Main Gate Discovered at Harran Palace

SANLIURFA, TURKEY—The Anadolu Agency reports that Mehmet Önal of Harran University and his colleagues have unearthed the main gate at Harran Palace, which was built in southeastern Turkey in the ninth century A.D. First occupied around 6000 B.C., the city of Harran was situated along trade routes to cities such as Nineveh, Iskenderun, and Antioch. “The gate, around 23 feet high, is made of basalt stones,” Önal said. “Star motifs were also unearthed in our excavations near the ground.” Some of the basalt stones bear inscriptions written in Arabic, he added. A three-domed bathhouse dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has also been found among the hundreds of rooms at the medieval palace. To read about a first-century A.D. urban park at Aphrodisias in southwestern Turkey, go to "The Archaeology of Gardens: Urban Gardens."