The story of Alışar Höyük

The oldest village on this mound once stood in the middle of a lake. Alişar Höyük rises north of Alişar village in the Sorgun district, 45 km southeast of Yozgat, and at 520x350 m and 30 m high it is one of Anatolia's great mounds. People lived here from the Neolithic right through to the Phrygian period.

In the Early Bronze Age a great wall with gates went up, and the town became the region's most important city. In the 2nd millennium BC Assyrian merchants arrived; fifty-three cuneiform tablets written in Old Assyrian record that trade. The city may have fallen to the semi-legendary Hittite king Anitta, whose conquest of a city called Kussar may refer to this place.

Burned in the 12th century BC, it later passed to the Phrygians. A University of Chicago team led by Hans Henning von der Osten dug here in 1927-32, and work resumed in 1992 under Ronald Gorny. Look for the finds in Ankara's Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.