Archaeological Museum, Urfa

The neighbouring southeastern cities of ‘Glorious’ Urfa and ‘Warrior’ Antep are fearfully competitive, regularly arguing over everything from their respective claims to glory in the Independence War to who grows the best pistachio nuts. No surprise, then, that Antep’s acclaimed Zeugma Museum should have triggered spasms of envy on its opening in 2011 down the road in Urfa. All Urfa was delighted when excavations in the city’s Haleplibahce neighbourhood uncovered some truly magnificent 2nd century mosaics of its own.

But while the Urfa mosaics, housed in a building of their own, are impressive, it is the museum’s neolithic displays that especially astound.  Here are wonderful pieces, notably the world’s oldest statue (about 10,000BC) which was uncovered in Urfa; carved leopards, boars and other creatures from Göbekli Tepe, and an entire precinct rescued from the now-submerged neolithic site at Nevali Cori.  Other periods in the region’s astonishingly rich history are also documented, not least basalt reliefs from the Sabaean moon cult at Harran.   The museum is a joy.

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