The city of Hartapu: results of the Turkmen-Karahoyuk Intensive Survey Project

Abstract

The Turkmen-Karahoyuk Intensive Survey Project (TISP) has identified the archaeological site of Turkmen-Karahoyuk on the Konya plain as a previously unknown Iron Age capital city in the western region of Tabal. Surface collections and newly discovered inscriptional evidence indicate that this city is the early first-millennium royal seat of 'Great King Hartapu', long known from the enigmatic monuments of nearby Kizildag and Karadag. In addition to demonstrating this Iron Age city's existence, supported principally by (1) the site's size at the time and (2) the discovery of a royal inscription authored by Hartapu himself, TISP has documented the site's existence from the Late Chalcolithic period until the late first millennium BCE, with a maximum size reached between the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods, suggesting that the city was at its greatest extent and the regional political centre from at least the late second to the mid-first millennium BCE.