Explore The Euphrates and Tigris basin
This artificial, 16,000-square-metre settlement mound, dating back to the fourth millennium BC, has been meticulously excavated by Italian archeologists from Rome University since 1962. Work on turning the site into an open-air museum was approaching completion in the summer of 2009, and it’s possible the pair of Hittite stone lions found here (now in Ankara’s Anatolian Civilizations Museum) will be returned – as will the finds currently housed in Malatya’s archeological museum.
The best of the remains are a vast, fourth-millennium BC palace complex, built of mud bricks on a stone foundation. Also unusual are a pair of wall-paintings from approximately 3200 BC, and a mosaic-style section of Hittite-era flooring from a palace on the northeast side of the mound. The site is attractively surrounded by a veritable sea of apricot trees.
