Archaeologists have found a huge structure at a dig site known as the Kultepe mound in Turkey which dates back four-and-a-half thousand years. It is believed that the building belonged to an important ruler and may have even been a palace. It is the largest building ever found in Anatolia or the Middle East.

Kultepe is an ancient mound covering the Bronze Age city of Kanesh in the district of Kayseri which spans 500 metres in diameter and rises 20 metres above ground level. It was known to archaeologists during the 19 th century but didn’t attract much attention until the discovery of more than a thousand Cappadocian tablets in Old Assyrian cuneiform writing, dating from the 2 nd millennium BC.

Thousands of artefacts have been recovered from the site but none as large as the latest discovery. “There is not such a huge building like this in Anatolia and Middle East. We are only at the certain part of the building right now. We will see an enormous structure once we discover it all. This is not a private house. It is most probably an administrative body. We believe that this is a building where Kanis King lives or governs his kingdom,” said Professor Fikri Kuloglu, archaeologist at Ankara University and head of the Kultepe archaeological excavation.

The ancient city of Kanesh has been inhabited since the mid-third millennium BC and is believed to have been the centre of a wealthy kingdom that benefited from a nearby crossing of important trade routes. The cuneiform tablets make reference to the systematic and international trade taking place in those times, however, concrete evidence of this has not yet been uncovered. Archaeologists hope that further excavation will reveal substantial evidence of trade activities in the future.

By April Holloway