Karatepe

Karatepe, ("Black Hill") is a Late Hittite fortress and open air museum in Osmaniye Province in southern Turkey. [The site lies at a distance of about 23 km from the district center of Kadirli.] It is sited in the Taurus Mountains, on the right bank of the Ceyhan River. The site (Latitude: 37.258801N Longitude: 36.247601E) is contained within Karatepe-Arslantaş National Park.

The place was an ancient city of Cilicia which controlled a passage from eastern Anatolia to the north Syrian plain. It became an important Neo-Hittite center after the collapse of the Hittite Empire in the late 12th century BCE. The ruins of the walled city of king Azitawadda were excavated from 1947 onwards [ The first preliminary report of the Karatepe excavations summed up the results of three campaigns (Autumn 1947, Spring and Autumn 1948): H. Th. Bossert, U. B. Alkim, H. Cambel, N. Ogunsu, I. Suzen. "Karatepe Kazilari (Birinci On-Rapor). Die Ausgrabungen auf dem Karatepe (erster Vorbericht)"] onwards by Helmuth T. Bossert and Halet Çambel. Relics found here include vast historic tablets, statues and ruins, even two monumental gates with reliefs on the sills depicting hunting and warring and a boat with oars; pillars of lions and sphinxes flank the gates.

The site's eighth-century BCE bilingual inscriptions, in Phoenician and Hieroglyphic Luwian, which trace the kings of Adana from the "house of Mopsos", given in hieroglyphic Luwian as Moxos and in Phoenician as Mopsos in the form "mps", have served archaeologists as a Rosetta stone for deciphering Hieroglyphic Luwian.

Recent usage

In the 2004 exploration of Mars, "Karatepe" was the name given to a site designated for entering the Endurance crater to investigate the layering of the bedrock.

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