HIERAPOLIS (PAMUKKALE)
Hierapolis was the ancient city on top of the famous Pamukkale hot springs located in south-western Turkey near Denizli.
Hierapolis is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As the hot springs of Pamukkale were used as a spa since the 2nd century B.C., people came to soothe their ailings here. Many of them retired and died here. The large necropolis is filled with sarcophagi.
The great baths were constructed with huge stone blocks without the use of cement, and consisted of various closed or open sections linked together. There are deep niches in the inner section of the bath, library, gymnasium and other closed or open locations. The complex, which was constructed in the 2nd century, constitutes a good example of vault-type architecture. The complex is now an archaeological museum.
HIPPODROME (ISTANBUL)
The Hippodrome, which was once the center of Byzantine Constantinople, is adjacent to the Blue Mosque. It was once a huge stadium seating over 100,000 who gathered for chariot races and political rallies. Today it is a large park, and a road covers the ancient chariot course. Two obelisks and one other small one are all that remain of the Hippodrome.
HATTUŞA
Hattusa ( ?attuša, near modern Boğazkale (formerly Boğazköy), Turkey) was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. The region is set in a loop of the Kızıl River (Marashantiya in Hittite sources and Halys in Classical Antiquity) in central Anatolia.
Hattusa was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1986.
THE HITTITES
The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa (Hittite URU?attuša) in north-central Anatolia (on the Central Anatolian plateau) ca. the 18th century BC. The Hittite empire reached its height ca. the 14th century BC, encompassing a large part of Anatolia, north-western Syria about as far south as the mouth of the Litani River (a territory known as Amgu), and eastward into upper Mesopotamia. After ca. 1180 BC, the empire disintegrated into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some surviving until as late as the 8th century BC.
The term "Hittites" was taken from the KJV (King James Version) translation of the Hebrew Bible, translating Children of Heth. (Heth is a son of Canaan.) The archaeologists who discovered the Anatolian Hittites in the 19th century initially identified them with these Biblical Hittites. Today the identification of the Biblical peoples with either the Hattusa-based empire or the Neo-Hittite kingdoms is a matter of dispute.
The Hittite kingdom was commonly called the Land of Hatti by the Hittites themselves. The fullest expression is "The Land of the City of Hattusa". This description could be applied to either the entire empire, or more narrowly just to the core territory, depending on context. The word "Hatti" is actually an Akkadogram, rather than Hittite; it is never declined according to Hittite grammar rules. Despite the use of "Hatti", the Hittites should be distinguished from the Hattians, an earlier people who inhabited the same region until the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, and spoke a non-Indo-European language called Hattic. The Hittites themselves referred to their language as Nesili (or in one case, Kanesili), an adverbial form meaning "in the manner of (Ka)nesa", presumably reflecting a high concentration of Hittite speakers in the ancient city of Kanesh (modern Kültepe, Turkey). Many modern city names in Turkey are first recorded under their Hittite names, such as Sinop and Adana, reflecting the contiguity of modern Anatolia with its ancient past.