Ancient Çorum: From the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Period

The lands of Çorum have a layered ancient history that begins long before Hattusa, the Hittite Empire’s capital. According to Çorum Tarihi (Turkish, “History of Çorum”), the region passed successively through city-states, Assyrian trading colonies, the Hittites, Phrygians, Persians, and, in the Hellenistic period, the kingdoms of Cappadocia, Pontus and the Galatians (Çorum Tarihi, p. 19, 47). Since Hittite political history is covered in detail on the Hattusa page, this page focuses on what the book reports specifically about the region — prehistoric settlements, city-states, trade and the road network, and Phrygian/Persian/Hellenistic administration.

Prehistory: Chalcolithic settlements

According to the book, no firm conclusions can be drawn about Palaeolithic or Neolithic settlement in the Çorum region, but genuine settlement began and intensified in the late phase of the Chalcolithic period (roughly 4000-3000 BC). Chalcolithic pottery and copper objects have turned up at nearly every excavated site in the region — Büyük Güllücek, Boğazköy, Alacahöyük, Eskiyapar, Kayapınar, Kuşsaray — though at Pazarlı there was a long gap after the Chalcolithic, with the next settlement only in the Phrygian period (Çorum Tarihi, p. 23). Finds from excavations at Büyük Güllücek village near Alaca resemble Bulgaria’s Karanovo culture and the İkiztepe site on the Black Sea coast; the book takes this as evidence that economic ties between the Balkans and Central Anatolia go back to the Chalcolithic period (Çorum Tarihi, p. 23-24).

City-states and the Bronze Age

The existence of at least 17 city-states in Anatolia in the 3rd millennium BC is known from an Akkadian text found at Boğazköy; excavations have shown that some of these city-states existed within the borders of today’s Çorum (Çorum Tarihi, p. 13, 23). Over the phases of the Early Bronze Age, these city-states grew wealthy as objects made of bronze — at first rare — became more widespread. The 13 “royal tombs” uncovered in 1935 by Remzi Oğuz Arık and Hamit Zübeyr Koşay at Höyük village in Alaca district — gold cups, a dagger of meteoric iron, silver-inlaid bull and stag figures, and sun discs — date to the Early Bronze II/III period (roughly 2500-2000 BC) and illustrate the economic power of the era (Çorum Tarihi, p. 24-25). Excavations at nearby Eskiyapar also produced gold earrings with spiral motifs related to the Troy treasure (Çorum Tarihi, p. 25).

Assyrian trading colonies and the Karum of Hattush

In the early 2nd millennium BC, merchants from Mesopotamia, under Assyrian leadership, developed trade with Anatolia and founded market towns called “karum” alongside Anatolian cities. Caravans of 200-250 donkeys brought textiles, perfumed oils and tin from Assur, exchanged for the region’s leather, argentiferous lead, silver and gold (Çorum Tarihi, p. 27). One of the ten major market towns named in cuneiform documents left by these merchants was the Karum of Hattush, located at today’s Boğazköy (Hattusa); these karums, under Assyrian jurisdiction, paid tribute to local rulers in exchange for trade and safe passage (Çorum Tarihi, p. 18, 27). This trade profoundly influenced Anatolia culturally, economically and politically; Anatolia became acquainted with writing around 2000 BC (Çorum Tarihi, p. 18).

The Phrygian period

The book has no direct information on how the Phrygians, who succeeded the Hittites in the region, were governed; only the mention by the Assyrian king Sardun II of five allied Muski (Phrygian) kings suggests the Phrygians may have been organized as some kind of confederation (Çorum Tarihi, p. 16). Excavations across Çorum province show that Phrygian settlements — with the exception of Pazarlı — almost all sit atop earlier Hittite settlements: Boğazköy, Alacahöyük, Eskiyapar, Demircihöyük, Kalehisar and Kalınkaya (Çorum Tarihi, p. 38-39). Although Phrygian power was broken by the Cimmerian invasion in the early 7th century BC, the Phrygian settlement at Boğazköy remained a city of considerable size even by comparison with contemporary archaic Greek cities (Çorum Tarihi, p. 39). Phrygian inscriptions have been found at Alacahöyük and Pazarlı, and a Cybele altar at Kalehisar (Çorum Tarihi, p. 39).

