Yesemek

Yesemek is not a monument but a workshop: a basalt outcrop on a hillside where, from around the fourteenth century BCE and again under the Neo-Hittite kingdoms, sculptors quarried stone and roughed out figures for buildings across the region - and then, at some point, stopped and left. Several hundred pieces lie scattered across the slope in every stage of completion, from blocks with the barest outline pecked into them to nearly finished lions, sphinxes, mountain gods and gate figures needing only detail. That sequence is the value of the place: it is one of the few sites anywhere that shows how monumental sculpture of this period was actually made, from quarry face to almost-finished block, and over some 100,000 square metres it is the largest known stonemasonry workshop of the ancient Near East, with about three hundred pieces recovered so far. Paths run through the field of statues, which are left in place. It has been on Turkey's UNESCO tentative list since 2012, in bare hill country an hour and a half from Gaziantep.

What's there

• The unfinished statues - hundreds of blocks at every stage.
• The quarry face - where the basalt was cut.
• The lions and sphinxes - the recurring gate figures.
• The production sequence - rough-out to near-finished, side by side.

When to go

April to June and September to November; the hillside is bare and hot in summer. Low sun brings out the carving on the unfinished pieces.

Before you go

There is no shade and the paths are rough hillside. Interpretation is limited. Nothing here is finished or polished - that is the point, but visitors expecting monuments will be surprised. A car is needed.

Nearby

İslahiye is close; Gaziantep and its museums are an hour and a half north-east.

Key facts