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The tablets containing the Song of Liberation were excavated in 1983 under a Byzantine period church in the Hittite capital city of Hattusha. Writing for the July–October 2019 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Eva von Dassow of the University of Minnesota reports on an intriguing, fictitious account of subjugation and liberation from Late Bronze Age Levant. The epic poem was originally composed in the Hurrian language, around 1600 B.C.E., but the surviving text comes from a Hurrian-Hittite bilingual edition from around 1400 B.C.E. It is recorded in cuneiform writing on a series of clay tablets, which came to light only...

According to a La Brújula Verde report, excavations at the site of Uşakli Höyük in central Anatolia unearthed the remains of several infants, which may provide new insight into little-known Hittite burial practices. The partial or complete skeletons of at least seven young children were discovered by a team from the Italian Archaeological Mission in Central Anatolia near a mysterious stone feature simply known as the "Circular Structure." The building, which dates to the second millennium b.c., was first uncovered several years ago. Archaeologists still do not know its exact purpose, but believe it had ritual significance. The remains of...

Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,300-year-old clay tablet depicting a catastrophic foreign invasion of the Hittite Empire in Büklükale, about 100 km from Turkey’s capital Ankara. A translation of the tablet’s cuneiform text indicates that the invasion occurred during a Hittite civil war, presumably in an attempt to support one of the fighting factions. Previously, only broken clay tablets had been found in the excavations at Büklükale, but this one is in almost perfect condition. Based on the typology and distribution of the collected pottery shards, Büklükale is thought to be a single-period city belonging to the Hittite Empire Period and...