Neolithic (c. 9000 BCE)
Urfa Man (the Balıklıgöl Statue)
Overview
Urfa Man — formally the Balıklıgöl Statue — is the oldest known life-sized, naturalistic statue of a human being, carved around 9000 BCE and contemporary with the great enclosures of Göbeklitepe. The figure stands about 1.90 metres tall in limestone, its deep eye sockets inlaid with segments of black obsidian so it appears to gaze directly at the viewer. It has no clearly modelled mouth, and its hands are clasped at the groin — a gesture echoed on the great T-pillars of Göbeklitepe. Discovered in 1993 in the Balıklıgöl district of Şanlıurfa, it is now the centrepiece of the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum.
Read the full guide to Urfa Man (the Balıklıgöl Statue) on gobeklitepe.co.uk →
Highlights
- Obsidian eyes that still glitter and seem to follow the viewer
- Carved around 9000 BCE, contemporary with Göbeklitepe's enclosures
- Hands clasped at the groin, echoing the great T-pillars
- A figure carved deliberately without a mouth
- Found by chance in 1993 beneath the Balıklıgöl quarter
History & Discovery
The statue surfaced by accident in 1993 during roadworks in the Yeni Mahalle quarter just north of Balıklıgöl, and the exact findspot was never properly recorded. Bahattin Çelik later tied it to a Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement buried beneath the modern quarter, evidence that a contemporary of Göbeklitepe lies under the city itself. First displayed in the old town-centre museum, it became the centrepiece of the new Haleplibahçe galleries when they opened in 2015.
Nature & Wildlife
Urfa Man is indoors now, but the Balıklıgöl quarter where he came to light still holds spring-fed pools, rose beds and old plane trees full of laughing doves and swifts. Around the museum itself, watered lawns and pines make a shaded green pocket against the open Şanlıurfa steppe beyond.
Geology
Urfa Man pairs two geologies: a body carved from the soft, fine-grained limestone that underlies the city, and deep eye sockets inlaid with obsidian, a volcanic glass with no source on the limestone plateau and so brought from afar. The stone's even grain is what allowed so smooth and lifelike a finish some 11,000 years ago.
Mythology & Legend
Urfa Man's obsidian eyes still glitter, yet he was carved without a mouth — an absence interpreted by researchers as deliberate, perhaps signifying silence or mystery. Many read the figure as an honoured ancestor keeping watch, his clasped-hands pose echoed on Göbeklitepe's great T-pillars.
The landscape
The view
The oldest known life-sized human statue stands in its own quiet gallery, pale limestone under focused spotlights, its black obsidian eyes catching the light so the figure seems to watch you approach.
Photography
Shoot slightly off-axis to keep spotlight glare out of the obsidian eyes, steady the camera in the low gallery light and move in close on the clasped hands echoed on Göbeklitepe's pillars.
Practical information
When to visit
Displayed indoors in climate-controlled galleries, it can be enjoyed comfortably in any season and makes a cool midday retreat when summer heat in Şanlıurfa climbs past 40°C.
Getting there
Housed in the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum in the Haleplibahçe quarter, close to Balıklıgöl and easily reached on foot, by dolmuş or by taxi from anywhere in the city centre.
Where to stay
Stay centrally in Şanlıurfa — konak guesthouses in the old town or modern city hotels put the museum, the pools and the bazaar within easy reach of one another on foot.
Food & water
A city museum visit poses no water worries: refreshments are available around the complex and shops line the surrounding streets, so save your carried litres for the steppe sites.
Safety
Displayed inside the museum — ordinary indoor care.
Accessibility
The statue is displayed within the modern museum building, which offers level circulation, lifts and wheelchair-friendly access throughout, so reaching it involves no rough ground at all.
Visitor tips
Stand directly in its gaze for a moment before photographing anything; found by chance in the Balıklıgöl district in 1993, it pairs naturally with a visit to the pools afterwards.
Take care
- Displayed indoors — ordinary museum care
- No special precautions beyond everyday indoor care
Location
37.1537990, 38.7818840 · Open in OpenStreetMap
Audio Guides
Urfa Man (the Balıklıgöl Statue) · 3 min 28 s
He has been waiting a very long time to meet you, roughly eleven thousand years, and he will meet your eye the moment you find him. Here in the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum stands Urfa Man, formally known as the Balıklıgöl Statue, the oldest known life-sized, naturalistic statue of a human being anywhere in the world. Nothing older stands at your own scale and looks back. Take in how he was found, because it could hardly be more fitting. In nineteen ninety-three, construction work in the Balıklıgöl district in the heart of old Şanlıurfa, the same neighbourhood where pilgrims now feed the sacred carp, brought his limestone body out of the ground. Beneath those busy streets lie traces of a Neolithic settlement as old as Göbeklitepe itself, which means the city centre has been lived in, one way or another, for some eleven millennia, and this statue is its oldest citizen. Now look at him properly. He stands close to two metres, carved from a single block of pale limestone, upright and formal. His eyes hold you first: deep-cut sockets inlaid with segments of black obsidian, volcanic glass carried from far away, polished so that they still catch the gallery light with a watchful sheen. Below them, nothing, for he has no mouth at all. Whether his silence meant reverence, or the hush of another world, or something we cannot guess, the carver left the mouth out on purpose while lavishing care on so much else. A double V of carved lines crosses his chest like a collar or necklace. And then comes the gesture that ties him to everything else you have seen in this region: his hands are clasped low in front of his body, fingers meeting at the groin, the very pose carved on the great central pillars of Enclosure D at Göbeklitepe, whose folded arms bring long stone fingers together low over the belly. The statue and the pillars share one body language, made by one world, perhaps within a few generations of each other. Who is he? An ancestor, a spirit, a guardian of the spring beside which he once stood, a person of consequence whose name mattered greatly and is now beyond reach? Archaeology cannot say, and honest guides will not pretend. What can be said is simpler and stranger. At some moment around eleven thousand years ago, in the world before pottery and farming, someone decided, for the first time we know of, to carve a human being at full size, at face-to-face height, with eyes that shine, and to set him upright among the living. Every portrait and every statue in every square on Earth follows a road that begins somewhere near this quiet figure. So give him a slow minute. Step to the left and to the right, and feel how the obsidian gaze seems to follow you, an effect eleven millennia old and still working perfectly. Then, when he releases you, carry that level gaze onward through the Neolithic halls, where his kin, the pillars, the beasts and the honoured ancestors of the Stone Hills, continue the story that he begins.