Arslantepe, Malatya’s 8,000-year-old archaeological site, is a Neolithic mound where several settlements have been uncovered, one on top of the other. A monumental area where state society was born, Arslantepe has been recently included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Located at a privileged point in the fertile Malatya Plain, Arslantepe is a 30-meter-tall mound of about 4.5 hectares created by the superimposition of settlements built on top of each other for millennia. It is situated some 12 kilometres from the west bank of the Euphrates River, and flanked by the slopes of the Anti-Taurus Mountain range on the other side.

Arslantepe was occupied in the 6th and 5th millennia BCE, but its most prominent and flourishing period was the 4th millennium when the palace complex was constructed. The Hittites called Arslantepe “Malatiya,” while in late Assyrian and Urartu sources it is referred to as “Melid”, “Meliddu” or “Meliteya.”

One of the largest mounds of Türkiye, Arslantepe is believed to have been home to many civilizations over several millennia. Evidence implies a short occupation in the Neo-Assyrian period, and the site was reoccupied in the Roman era to be ultimately used as a cemetery in the Byzantine period.

Arslantepe shows fundamental changes in human relations during the period of state formation, which involved Eastern Anatolian and Mesopotamian societies in the course of the entire 4th millennium BCE. The site is an exceptional testimony to the first emergence of state society in the Near East, originally related with the great 4th-millennium Uruk civilization. This interchange of cultural traditions and social values resulted in the emergence of new social and political systems based on hierarchies, social differences, economic privileges, and new power relations. These, in turn, led to new developments in monumental architecture, administrative technology, and iconography of power in artistic representation.