The History Blog

An engraved ivory panel from the Iron Age has been discovered in the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusa in modern-day Boğazköy, north-central Turkey. It is around 2,800 years old. The piece of elephant ivory is about a foot long and four inches wide. Carved on the surface are a sphinx and a lion in profile, back-to-back, with two tree of life figures on each end.

Archaeologists believe the ivory piece was likely mounted onto a wooden box or wooden furniture. The left and right sides are jagged and broken, while the top and bottom are smooth. That suggests the piece was originally longer, but the width is still the same.

Hattusa was found around 2000 B.C. and was the capital of the Hittite Empire from 1700 B.C. until it fell in the Bronze Age collapse around 1200 B.C. The ivory panel was unearthed on the northwest slope of the Royal Citadel, seat of the Hittite kings, and while the empire was long gone when the ivory was engraved, its iconography is a callback to Hittite culture. The defensive walls of Hattusa’s Upper City had a Lion Gate, flanked by two monumental lions, and a Sphinx Gate, flanked by two massive winged sphinxes with upright tails. Both portals date to around 1500 B.C.

When the ivory was engraved, Hattusa had only recently become repopulated after it was abandoned when the Hittite Empire fell. A small Phrygian contingent settled there around 800 B.C. There is also archaeological evidence of several cultures in the Iron Age layers of Hattusa. The discovery of so fine an ornament may rewrite the little we know of this period in the city’s history.

Schachner said, “This work is a unique work for Boğazköy. This is the first time we are faced with a work that is so intense and decorated with such a beautifully crafted scene. During the Iron Age, very extensive excavations were carried out in Boğazköy, but such a detailed work was not uncovered. “In terms of both the stage and the iconography and style used, we can better reveal Boğazköy’s relations towards Southeastern Anatolia and its artistic relations towards the Southwest and Greece in its period, that is, in the first millennium BC.”

“If there is such a work, it is possible to say that this place is no longer a small town, but a more important one, perhaps a center of power. Because when we evaluate it with another discovery in previous years, it is possible to say whether it points to a complex social structure or a hierarchical social structure. “Slowly, it is possible for us to obtain better information about the social status of that period.”

After the scientific studies on the work are completed, the ivory work in question will be exhibited at Boğazköy Museum.

A Roman phallic wind chime was discovered last week at the ancient site of Viminacium in Serbia. The object, known as a tintinnabulum, is made of bronze and has an intricate design of a central winged phallus with additional projecting phalluses and four bells hanging from chains. It is only the second tintinnabulum ever found at Viminacium, and the only one found in its original archaeological context. Nothing is known about the discovery of the first one and the object itself is in a private collection in Austria.

Located about 30 miles east of modern-day Belgrade, Viminacium had a large permanent military camp garrisoning the border with the Goths and was the capital of the Roman province of Moesia Superior. It had the largest amphitheater in the Balkans and the largest cemetery discovered anywhere in the territory of the Roman Empire. The site has been excavated regularly since its rediscovery in the late 19th century. The current excavation is exploring the civilian settlement that grew around the military base.

“The investigation of the civilian settlement (city) of Viminacium has just begun, and the first significant discoveries have already been made. During the excavation of one of the main city streets, the gate of one of the buildings was discovered. It was established that the building was destroyed in a fire, during which the porch collapsed and fell to the ground, and in the garage layer an object known in scientific circles as a tintinnabulum was discovered ,” [said Ilija Danković, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology in Belgrade].

Tintinnabula were often hung near or on doors as an amulet to ward off evil. They were usually made of bronze and featured that favorite of Roman talismans, the fascinus, or phallus. The phallus represented the deity Fascinus and had apotropaic powers; ie, the ability to avert evil or bad luck. Bells were also apotropaic as their ringing was believed to frighten away evil spirits, so tintinnabula were doubly powerful protection.

The phalluses in tintinnabula morphed into a variety of forms. They could be deities, humans, wolves, lions, winged beasts, monsters or a combination of several of the above. Frequently more than one phallus sprang out from the figure. The recently-discovered Viminacium example is either being ridden by an anthropomorphic figure with legs or has its own legs. It has been recovered encased in soil for careful micro-excavation in laboratory conditions. Its configuration will be revealed once it has been cleaned and conserved.

Excavation of a mosaic floor of a Roman-era structure in İncesu, central Turkey, has revealed it to be the largest ever found in Anatolia, and they keep finding more of it.

