Fasıllar monument

The carved stone

The fallen block carries a composition of two divine figures above one another with lions below. The municipal heritage book records it near Fasıllar and places the village east of Beyşehir. Its scale and sculptural programme make it one of the basin’s most conspicuous Bronze Age remains.^[1]

The monument has often been discussed in connection with Eflatunpınar, but whether it was originally intended to be installed there remains debated. Treating it as a completed part of Eflatunpınar erases that uncertainty. The Fasıllar area also preserves traces of other periods, which must be dated separately.^[2][3]

A longer archaeological landscape

Surface survey around Fasıllar identified settlement evidence extending back to the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The monument is therefore a prominent object within a much longer landscape, rather than the beginning of occupation in the area.^[4]

Scale, survey and interpretation

The Ministry of Culture's site description places the recumbent monument on a slope south of Fasıllar village and records a block about 8.3 metres long, 2.75 metres wide and 2.25 metres thick. Those dimensions convey the labour involved in quarrying and carving it. The same description notes areas left without fine detail. Such incomplete carving raises questions about production and intended display, but it does not establish where the stone would finally have stood or which particular ruler commissioned it.^[5]

The monument is not the only archaeological evidence in its neighbourhood. Yiğit Erbil and Elif Ünlü's surface survey studied Early Bronze Age ceramics at Çemçem, Karahisar and Yazyurdu II mounds, and considered settlement distribution and routes. These are earlier communities than the Hittite relief; their pottery cannot be read as a direct record of the monument's makers. A history of Fasıllar therefore needs both the conspicuous carved stone and the less visible, separately dated settlement evidence.^[6]