Karatepe-Aslantaş Museum and Archaeological Site

Karatepe-Aslantaş is a fortress from the last phase of the Hittite world, around 700 BC, in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains. Its ancient name was Azativataya. It stood on the western bank of the Ceyhan River, 20 kilometres from Kadirli in Osmaniye province, where it commanded two routes at once: the Akyol road used by Phoenician caravans and the river, along which cedar logs were rafted down to the Mediterranean for shipbuilding.

The place came to light in 1945–46. A team led by Professor H. Th. Bossert had heard rumours of a stone lion east of Kadirli. In February 1946 Bossert, the archaeologist Halet Çambel and Naci Kum, the director of the Adana Museum, reached the spot after a hard journey, the last part on horseback with a local schoolteacher as guide. What they found changed the field: the inscriptions here, written in Phoenician and in hieroglyphic Luwian, helped scholars decipher the latter.

Today the ruins are shown as an open-air museum among trees. Gateways framed by carved lions, reliefs and inscribed stones make it one of the most atmospheric Iron Age sites in Turkey.