Excavations resume in Arslantepe Mound

Excavations have resumed in Arslantepe Mound, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in the eastern province of Malatya.

One-third of the works that started in 1932 with the order of Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Türkiye, on the Arslantepe Mound, where the oldest city-state was founded, have been completed.

Arslantepe, home to the finds from the Late Chalcolithic Period to the Iron Age, hosted many civilizations from the Hittites to the Roman and Byzantine.

The mound from the Late Hittite Period has lion statues and an overturned king statue at the entrance. During the excavations in the past years, structures of the "first city-state" in Anatolia, with more than 2,000 seals and a mud-brick palace with a city infrastructure, such as the world's first rain drainage line, came to light.

This year's excavations started under the direction of Arslantepe Mound Honorary Excavation Committee head and Italian Sapienza University's Archaeology Department lecturer, Marcella Frangipane.

She noted that they carried out the restoration and conservation work before the excavation but that the work gained even greater importance after UNESCO inclusion, adding: "This is a mudbrick building and needs more attention."

Stating that the number of visitors to the mound increased after UNESCO added it to its list, Frangipane said, "There is a fortification wall at the entrance. It is 2,200-2,500 years old. We cleaned this fortification wall, and now we are carrying out restoration work. In addition, we worked on the wall on which there is a painting. It is in very good condition. This roof system is very good; the weather remains the same even if the climate changes. It is isolated, but we check it every year. The building is...