Hittite-hunting on the road to Osmaniye

Today a path winds up through the woods and emerges in front of the citadel's southwestern gate, where extraordinary relief panels depicting life in ancient Azatiwadya are preserved in situ, still guarded by the stone lions that face out towards the lake, their snarls frozen forever on their faces. If you look to the left as soon as you cross the threshold you will be able to see King Asatiwas himself sitting at a table while servants fan him and bring in food and drink. Beneath his feet a cow is readied for sacrifice, while in front of him musicians strum lyres and bang drums in his honor. Those familiar with ancient Egyptian art will immediately notice similarities in the figures, whose faces are shown in profile while their bodies are twisted out to face the audience.

Just past the gateway on the left stands a single statue of the bearded storm god, sometimes also called Baal or Tarhunzas. Then the path continues through the pines and dips down to reach the northeastern gate, where the carvings are, if anything, even more splendid before looping back to the entrance. There, a small museum contains finds from the site as well as several large statues of lions rescued from nearby Domuztepe (Boar Hill). There, too, you can learn about the local equivalent of the Rosetta Stone: mirror inscriptions in Hittite and Phoenician that finally enabled linguists to decipher the Hittite hieroglyphics.

When a site such as Karatepe-Aslantaş is so well preserved and displayed, it's hard to believe that its very existence was once forgotten. It was only in 1946 that a schoolteacher from Kadırlı showed some finds to archaeologists, including Halet Çambel, who then began work on excavating the site. Çambel was one of those people whose life seems to have been designed to make the rest of us feel inadequate. One of the first women fencers to take part in the Olympic Games, she also married Nail Çakirhan, a self-taught architect who won an Aga Khan award for designing modern wooden houses in a traditional style in Gökova and Dalyan. A bust commemorating her can be seen near the museum.

It doesn't take long to look around Karatepe-Aslantaş and afterwards you can pause for a picnic at the lakeside site right by the entrance to the national park. On the way back to Osmaniye it's also worth stopping to inspect the ruins at Hierapolis-Castabala, which are clearly visible from the road. Hierapolis is not a major site and not a great deal is known about it except that Alexander the Great passed through in 333 B.C. The most conspicuous remains are of a colonnade running alongside a stretch of Roman road. This trails off into the fields, but if you keep following it you will pass, on the right, what may be the remains of a temple or more probably of a Byzantine church, before arriving at a theater whose tiered seating is being slowly re-colonized by the surrounding vegetation. Adrift in the fields beyond, some fragmentary brick structures were probably part of a Byzantine bathhouse.

So much for Hierapolis. But high up on a rock gazing down on the ruins are the dramatic remains of Castabala, one of the many castles that adorn this particular part of Turkey, their locations so lofty that they leave the onlooker stupefied at the thought of the labor that must have gone into constructing them. Again, not much is known about Castabala. Was it built by the Armenians to protect the medieval Kingdom of Cilicia? Or was it built by the Knights of St. John to protect the route taken by the Crusaders as they headed for the Holy Land? Sadly, the records to answer such questions simply do not exist.

Osmaniye is the obvious kicking-off point for exploring Karatepe-Aslantaş and Hierapolis-Castabala, but unfortunately it's hardly a prepossessing town, its only attraction the lush Karaoğlanoğlu Park, where a statue commemorates the heroines of the Turkish War of Independence. Nearby a couple of disconsolate Roman capitals in the car park are the only signs of life at the so-called Osmaniye Museum. But the biggest problem is the dearth of decent places to stay. The Şahin Hotel offers two-star service at three-star prices, while the Çınar Hotel is welcoming but will be too basic for most tastes. Way outside the town boundaries a so-called five-star hotel is shaping up beside two radio masts but looks unlikely to set many pulses racing.

So here's a thought: If you have your own wheels, why not backtrack to Ceyhan and then take the country road down to the small beach resort of Yumurtalık, the site of ancient Ayas? A strip of sandy beach looks straight out onto the low-lying offshore ruins of Kızkalesi (Maiden Castle), the site, not altogether surprisingly, of a tragic story virtually identical to the one told about Kız Kulesi (Maiden Tower) in İstanbul: A young woman is told by a fortuneteller that she will be killed by a snake bite; the young woman holes up in off-shore castle; the young woman is sent a basket of food inside which lurks the death-dealing snake...

A small promontory juts out towards the castle and is decorated with the remains of a small castle newly restored with the aid of European Union funding. On its far side is a picture-postcard fishing harbor with the predictable, if very low-key, fish restaurants to go with it. If you keep following the shoreline you will come to the kaymakamlık (local government offices) where, in the absence of a museum, all sorts of Roman bits and bobs are corralled in the car park. Then it's about another kilometer's walk out to a small stone keep overlooking a bay. As you make your way there you can entertain yourself by looking for bits of old Roman masonry reused in garden walls and cowsheds and by asking yourself what ever possessed someone to decide that most of the walls would look better painted to resemble the hide of a multicolored reticulated giraffe.

Yumurtalık is the perfect antidote to Osmaniye, with hotels and pensions to suit most budgets. If you don't have your own car you may think the several changes of bus not worth the effort. At this time of year, though, the thought of the fields of flowering sunflowers stretching as far as the eye can see on the way there might just sway the balance in its favor.

WHERE TO STAY

Çınar Oteli, Osmaniye. Tel: 0328-814 3814

Grand Beach Hotel, Yumurtalık. Tel: 0322-671 2277

Küçük Pansiyon, Yumurtalık. Tel: 0322-671 2215

Öztur Otel, Yumurtalık. Tel: 0322-671 2167

Şahin Otel, Osmaniye. Tel: 0328-812 4444

HOW TO GET THERE