Guide
The Batman Museum, which comes under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, keeps the works recovered in rescue excavations carried out in the areas that will go under water once the Ilısu dam comes into service.
The museum is housed in the Batman culture centre building, though it has its own entrance. It has two floors covering some 1,500 square metres in all, and the works are displayed in three separate halls.
The collection is made up of finds of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic together with material recovered from the Ilısu and Hasankeyf areas. About five hundred objects are shown across the three large halls, and they come from seven rescue excavations. The most important of them are the gaming pieces and bronze grave goods uncovered at Başur Höyük, the standing stone found at Gusir Höyük, and a figure of the god Bes found at Hasankeyf.
Under a project carried out by the museum directorate, a model of prehistoric settlement was built in the garden so that visitors might learn by seeing and trying things for themselves. House models from the mounds of Gusir and Gre Amer were built there, and rituals of those periods, such as burying the dead within the house, were recreated inside them. Replicas of the Artuqid Gate at Hasankeyf and of the gaming pieces from Başur Höyük were also placed in the garden.
For those who want to see how archaeological excavation is done there are practice trenches, where professional archaeologists give visitors hands-on instruction. The museum also holds a projection room where documentaries about the excavations in the Batman and Siirt regions are shown, a library, and a laboratory where the works are restored.
