A shrine built more than 3000 years ago in what is now Turkey may be a symbolic representation of the cosmos, according to a new interpretation.

It has now been suggested that the elite of the Hittite society, an empire that dominated what is now Turkey between 1700 and 1100 BC until it was destroyed, created the Yaz谋l谋kaya shrine to embody their ideas about how the universe was organised.

Yaz谋l谋kaya contains many images in rock relief, and the researchers behind the new interpretation argue that these have symbolic meanings relating to the underworld, earth and sky, as well as to cycles of nature like the seasons.

鈥淭here are many connotations with the names of the deities and the arrangements and groups, and so in retrospect it鈥檚 pretty easy to figure it out,鈥� says Eberhard Zangger, president of , an international non-profit foundation. 鈥淏ut we worked on it for seven years.鈥�

鈥淭hey may be onto something,鈥� says at the University of Reading in the UK. 鈥淚鈥檓 not convinced of all the details, but very interested in the whole thing.鈥�

Yaz谋l谋kaya is an open-air shrine and was one of the most important sites of the Hittite Empire. The remains of the Hittite capital 岣猘ttu拧a can be found near the modern village of Bo臒azkale in central Turkey. Yaz谋l谋kaya is within walking distance of the ancient capital.

At Yaz谋l谋kaya, the Hittites carved and modified natural rock outcrops to create two roofless spaces, decorated with rock relief images of their deities. They used the site for centuries; its present form dates from about 1230 BC.

It isn鈥檛 clear why the Hittites built Yaz谋l谋kaya or what they used it for. Many ideas have been proposed 鈥� for instance, that one of the spaces was used in new year ceremonies, and that the other was a mausoleum for a Hittite king.

In 2019, Zangger and his colleague at the University of Basel in Switzerland suggested that some of the carvings of gods might be a calendar, able to track both solar years and lunar months. Such a calendar would have been centuries ahead of its time, and the interpretation was greeted with scepticism.

Now, the pair and their colleagues have taken a new tack. Instead of focusing on the possible uses of the carvings, the researchers have considered what these might have meant to the Hittites.

鈥淭hey had a certain image of how creation happened,鈥� says Zangger. He says the Hittites imagined that the world began in chaos, which became organised into three levels: 鈥渢he underworld, and then the earth on which we walk, and then the sky鈥�.

As part of this, Zangger says the Hittites would have highlighted the circumpolar stars, which never sink below the horizon. He argues that one prominent group of deities in Yaz谋l谋kaya represents the circumpolar stars. 鈥淭here are images like that in Egypt,鈥� he says, and the Hittites were influenced by many neighbouring societies, including Egypt. Other carvings may have links to the earth and the underworld.

The second aspect of Hittite cosmology was 鈥渞ecurrent renewal of life鈥�, says Zangger 鈥� for instance, day following night, the dark moon turning into a full moon and winter becoming summer. The calendar-like carvings reflect this cyclical view of nature, he argues.

鈥淎s an idea, it鈥檚 not far-fetched,鈥� says at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. Other cultures, ranging from nearby Mesopotamia to distant Mesoamerica, used religious monuments to link terrestrial life with the wider universe. 鈥淥bviously that makes sense, because that鈥檚 exactly what religion does. It addresses universal concerns and the place of the people in the world,鈥� she says.

However, Boutsikas is concerned that many of the team鈥檚 interpretations of the images aren鈥檛 based on Hittite texts, which say little about astronomy. Instead, the researchers have often used texts from Mesopotamian societies, which influenced the Hittites but were also distinct. She says the evidence would be stronger if similar links between gods and astronomy could be found at other Hittite sites.

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