Yesemek Open-Air Museum and Sculpture Workshop

Über den Ort

Site that served as the largest stone quarry and sculpture workshop of the Near East between the 14th and 7th centuries BC. Unfinished sphinxes, lions and orthostats carved in the Hittite, Hurrian and Late Hittite periods are displayed on the hillside where they were cut. The workshop was abandoned after the Assyrians destroyed the Kingdom of Sam'al in the 8th century BC. Discovered in 1890, it became an open-air museum in 2005 and was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2012.