Academics come to Kultepe to learn about archaelogy

Many archaeologists come to Turkey’s Anatolian region and learn archaeology there, Kultepe Hoyuk excavation president Professor Fikri Kulakoglu said. "There are many archaeologists from the United States, Germany and Japan who come to Turkey to learn more [about] archaeology." They choose Turkey because Anatolia is known as the bridge of civilizations, he added. Many foreign archaeologists take part in Turkish excavations, he added. There are many ruins in Kultepe, he said. "Kultepe was a center where the history of Anatolia began." Assyrian traders came to Kultepe 4,000 years ago and brought literacy to the people there and, thanks to them, Anatolia entered into written history for the first time. "New excavations show that the 4,000-year-old history can be traced back to an earlier time. We can talk about a 4,400-year-old history here. So far, 23,500 cuneiform tablets have been found in excavations here but Kultepe is a very large area. Maybe only 1 percent of this area has been excavated so far. Therefore the number of these tablets will reach a few thousand. This is the biggest collection in the whole of Asia. Now the Culture and Tourism Ministry has started work to include the Kultepe tablets on the UNESCO World Heritage List. We hope that these tablets will enter the list, after the Bogazkoy tablets." Kulakoglu added that this year they would dig the depot of the palace and hoped to find new and different artifacts there.