Göbeklitepe Complete Visiting Guide: The 9600 BC Enclosures, T-Pillars and Tips

Located eighteen kilometres north-east of central Şanlıurfa at the highest point of the Germuş mountain range, UNESCO-listed Göbeklitepe ("Potbelly Hill") is the single most revolutionary archaeological discovery of the past century. Until German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began excavating the artificial mound in 1995, historians believed that humans only developed organized religion, monumental stone architecture and specialized craftsmanship after inventing agriculture, pottery and permanent cities. Göbeklitepe flipped that timeline on its head: carbon-dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period between 9600 BC and 8200 BC (11,600 years ago), these monumental stone enclosures were quarried, dragged and carved using only flint stone tools by prehistoric hunter-gatherers, 6,500 years before Stonehenge and 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid of Giza.

How the Visitor Center, Shuttle and Canopy Walk Work

To protect the fragile limestone, private cars and buses park at the Göbeklitepe Visitor Center at the foot of the hill. Your admission ticket includes a free 3-minute ride on the electric park shuttle up to the summit, where an architectural tensioned-membrane canopy covers the main excavation trench. Follow the circular wooden boardwalk clockwise around the four main excavated circular enclosures:

• Why the Pillars Are T-Shaped: look closely at the narrow sides of the 5.5-metre-tall central twin pillars inside Enclosure D. The T-shape is actually a stylized human body seen from the side, the horizontal top bar is the head, and carved in low relief down the vertical shaft are two human arms with long fingers meeting over the stomach above an engraved belt with a fox-skin loincloth.
• Pillar 43 & The 3D Predator: using your phone camera zoom (or binoculars), spot Pillar 43 on the northern wall of Enclosure D, carved with a vulture holding a sphere (or sun) above its wing, a scorpion and a headless man; and on Pillar 27 in Enclosure C, a three-dimensional high-relief stone predator (lion or leopard) crawling vertically down the side of the pillar.

Best Time of Day to Visit & Getting There on Bus 100

Arrive either at early in the morning right at opening time or at in the afternoon to Sunset, when the low evening sun streams horizontally under the canopy roof and turns the limestone pillars golden over the vast Mesopotamian horizon. To get there without a car, board Municipal Bus 100 from Abide Junction (Abide Parkı) in central Şanlıurfa.