The mosaics were first encountered during salvage archaeology operations in 2010. After two excavations (2010 and 2012) partially uncovered the mosaic inscriptions, legal issues forced the suspension of archaeological work. Excavations resumed in 2020 and by the end of the season in 2021, more than 10 rooms with approximately 3230 square feet of uninterrupted mosaic floors in exceptional condition had been uncovered. This season’s excavation has doubled the surface area of mosaic coverage to approximately 6500 square feet out of the 43,000 square feet of the site excavated thus far.

The structure has not yet been identified conclusively, but archaeologists believe it was the villa of great importance built in the 4th century A.D., although there are elements from the 3rd century A.D. as well, and it was still in use throughout the Byzantine and Turkish-Islamic periods. The glamorous central reception hall and surrounding rooms are adorned with a dizzying array of floor mosaics with geometric patterns that create an overall wall-to-wall carpet effect.

The interwoven panels and motifs include simple guilloche (two interlaced strand lines), chain guilloche (the interlaced strands tie together like a linked chain), 3D cubes, Solomon’s knots, wave bands, meanders, ribbons, diamonds, swirls and much more. In the main room, a shield of triangles, which in earlier mosaics often surrounded a depiction of the gorgon Medusa, surround a Latin inscription that praises the building itself.

The Latin inscription reads:

Votis XXX multis XX bis XX
Curante Yacintho comite
Fabrica ad summum per
Ducta es culmen

Meaning:

With vows/prayers on the occasion of the 30th anniversary and further vows until the 40th
[The building was erected]Under the direction of the comes Hyacinthus
You, building, have been executed to the highest level.

Comes (“count”) was a title granted to officials of the imperial court. Nothing is known of an official named Hyacinthus recorded in this inscription.

Another, much briefer inscription in a smaller adjacent square walled room is in Greek and translates to “If you are healthy, enter.” This could refer to either physical health, or, if the building had a religious purpose, it could be a condition that all who were allowed to enter the space were spiritually sound.

Providing information about the example of civil architecture, [Can Erpek, Byzantine archaeology professor at Nevsehir Haci Bektas Veli University,] stated that it could be one of the imperial properties and said:

“We are talking about a high-end residence spread over a very large area, a residence with 33 rooms, we have not reached the limits of this residence, we foresee that the current residence will expand even further with our excavations that will continue next year. When we think of Cappadocia and the Central Anatolia Region, which has very valuable floor mosaics, we do not see floor mosaics on such a large residential floor. We know that there were many imperial properties in the Cappadocia region during the Roman and Byzantine periods. We encounter the name Hyacinthus in the inscriptions, we think that he is one of the rulers and administrators of the region, we examine the sources. As we access the data, we may have reached the residence of an important high-level administrator of the imperial estates in the region; such a residence has not been reached until now. “Our excavations will continue next year.”

Archaeologists have discovered a well-preserved sculpture of a warrior head at the iconic Maya site of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, Mexico. The head, which would have originally been part of a larger sculpture, is in excellent condition, preserved for centuries in construction fill in a basement under the Casa Colorada group of Chichén Itzá.

The warrior wears a feathered serpent helmet with wide-open jaws around his forehead and chin. The dimensions of the piece — 13 inches high, 11 inches wide and 8.7 inches deep — is typical of the sculptural types found in the first era of Chichén Itzá’s construction, the Late Classic period between 600 and 800 A.D.

Speaking at President López Obrador’s morning press conference, the head of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), Diego Prieto Hernández, described the head as a “very interesting find.”

“It was customary to represent warriors with a headdress, with a kind of helmet,” he said. “In this case it is a snake figure from which the face of this character emerges, and a feathered headdress, so it is probably alluding to Kukulcán, the feathered serpent of the Maya.”

The warrior was found last Tuesday in a rescue archaeology operation on the route of the future Maya Train, a 1000-mile train that will cross the Yucatán peninsula from Palenque to Cancun. It is controversial for many reasons. Its route traverses the jungle, damaging the environment and wildlife, and the plan was opposed by the indigenous people who actually own the land but were not consulted in any meaningful way. Train construction moved forward anyway, beginning in 2020, and is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

To mitigate the potential for destruction of archaeological sites that are either unknown or underexplored, rescue archaeology excavations have been performed along the train line. A related project has developed the infrastructure of the 27 archaeological zones near the Maya Train, building new museums and visitor centers or updating and expanding existing ones, as a draw to tourists taking the train. The Maya Train rescue excavations have recovered enormous amounts of material and remains, including 57,146 architectural elements, 1,398,083 ceramic fragments and 660 burials.

Chichén Itzá, arguably the most famous Maya site in the world, one of UNESCO’s New 7 Wonders of the World, visited by more than 2,500,000 people a year, is getting a new museum. Shockingly enough, it has never had one before.