earliest history of the Hittites relates that they were descended from the ancient kings of Kussara, the whereabouts of which is still unknown. We find mention of a King Pithana and his son, Anitta, in the Hittite archives, along with lists of cities that the two had apparently conquered. Because of the Indo-European tongue of the Hittites, it is presumed that they came originally from Syria. The founder of the Hittite kingdom is thought to have been Labarnas. During his reign, the kingdom and area of Hittite control started to expand greatly. The successors of Labarnas, Hattusilias I and Mursilis I, pushed the boundries even further to include not only north and south Anatolia but also Syria.
Mursilis took Aleppo in Nourthern Syria, then penetrated into Mesopotomia to put an end to the old Babylonion Dynatsy in 1600. From here the Hittites pulled back into Anatolia, the center of the empire. In this period of the first three Hittite rulers, we have a very welldocumented history of their exploits from state archives full of cuneiform and hieroglyphic text. Information after the time of Mursilis I becomes sketchy owing to the scarcity of similar documents.
The empire went through a period of internal struggle and battles for power among princes and noblemen. These unsettled times ended with the acession of King Telipinus in the beginning of the 15th century B.C He established the state, as well as established a code for succesion to power. His capital was built at Hattusas, northeast of Ankara at the present Boğazköy.
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