Sapinuwa

40.25277777777835.2375Koordinaten: 40 ° 15 '10 " N, 35 ° 14' 15" E

Šapinuwa (also called Schapinuwa or Sapanuwa ) was a Hittite royal residence in northern Anatolia. It is located about two kilometers southwest of Ortaköy in the homonymous district of Çorum Province of Turkey.

Location

The city lies on the route through the plane of Sungurlu / Alacahöyük eastwards through the Kelkit valley leads to the Caucasus from the Hittite capital Hattusa in the West. So they took a strategically important position. It extends in a tributary of the River Çekerek on flat terraces on an area of ​​nine square kilometers.

Description

Šapinuwa excavated since 1990 by a team of Ankara University under the direction of Aygül and Mustafa Süel. The first excavated building is called Building A. It is rectangular and has a floor area of 2500 m². The foundations consist of cyclopean blocks of limestone and sandstone at a height and thickness of about two meters, about joined mudbrick walls. From the quantities of found debris can be concluded that the monumental building had at least two upper floors. In the ceiling of cedar wood was used by the mountain Karadağ near Ortaköy, which can be identified as the Hittite mountain Šakaddunuwa. The floor plan is oriented from southeast to northwest, north, close to other buildings, possibly economies. A double protective wall surrounding the building. The building was completely destroyed by fire, after which the whole town was abandoned. In fire debris of the upper floors over 4000 fragments of cuneiform tablets have been found, which has not yet published only a fraction.

In a further excavation 1994 160 meters south-east of it came the about 25 × 40 -foot building B to light. On the foundations of carefully carved stone blocks here 1.10 meters thick mud-brick walls were coated with a 2-3 cm thick layer of plaster found. Inside the building about 40 pithoi appeared. They served as storage containers for food of various kinds Building B had at least one upstairs.

Finds

From the cuneiform tablets found in Building A about two-thirds are written in the Hittite language, a smaller part in Hurrian, the rest is Akkadian or bilingual Hittite - Hurrian, Hittite - Akkadian or Hittite - Hattish. Most of them are letters, but also to texts of a religious nature, omen texts and lists. Since a considerable part of the letters, in addition to senior officials, the Great King or the Queen as the addressee or sender can be assumed that Šapinuwa was a royal residence. The Hurrian texts are predominantly religious content and relate mainly to the itkalzi ritual, a cleansing ritual. Due to the number occurring in the texts names that are also detected in texts from MASAT Höyük, the excavators date the city to the 14th century BC in the time of the Hittite empire.

Likewise, small finds were numerous excavated, including pottery, seals, arrowheads, axes and other metal small finds. These are exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Çorum. In Building D, south of B, the relief of a warrior came to light.

After a cuneiform text from Bogazköy beyond the delivery of pottery, perhaps cult purposes ( KUB 25.28 i 1-10), the town was about 100 km from Hattuša removed if one sets an average daily output of a cart of 30-35 km. The revered here weather gods will, among other things in the Suppiuliuma - Šattiwaza contract ( KBO 1.3) mentioned.