2,800-year-old ivory carved with sphinx discovered in Turkey

Archaeologists in Turkey have unearthed an ornately carved 2,800-year-old elephant tusk in what may have once been an Iron Age “center of power.”

The ivory carving features a mythical sphinx — a human head on the body of a winged lion — as well as a depiction of a real lion and two tall plants that may represent the mythical “tree of life.” While the artwork dates to the Iron Age, it was found in an archaeological layer over a much older city — the deserted Bronze Age Hittite capital of Hattusa.

According to Andreas Schachner, an archaeologist with the German Archaeological Institute who has led excavations at Hattusa since 2006, the artifact shows that the Iron Age settlement at the site was an important place, although it was established after the Hittites had abandoned the city in about 1200 B.C., during what’s known as the Late Bronze Age collapse.

“It is possible to say that this place was no longer a small town but a more important place, perhaps a center of power,” Schachner told the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency.