Archaeologists working in Turkey have discovered a giant statue of a Neo-Hittite king that dates back 3,000 years.

The partly broken sculpture of the king’s head and torso stands nearly five feet tall, and the full sculpture may have been more than 10 feet, said Timothy P. Harrison, an archaeologist from the University of Toronto who was part of the team that made the discovery.

The piece demonstrates that creativity and intellect flourished in the Iron Age, though cities and kingdoms were small and independent — unlike the centralized system of the earlier Bronze Age. “This counters our intuition that big empires are what produced creativity,” Dr. Harrison said.