Archaeologists at the Neolithic sanctuary of Göbeklitepe unearthed a rare human statue embedded horizontally within a room wall between Structures B and D, interpreting the figure—laid on its back—as a votive offering.
“This human statue was found mounted horizontally on a wall inside a room and is thought to have been placed as an offering,” said Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, according to Anadolu Agency.
Ersoy announced the discovery while touring the 12,000-year-old World Heritage site with Japan’s Princess Akiko Mikasa. Excavation director Necmi Karul told the delegation that the statue’s head and torso were intact, though its feet were missing, and its placement in the wall suggested ritual deposition.
Ersoy compared the find with earlier sculptures from Karahantepe and Urfa Castle, both part of the Stone Hills Project, where ten Neolithic sites are under investigation by 36 institutions and 220 experts.
Restoration teams re-erected standing stones—some six meters tall—in Structure C, using materials compatible with the originals, including a goat-hair mortar. About 1,000 olive trees now form a green buffer around the mound, and geomagnetic surveys scheduled for next month will inform future digs. A visitor center, parking area and walking paths are expected by late 2025.
Last year’s exhibition Göbeklitepe: The Mystery of a Sacred Place at Rome’s Colosseum attracted more than six million visitors. A new show, Myths on Stone: Göbeklitepe and the World of Last Hunters, will open at Berlin’s James-Simon Gallery from 5 February to 31 July, featuring 96 artifacts from the Şanlıurfa Museum collections.
Ersoy described Göbeklitepe as “the common heritage of humanity” and thanked Princess Akiko for Japan’s support of Anatolian archaeology.
Göbeklitepe dates from roughly 9600 to 8200 BCE. Its concentric T-shaped limestone pillars carved with wild animals have challenged assumptions about the shift from foraging to farming societies, revealing complex ritual behavior among hunter-gatherers well before the rise of Mesopotamian cities.
Karul cautioned that interpreting the new statue would take time, noting that statues were frequent in the Neolithic period but that one laid on its back inside a wall was unprecedented at the site. Conservators are stabilizing the fragile sculpture while specialists document its context.
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