Karatepe-Aslantaş Open-Air Museum

Listen first. Wind moves through the pine trees, and somewhere below you water lies still behind a dam. The ground under your feet is a mix of needles, dust and old stone. In the shade, the air smells of resin. This hilltop in the forests of Osmaniye feels quiet, almost private. Yet nearly three thousand years ago, it was a fortress where a local ruler carved his name into stone and announced to the world that he had brought peace to his land.

You are standing at Karatepe, which means 'Black Hill' in Turkish. The ancient name of the fortress was Azatiwataya, named after the man who built it, a ruler called Azatiwada. He lived around the eighth century before Christ, in the period that historians call Neo-Hittite. That label needs a short explanation. The great Hittite Empire of central Anatolia collapsed around 1200 BC. In its place, smaller kingdoms rose across southern Turkey and northern Syria. They kept parts of the old Hittite culture, art and language alive for centuries.

Azatiwada was not a king himself. His own inscriptions describe him as a servant of a king named Awariku, who ruled the plain of Adana to the west. The inscriptions also mention the 'house of Mopsos', a royal line connected to a figure that Greek legends remember as a wandering seer. Here, legend and history touch. The texts on these stones do not prove the Greek stories, but they show that the name Mopsos was known and respected in this corner of the ancient world.

Now for the reason scholars around the world know this hill. Azatiwada had his message carved in two languages and two scripts, side by side. One version is in Phoenician, an alphabet that scholars could already read. The other version is in Luwian, a language related to Hittite, written in hieroglyphs. Before Karatepe, those hieroglyphs were only partly understood. A long parallel text in a known language changed that.

Think of the Rosetta Stone in Egypt, which helped scholars read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Karatepe played a similar role for Anatolian hieroglyphs. By comparing the two versions line by line, researchers could confirm the sounds and meanings of many signs. That breakthrough opened up inscriptions found across Turkey and Syria. So when you look at these carved signs, you are looking at one of the keys that unlocked the voices of a whole lost civilisation.

The discovery came in the 1940s. The German scholar Helmuth Theodor Bossert and the Turkish archaeologist Halet Çambel reached this hill after hearing local reports of a carved lion stone. Excavations soon uncovered the gates and their inscriptions. Bahadır Alkım, another Turkish archaeologist, also worked closely on the early digs. The work took place far from roads and towns, in rough forest country, with equipment carried up the slopes.

Halet Çambel deserves a moment of her own. Before she became an archaeologist, she was an athlete. In 1936, she competed in fencing at the Berlin Olympics, and she is remembered as the first Muslim woman to take part in the Olympic Games. Later, she spent decades at Karatepe. She did not want the reliefs taken away to a distant museum. She pushed to keep them here, in place, where they were carved. That decision is why you can see them in their original setting today.

Walk toward one of the two monumental gates. The fortress had a northern gate and a southern gate, and both were lined with large carved slabs called orthostats. An orthostat is simply an upright stone slab set at the base of a wall. Look at the guardians at the entrance. Lions and sphinxes stand on either side, with heavy bodies and wide eyes. They were meant to protect the gate and impress anyone who came through it.

Then let your eyes move along the slabs. The carvings show scenes from daily and courtly life. You can find a banquet, with figures seated before food. There are musicians, hunters and animals. One well-known slab shows a ship with oars, a rare image of seafaring from this inland hill. Another shows a woman nursing a child. The style is lively and a little rough, mixing local taste with influences from Assyria, Phoenicia and Egypt.

Here is something many visitors miss. Some slabs look unfinished or uneven in quality. Scholars think several different workshops or carvers worked on the gates, each with its own hand. Compare two neighbouring reliefs and you may notice differences in how faces, hair or clothing are cut. The reliefs also sit under protective roofs today. These shelters keep rain and sun off the soft stone, so the carvings can survive for future visitors.

In the text itself, Azatiwada speaks with confidence. He says he filled the storehouses, built fortresses, and made the land safe, so that a woman could walk alone on the roads without fear. It is a ruler's propaganda, of course. But it also tells us what people valued: food, security and freedom of movement. Near the gates, you can also see a large statue of the storm god, a major deity in this region, standing on a base carved with bulls.

The setting today is very different from the ancient one. The hill lies inside Karatepe-Aslantaş National Park, a protected area of pine forest. Below, the Ceyhan River has been held back by the Aslantaş Dam, and its reservoir now fills the valley. Across the water stands another ancient hill, Domuztepe, which was also settled in antiquity. In Azatiwada's time, this fortress guarded a river crossing and the routes between the mountains and the plain.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment by the gate. Look at the lion's mouth, the lines of hieroglyphs, the shadows the pines throw across the stone. Somewhere in these marks, a man from long ago is still telling you that his land was at peace. As you walk back down through the trees, listen again for the wind, and notice how quiet this place has become.