1/ The city of Hattusa - near present- day Boğazkale in Çorum province - already existed about 2000 years before the beginning of our era (BCE).

2/ At the end of the 19th century, early 18th century BCE, a battle took place between King Piyusti of Hattusa and King Anitta of Kussara which was won by Anitta. He sacked and destroyed Hattusa and put a curse on the king who would one day rebuild the city.

3/ More than a century later, Hattusa was nevertheless rebuilt, by a descendant of Anitta, King Labarna. He made Hattusa his capital and took a new name: Hattusili. This marks the beginning of the Hittite Empire.

The Late Bronze Age in Anatolia is an interesting period.

4/ It was the first time that a real empire came into being that linked multiple city-states and kingdoms together and placed them under one authority, that of the Hittites.

5/ There was a brisk trade between the peoples of the Mediterranean, and high-level correspondence in several languages ​​and important international friendships and alliances were made. You could rightly speak of a complex, international civilization.

6/ The Hittites were a people whose origins are unclear. The sudden fall of the empire has also been shrouded in mystery for a long time. In fact, the entire empire was forgotten...

7/ It was in 1876 that the Briton Archibald Sayce believed that the Hittites must have had a language of their own, referring to large basalt blocks with inscriptions in, for example, Aleppo. Sayce went to search for more material in the Ottoman Empire.

8/ After three years, he came up with examples from all over Anatolia, claiming that Syria had been just a corner of the great Hittite Empire. He also said that further search was needed at Boğazkale.

9/ His ideas were met with skepticism, but then interesting Egyptian hieroglyphs suddenly surfaced. This showed that Pharaohs saw the king of the Hittites as an equal. This meant that these Hittites must have been a great and powerful people.

10/ In 1906, a German expedition found an enormous amount of clay tablets, partly in Babylonian - which had already been deciphered - and partly in an incomprehensible language.

11/ The idea that this should be the Hittite state archives and that Hattusa had been the capital of the great empire received widespread support.