During the 1907 survey of Hittites sites in Anatolia, John Garstang and his team visited the site of the Hittite capital of Hattusha near the modern Turkish settlement of Boğazköy (spelt ‘Boghaz Keui’ by Garstang). The team took photographs of the remains of the city shortly before they were excavated by the German Institute of Archaeology. The site is now listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list and is continued to be excavated by the German Institute of Archaeology. For more information on the site today, see the Institute’s Hattusa excavation project website.
Remains of the lower palace at Boghaz Keui (Boğazkale, Turkey), 1907. RefNo: HIT-BOK-011 'Boghaz Keui No. 11'
Here is a general view of the visible remain of the ‘lower palace’ at Hattusha. The modern settlement can be seen in the background.
The Amazon Gate at Boghaz Keui (Boğazkale, Turkey), before it was excavated, 1907. RefNo: HIT-BOK-042 'Boghaz Keui No.42 Boghaz Keui Masonry near the Amazon Gate'
This image shows the remains of two parabolic arches which formed a gate in the city wall of Hattusha, now called the ‘King’s Gate’ which has since been fully excavated.
Masonary near the Lion Gate at Boghaz Keui (Boğazkale, Turkey), 1907. RefNo: HIT-BOK-037 'Boghaz Keui No. 37' 'Boghaz Keui - masonry of wall at Lion Gate'
This image shows the wall next to the Lion’s Gate, which stands at the southwest of the upper city of Hattusha. The Gate, which can be seen on the right, features two sculptured lions which ‘guarded’ the entrance to the city. The sculptures are still in situ today and archaeologists have created a reconstruction showing how the gates may have originally appeared.
Garstang’s spelling of the placenames is remarkable – he obviously went to a lot of trouble to understand and record exactly how the local people pronounced them. The modern spellings are Turkish but they are transliterations of much older names, which would have been written in Arabic script at the time of his visits. Phonetic pronunciation of Garstang’s spelling sounds exactly like the modern Turkish equivalent.