Donuktaş in Tarsus is the podium of an unfinished Roman temple, read by earlier travellers as the tomb of an Assyrian king. The medieval traveller V. Langlois described it as the tomb of the Assyrian king Sardanapalus. The German archaeologist Robert Koldewey examined it between 1888 and 1890, and the French archaeologist Charles Texier excavated afterwards; a finger thought to belong to a large statue was found here.
The most serious research was begun in 1985 by the Tarsus Museum and Nezahat Baydur. The scientific excavations, which ended in 1992, uncovered a monumental building that is beyond doubt a temple. It is joined within a rectangular area running north-east to south-west by a square massive vaulted arch, and it was established that it stands on a base of twenty steps.
The building measures about 98 metres by 43 on the outside, with walls 8 metres high and up to 6.5 metres thick, and the main space was open above. The large number of marble panels found in the excavation suggests the outside was faced in marble. The walls were made by binding compacted gravel with Roman concrete. An altar was also identified, and the ramp and the cella walls suggest a temple on a high podium.
When it was built cannot be fixed from direct evidence. Working from a capital and other architectural pieces, it has been proposed that construction began in the second century AD and was never finished, and that in Tarsus — then the capital of Cilicia — it was a temple of the regional league, standing for the union of the region. Another proposal is that it was dedicated to Sandan, the founder and chief god of Tarsus, also called Sandon, Herakles and Baal-Tarz; and because those gods were identified with Jupiter under Rome, it has also been thought to have been built as a temple of Jupiter.
Getting there
- Access
- City transport reaches it.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Mersin as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 10.4 °C in January to 28.5 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, October and November; rainfall is heaviest in December (137 mm) and lightest in August (7 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
