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The
Bronze Age, Hatti Culture, Assyrian Trade Colonies
The Bronze Age
The Bronze period begins around 3000 in Anatolia, around 2500
in theAegean and Crete, around 2000 in Europe. Bronze is
obtained by mixing copper and tin ( % 90 copper, % 10
tin). In this period apart from bronze tools other kinds
such as copper, gold and electron, which is an alloy of
natural gold and silver are also produced for using in
religious ceremonies. The people in this period lived in
cities surrounded with fortification walls. Houses are
built in rectangular shapes on stone foundations with
sundried brick walls and. Agriculture, animal husbandry,
merchandise and mine production are the means of life.
Turkey
Alacahoyuk, 67 km to Yozgat city and 3 hours away from Ankara
is the most advanced settlement area in Anatolia from
this period. The rich graves discovered here are in
shapes of regular stone rooms. The dead is put in the
center of these rooms with gifts, in a posture that the
knees are pulled up to the belly ( hocker position).
Sacrificed and presented during the ceremony, bull heads
and feet are left on top of the roofs. Goats and sheep
are also sacrificed. They might have been served to the
attendants at the funeral. The graves are thought to be
used for many generations. Most of the gifts are composed
of gold, silver, electron, bronze objects and decorative
items such as diadems, necklaces, hairpins, bracelets,
earrings made of precious stones like amber, rock
crystal, etc. Bronze and gold weapons, sun discs, deer
and bull figurines, goddess statues of religious services
are invaluable works of art discovered here. For the
first time in this period do we find bronze spear heads
in Anatolia. They resemble very much to their
counterparts in Mesopotamia and Syria which is an
interesting point.
Another important place in the bronze age is Troy, Level 1.
dated back to 2900-2500 BC. This first city in Troy, now
partly unearthed is wrapped up with a 90 meter wall.
Houses are in megaron type again and the entrances are
from the narrow sides. Walls are stone and set in the
herring bone pattern. Troy, Level 2. is dated back to
2500-2000 BC. It is built on top of Troy Level 1. The
inhabitants of this level come from the Aegean and
Balkans like those of the first level. It is also
surrounded with
walls but this time they are 20 meters longer. The
expedition team uncovered a royal residence that belongs
to a king on one of the hilltops. Heinrich Schlieman, the
German businessman who dug the Trojan mound in 1870,
discovered a treasury at this level of Troy 2. Knowing
Homer’s Iliad by heart, he was in search of King
Priamos's treasury and for years he believed the treasury
he had discovered at the site was so. In the last years
of his life, however, he was going to learn that the
treasury actually belonged to a different level, the
level 2, thus, to a different time period.
Hatti Culture
The information about the Hatti civilization comes to us
through the Accadian sources (2350-2150 BC). The Hattis
are believed to be the one of the indigenous peoples in
Anatolia. They lived around 2500 BC in city kingdoms and
small tribes and by 2000 BC all of them were taken under
the rule of the Hittites. Different from other cultures
though,The Hatti art
gives us the examples of a human-shaped pottery type
(anthropomorphic) rather than an animal shape or a hybrid
form. They worshipped such statues and figurines, and
each one of them carried his or her name. The Hittites,
an Indo-European tribe that came to Anatolia over the
Caucasus around 2000 BC, were influenced by the Hatti
culture in religion, mythology and literature. Not only
did they take the names of mountains, rivers and towns
from them; Hittites preserved even the original Hatti
name of the country they lived in as “the land of Hatti”.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Hittites
formed one of the most interesting and authentic
civilizations of the world history with the help of a
rich cultural background they inherited from the Hattis
over 250 years.
The peaceful times in Anatolia that lasted for thousands
of years came to an end with a fierce attack around 2000
BC. There is only the remains of a thick fire layer
dating back to 2000 BC in the settlement areas of the
central Anatolia such as Alacahoyuk.
Assyrian Trade Colonies ( 1900-1700)
The Assyrian merchants established trade colonies in central
parts of Asia Minor in this period. Their aim was to sell
and barter the goods they produced for timber, silver,
copper and raw material from Anatolia. According to
thousands of tablets discovered at Kultepe, the Assyrians
had established independent trade colonies here named
karum. The gold and silver were the two basic norms for
trade, the former for the wholesale and the latter for
the retail business.The method of trade was
bartering. The donkey was the main transportation animal.
This period marks a big interaction and cultural exchange
between Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The Indo-European
tribes that until then lived on the north of Europe, for
an unknown reason, migrated towards south between 2250
and 2000 BC in to a vast area from the Indian to the
Atlantic Ocean. During this migration, tribes like
Germans, Latins ,Iranians, Cimmerians, Indians and
Hellens moved to the areas and the countries around their
present day locations. In the meantime some tribes,
likeTrojans, Thracians, Phrigians and Hittites got in to
Anatolia too.
Turkey
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