Sitting near an ancient church built on a hill high above the temple, archaeologist Aytac Coskun says the first time he saw the place, he knew he had to excavate.1
A tour of the site reveals some what he and his team have excavated in recent years — a sprawling rock altar, an underground church, a water canal stretching for at least several miles.
Coskun and his team have unearthed objects including a beautifully preserved and ornately decorated Roman-era bronze baptismal bucket and an Assyrian-era stamp, a kind of official seal carved into rock, that could date back some 3,000 years.2
Coskun believes some 1,500 people, both military and civilian, lived here during times of peace. In wartime, he says, it's likely that some 10,000 people from the surrounding area came here to seek shelter.
That, he says, may help explain the expansive underground living areas. So far, he says they've excavated six residential complexes inside the castle walls, and there are 99 more still below the surface.
That's just one reason Coskun says this site has the potential to change modern understanding of this part of the world and its archaeological and architectural history.3
Excavations, he says, could continue for another 30 years.
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- 1. "I first came to Diyarbakir in 2005," says Coskun, "and when I saw this hill, I saw some pieces of artifacts, and I knew no excavation had been done before. So as soon as I saw it, I knew it had to be a dig because there must be something significant underneath."
- 2. "The digging we're doing inside the castle walls is 57,000 square meters [68,171 square yards]," he says. "It's a huge area. And outside of it...is (something) like 10 million square meters [3.86 square miles]."
- 3. "It's totally open to new discoveries, that's for sure," he says. "We don't know what else we'll find. We've only dug around 10% of the area on the surface within the castle walls. And beyond the castle walls," he adds, "you see more living areas, the canal, a necropolis where the leading families buried their dead, and ceremonial areas. So, there will be more to come."