The Persian period: the satrapy of Cappadocia

Under a treaty struck in 585 BC between the Median king Cyaxares and the Lydian king Alyattes, the Kızılırmak (Halys) river was accepted as the border, bringing Çorum’s territory under Median rule; the region then passed to Persian control when Cyrus II conquered the Median kingdom (Çorum Tarihi, p. 40-41). Under Darius the Great the empire was divided into 20 (elsewhere in the book also given as 23) satrapies; Çorum’s territory lay first between the Kızılırmak-bounded satrapy of Cappadocia and the satrapy of Phrygia, and from the reign of Darius II within the borders of Cappadocia after it was split in two (Greater Cappadocia and Pontic Cappadocia) (Çorum Tarihi, p. 15-16, 41-42). The Persians granted large estates to nobles and clergy especially in this region in a deliberate effort to “Persianize” it; according to the book, traces of the Persian religion of Ahura Mazda can still be sensed in some local fire-related customs (Çorum Tarihi, p. 16, 42).

The Hellenistic period: Cappadocia, Pontus and the Galatians

After Alexander put an end to the Persian Empire, the Cappadocians first declared independence under the Persian noble Ariarates, after which this kingdom passed to Macedonian generals and then back to the local dynasty. In the same period, Mithridates Ctistes, of Cius (Gemlik) origin, founded a separate kingdom in Pontic Cappadocia; from then on ancient writers referred to these two regions as the Kingdom of Pontus and the Kingdom of Cappadocia (Çorum Tarihi, p. 42-43). Among the Galatian tribes that crossed into Anatolia in 278 BC, the Trocmi settled in the Çorum and Yozgat area, with their capital at Tavium (today’s Büyük Nefes village, roughly 25 km southeast of Boğazköy). The Galatians were governed by a loose confederation under four “tetrarchs” and a popular assembly; they seized a third of the local population’s land and taxed production on the rest (Çorum Tarihi, p. 45-46). Per Sevim Uluç, the ruins at the place known today as Avkat, in Mecitözü, are identified with Euchaita, an important Galatian city in the time of the geographer Strabo (Çorum Tarihi, p. 46). After the Roman defeat of Pontic king Mithridates VI in 85 BC, the region was gradually absorbed into Rome, and Galatia was made a Roman province under Emperor Augustus (Çorum Tarihi, p. 46).

Road network and trade

The postal and road network set up by the Persian king Darius I revived routes that had existed since much earlier periods. The famous Royal Road that Herodotus describes, running from Sardis to Susa in Mesopotamia, passed through Ankara and, via the Kızılırmak, to the Cappadocian city of Pteria (which the book tentatively, and not without dispute, identifies with Boğazköy) and to Tavium, from where another branch turned north to Pontic Cappadocia (Çorum Tarihi, p. 20-21). The book also reports that one of the region’s notable export goods was the cehri plant (buckthorn), used to make dye; produced in Cappadocia and exported via the port of Sinop, it was known in ancient sources as “Sinop dye.” Grown in Çorum until three or four decades before the book’s 2020 edition, a batman (about 6 kg) of cehri once sold for a gold coin, before losing its importance with the spread of chemical dyes (Çorum Tarihi, p. 21-22). The region’s rich mineral deposits and agriculturally favourable geography formed the basis of production and trade throughout its history (Çorum Tarihi, p. 11).

Sources

• Çorum Tarihi (History of Çorum), 5th Hittite Festival Committee (Part 1, Section 1, by Sevim Uluç); ed. Çorum Municipality City Archive, 3rd ed., Çorum Municipality Cultural Publications, Çorum 2020, ISBN 978-605-84272-4-2, p. 9-58. https://www.corum.bel.tr/public/uploads/2026/01/corumtarihi.pdf