Arslantepe Mound

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Arslantepe Mound, 2021); A 30 Metre Tell Occupied From About 6000 BC, Holding The Earliest Known Palace Complex · Malatya, Malatya

A thirty-metre mound outside Malatya holds one of the most consequential excavations in the Near East, and almost nobody has heard of it. From about 3300 BC, a thousand years before anything comparable elsewhere, the people here built a complex of corridors, storerooms and painted halls that archaeologists call a palace because nothing else describes it - a centralised building for administering and redistributing grain, with mass-produced bowls stacked in the stores as the ration containers. It is the earliest evidence anywhere of a state doing what states do. In one room the Italian team that has dug here since 1961 found nine swords of arsenical bronze, made around 3300 BC: the oldest swords in the world. UNESCO inscribed the mound in 2021. What you see on site is mud-brick walls under protective shelters and a good visitor centre; the swords are in the Malatya museum, which is the other half of the visit.

Orduzu Mahallesi, Arslantepe Hoyugu, Battalgazi, Malatya, Malatya, Turkiye

Open daily with longer summer hours and an earlier winter close. The excavation is under protective shelters and access to sections depends on the season and on conservation work. MALATYA WAS ONE OF THE PROVINCES WORST HIT BY THE FEBRUARY 2023 EARTHQUAKES - confirm what is open, including the city museum that holds the finds, before travelling.

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