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Written by Andrew Loral
A 600-year-old Ottoman endowment inscription carved directly into natural bedrock has been restored in Amasya, northern Türkiye. Dating to 1418, the Bayezid Pasha foundation text is now readable again after years of damage, and experts say it may represent the only known example of a waqf inscription carved into living rock anywhere in the world.
Visitors to the Zeugma Mosaic Museum in Gaziantep can now experience one of the institution’s most remarkable masterpieces from a completely new perspective. A specially constructed viewing platform allows the public to approach the museum’s approximately 2,000-year-old bronze statue of Mars more closely than ever before. The museum, established in 2011 across a 30,000-square-meter complex
In the rural landscape of central Anatolia, a solitary rock formation near İncesu village in Seydişehir, Konya Province, carries both an archaeological legacy and a local legend. Known as “Dümdüm Rock,” the site preserves a rock-cut tomb attributed to the Phrygian period—an era that shaped much of Anatolia’s early Iron Age cultural identity. What sets
For decades, visitors have come to Stratonikeia for its marble streets, its vast gymnasium, and the memory of gladiators who once fought in its arena. Soon, they may also come for the sound of a hammer striking copper, or the smell of fresh bread from a village oven. At the entrance of the ancient city
A quiet sanctuary overlooking the rugged slopes of Yuntdağı has revealed an extraordinary testimony to ancient ritual life. Archaeologists working at the Demeter–Kore Temple in Aigai have uncovered approximately 3,000 small terracotta water vessels known as hydriskoi — one of the most substantial votive accumulations ever documented at the site. The excavation, conducted for the
Mount Ararat is often presented as a question. Did the Ark land there — or not? But a new academic study suggests we may have been asking the wrong question all along. Instead of searching for frozen timber beneath glaciers, the 2025 research turns to something more complex: how one mountain carries three different sacred
Fresh fossil discoveries in central Türkiye are offering new insight into Anatolia’s deep-time biodiversity. Excavations near the Yamula Dam locality in Kayseri have yielded 103 new fossil fragments during the 2025 field season—remains that researchers believe may belong to a younger species than those previously documented at the site. The finds come from the Çevril–Taşhan
The Hatay Archaeology Museum in southern Türkiye—severely damaged during the devastating February 6, 2023 earthquakes—will reopen in stages, with full public access planned by the end of 2026, officials have confirmed. Before the disaster, the museum housed approximately 37,000 artifacts, including an internationally renowned collection of Roman and Byzantine mosaics. Following the earthquakes, the artifacts
A charred scrap of fabric from western Anatolia is forcing archaeologists to rethink the technological sophistication of the Bronze Age. At Beycesultan Höyük, a major mound settlement in inland western Türkiye, researchers have identified the earliest known indigo-dyed textile in Bronze Age Anatolia—alongside the region’s first evidence of a complex single-needle knitting technique known as
In central Anatolia, near modern Nevşehir, the Topada Inscription preserves one of the most important royal inscriptions of the 8th century BCE. Commissioned by Wasusarma, king of Tabal, and carved in Hieroglyphic Luwian, the monument documents a regional war involving eight rival kings and reflects the shifting balance of power under the expanding shadow of
A routine morning on Lake İznik turned unexpectedly archaeological this week, when a fisherman’s net surfaced not with carp or perch—but with what appears to be a historic clay jar. The incident occurred along the shores of Göllüce, a neighborhood on the western edge of the lake in Bursa, northwestern Türkiye. As drought conditions continue
