The Discovery and Excavation of Boğazköy/Hattusha

1834	On July 28 Charles Texier discovers the ruins of Hattusha. Believing he has found Pteria, a city of the Medes, he makes drawings of reliefs at Yazılıkaya and some of the city ruins, and prepares a rough plan of the city.

1836	William J. Hamilton makes a day's excursion to Hattusha, where he does various drawing, including a plan of Temple 1. He is convinced that the ruins represent the Galatian/Roman city Tavium.
1858	Heinrich Barth and Andreas D. Mordtmann senior make drawings of the ruins of Temple 1 and have the reliefs in the smaller Chamber B at Yazılıkaya cleared.
1861	Georges Perrot, Edmont Guillaume and Jules Delbet prepare more accurate drawings of the Yazılıkaya relief sculpture, and publish the first photographs of Yazılıkaya, Yenicekale and the Nişantaş inscription.
1864	Henry J. van Lennep prepares new drawings of Yazılıkaya.
1882	Karl Humann prepares a topographic plan and takes plaster molds of many of the Yazılıkaya reliefs.
1893-94	Ernst Chantre opens exploratory trenches in the Great Temple, on Büyükkale and in Yazılıkaya. He publishes the first cuneiform tablets from the Hattusha.
1906	Hugo Winckler and Theodor Makridi begin excavating on behalf of the Ottoman Museum in Istanbul on Büyükkale and make sondages in various other places. 2500 fragments of cuneiform tablets recovered here first identify the city as the Hittite capital Hattusha.
1907	Continuation of the excavations in cooperation with the German Institute of Archaeology and the German Oriental Society. The first real documentation of the ruins, complete with many plans and photos, is compiled and a more accurate topographic map prepared.

1911-12	Winckler and Makridi conduct shorter excavation campaigns.
1915	With the aid of the cuneiform tablets from Bogazköy, Bedrich Hrozný is able to decipher the Hittite language.
1931-39 and 1952 to the present	The German Institute Archaeology , for many years with the cooperation of the German Oriental Society as well, conducts excavations; the successive directors have been Kurt Bittel (through 1977), Peter Neve (1978-1993), Jürgen Seeher (1994-2005) and Andreas Schachner. Nearly all the remains of the Hittite Royal Citadel on Büyükkale have been cleared, and large-scale excavation has exposed wide areas of the settlement in the Lower City, the Great Temple, the temple precinct in the Upper City and its surroundings, as well as on the high spur of Büyükkaya. Excavation on a smaller scale has been carried out in various other locations within the city and in the immediate surroundings, as well as in the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya.