Yalburt

Yalburt (Turkish Yalburt Yaylası) denotes a grazing area, named after a former settlement, near the villages Dereköy and Çobankaya in the district of Ilgın of the Turkish province Konya, about 23 kilometres north of the district town Ilgın. In 1970, during excavation work, remains of a Hittite pond complex were discovered there, whose walls are described in a campaign report of the Hittite Great King Tudhalija IV.

Complex

The excavations uncovered three of four sides of a rectangular structure that represent the boundaries of a water basin. No traces were found of the – undoubtedly formerly existing – fourth, eastern side. The dimensions are 12.60 metres in west‑east direction and 8.25 to 8.45 metres in north‑south direction. On a lower layer of bricks lies a frieze on which, in Luwian hieroglyphs, Tudhalija IV gives a report of a campaign to Lycia. The frieze consists of 19 stone blocks of about one metre height and an average length of 1.70 metres. Blocks 18 and 19 have toppled and lie with the described side down, largely buried underground.

The text begins on Block 1, at the east end of the south wall, with the well‑known name cartouche of the ruler with name and title under the winged sun disc. It corresponds to the cartouche of the same king as seen in Yazılıkaya in Chamber B, once alone and once in the relief Tudhalijas with his protective god. Because the blocks were scattered in the field at the time of discovery, errors likely arose in the arrangement of the inscription stones by the excavators of that time. After the publication of the content by Massimo Poetto in 1993 and the editing by John David Hawkins in 1995, there is general agreement that the text does not continue on Block 2 but on Block 16a. The king’s lineage follows and then on Block 16 the beginning of the narrative part. This yields the following introduction of the report:

The Great King describes a campaign to Lycia, specifically naming the countries or places Kuwalatarna, Lukka, Winuwanti (possibly Oinoanda), Pinali (Pinara), Tlawa (Tlos), Awarna (Xanthos) and Patara. The countries are defeated with the aid of the weather god, women and children kneel at the feet of the king, and there is also mention of rich loot.

John David Hawkins sees a connection between the mention of the captured cities Awarna and Pinali in the Yalburt inscription and their mention in the Milawata Letter, whose author is considered in research to be Tudḫalija IV. In this letter, §§ 6 and 9 deal with prisoners that the father of the recipient had taken in Atrija (in Caria, possibly located at the ancient Stratonikeia) and Utima and that had not yet been released by his successor and son. Tudḫalija IV apparently offered an exchange for hostages that he had taken in Awarna and Pinali, had advanced the payment, and urges the addressee to now release the prisoners from Atrija and Utima. Hawkins assumes that Tudḫalija took the hostages mentioned in the letter from Awarna and Pinali during the campaign against the Lukka lands described in the Yalburt inscription.

There is no clarity about the fourth, eastern side of the water basin. In the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, ten additional blocks have been stored since the first excavations, which cannot be assigned precisely. Among them are fragments with hieroglyphs, but also one with a pictorial representation. Visible is the torso of the king, who holds a club in his hand. He is held protectively in the arm by a mountain god, recognizable by the mantle. Here also the comparison to the embrace scene of Tudhalija by Šarruma in Yazılıkaya is close. The fragment indicates that the eastern side may have been equipped with figurative depictions. This would result in similarities to the water sanctuary of Eflatun Pınar. Also a – today no longer existing – fragment of a statue, which was destroyed outside the southern side, although it cannot be dated, perhaps points to a pictorial equipment.

Ömür Harmanşah and Peri Johnson were able, within the framework of their survey project of the surroundings in the 2015 campaign south of the monument, to discover for the first time a larger quantity of pottery of the middle and late Bronze Age, indicating a possible settlement of the 2nd millennium BC in Yalburt.

Research History

After the discovery in 1970, the then director of the museum in Ankara, Raci Temizer, carried out the first excavations and the inscribed blocks were re-erected or taken to Ankara. The first documentation with photos and drawings was published by Massimo Poetto in 1993. In 1995 another edition of the text appeared by John David Hawkins. Since 2010, new research in Yalburt and the surrounding landscape has been conducted by Ömür Harmanşah and Peri Johnson within the Yalburt Yaylası Archaeological Landscape Research Projects of Brown University in Providence.