We started our trip leaving Adana and traveling inland towards Hieropolis Castabala and Karatepe. Out of the two, Karatepe is more important and far more impressive. It's an open air museum on the location of a Hittite fortress of king Azatiwada in a beautiful setting of Karatepes-AslantaŹ national park. Historically it's very important since findings of bilingual inscriptions in Phoenician alphabet and Hitite (Luwian) hieroglyphs meant Luwian could finally be read/translated/understood.
The stone fundations of the fortress still stand while the brick walls have crumbled away. Yet, not offering much on the architectural part, it"s still an amazing treasure of reliefs and statues lovingly restored to the two entrances into the fortress. The inner walls of the gate-houses were adorned with sculptures of lions and sphinxes, inscriptions and reliefs, depicting cultural, mythological and daily-life scenes carved on blocks of basalt. More
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Who are you staring at? =P
King with Phoenician (lingua franca at that time) writing down his front:
Weather was absolutely miserable..
... which did not bother the sweet water crab going for a walk in the forrest some 100m above the water. Poor thing had to pretend to be a weird shaped leaf statue while we admired it =D It didn't even blink =P
Hieropolis Castabala offers a nice walk in a meadow like environs (if it's not pouring)
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