Huge Ancient Cave City Unearthed In Southeast Turkiye

Archaeologists stumbled upon the city under a city almost by chance after excavating house cellars in Midyat near the Syrian border, which led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of aces in 2020.

Through a basement door in southeastern Turkiye lies a sprawling underground city, perhaps the country's largest, which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century BC. Workers have already cleared over 50 underground rooms, all connected by 120 metres of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site's estimated 900,000 square meters area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkiye. Workers have already cleared over 50 underground rooms, all connected by 120 metres of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site's estimated 900,000 square meter area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkiye's southern Anatolia region. "Maybe even in the world", said Midyat conservation director Mervan Yavuz, who oversaw the excavation.

"To protect themselves from teh climate, enemies, predators and diseases, people took refuge in the caves, which they turned into an actual city. The historian traces the city's ancient beginnings to the region of King Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled the Noe Assyrian Empire from 883 to 859 BC. At its height in the seventh century BC, the empire stretched from the Gulf in the east to Egypt in the west. Referred to as Matiate in that period, the city's original entrance required people to kneel and squeeze themselves through a circular opening. The entrance first gave the Midyat municipality an inkling of its subterranean counterparts' existence. "We suspected it existed," Yavuz recounted as she walked through the cave's gloom. "In the 1970s, the ground collapsed, and a construction machine fell. But at the time, we didn't try to find out more; we just strengthened and closed up the hole."

A hiding place underground  

The region where the cave city is situated was once known as Mesopotamia, recognized as the cradle of some of the earliest civilizations in the world. Many significant empires conquered or passed through these lands, which may have given those living around Matitate a reason to take refuge underground. "Before the arrival of the Arabs, these lands were fiercely disrupted by the Assyrians, the Persians, The Romans, and then the Byzantines, said Ekrem Akman, a historian at the nearby University of Mardin. Yavuz noted that "Christians from the Hatay region fleeing the persecution of the Roman Empire built monasteries in the mountains to avoid their attacks". He suspects that Jews and Christians may have used Matiate as a hiding place to practice their then-banned religions underground. He pointed to the mysterious stylized carvings of a horse and eight-point star hand trees which adorn the walls and a stone slab on the floor of one room that may have been used for celebrations for sacrifices. As a result of the city's long continuous occupation, he said it was difficult to pinpoint precisely what at the site can be attributed to which period or group. But pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, all these believers contributed to the underground city of Matiate.

Invasion Centuries

Curator Gani Tarkan said that even after the threat of centuries of invasions had passed, the caves stayed. He used to work as a director at the Mardin Museum, where household items, bronzes and potteries recovered from the caves are on display. "People continued to use this place as a living space", Tarkan said. "Dome rooms were used as catacombs, others as storage space", he added. Excavation leader Yavuz pointed to a series of round holed dug to hold wine-filled amphorae vessels in the gloomy cool out of the glaring sunlight above. The Mardin region's Orthodox Christian community maintains that old tradition of wine production. Turkiye is also famous for its ancient cave villages in Cappadocia, the country's centre. But while Cappadocia underground cities are built with rooms vertically stacked on each other, Matiate spreads out horizontally, Trakan explained.

The municipality of Midyat, which funds the world, plans to continue excavating until the site can be opened to the public. It hopes the site will prove a popular tourist attraction and attract visitors to the city of 120,000.

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