1,800-Year-Old Statue of Asklepios Unearthed at Aspendos

Beneath the collapsed remains of a monumental gateway in southern Türkiye, archaeologists have brought a familiar face back into the light: Asklepios, the ancient god of medicine, carved in marble and standing taller than most people who walk past him today.

A God and His Son, Buried in a Gate

The discovery was announced by Türkiye’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, who shared the news directly on social media. Standing roughly 2.20 meters tall, the marble statue group depicts Asklepios alongside a smaller figure at his feet, his son and constant companion Telesphoros. It was unearthed among the collapsed remains of the northern wing of the Monumental Gate, right where Aspendos’s East Plaza opens onto Theatre Street, one of the busiest and most visible corners of the ancient city.

That location matters. This was not a hidden shrine tucked away for private worship. It was public space, somewhere ordinary residents would have walked past on their way to the theatre or the agora, suggesting health and medicine were something the whole city took pride in and put on display.

The excavation is part of Türkiye’s Heritage for the Future project, a nationwide effort coordinating archaeological work at historic sites, and the statue has been dated to the final quarter of the 2nd century AD, the same general era that produced Aspendos’s famous theatre.

What the Statue Actually Shows

Asklepios is depicted standing straight on, a mature man with a full head of hair and a carefully worked beard, his weight settled onto his left leg while his right leg bends gently forward. His upper body is left mostly bare, but a cloak, known as a himation, is draped over his left shoulder and falls in deep, deliberate folds around his waist and legs. According to the Ministry, details like the stance, the drapery, and the treatment of the face and hair mark the piece as a genuine product of Roman-era sculptural workshops.

At his feet stands Telesphoros, rendered in a completely different style. Rather than an idealized adult body, he appears as a small, child-like figure wrapped from head to toe in a long, hooded garment that hides almost every anatomical detail. The contrast was deliberate. In the ancient imagination, Asklepios represented medicine itself, diagnosis and treatment, while Telesphoros stood for what came after: recovery and the slow return to health. Together, the two figures form a complete visual story of what it meant to fall ill and get better in the Roman world.

Why This Find Stands Out

Worship of Asklepios was widespread across the Greek and Roman world, with the great healing sanctuaries at Epidaurus and Pergamon among the most famous examples. Direct physical evidence tying that broader cult specifically to Aspendos, however, has until now relied more on inference than hard evidence.

The statue’s location adds further significance. Because it turned up near a monumental civic gate rather than inside a secluded temple, it suggests healing imagery was not confined to quiet, sacred spaces. It was part of how the city presented itself publicly, alongside its theatre, agora, and other grand architecture.

There is also value in the fact that both figures survived together, and largely intact. Asklepios and Telesphoros are often found separately, damaged, or missing entirely from the archaeological record, forcing scholars to reconstruct the pairing from fragments and written sources. Having both figures in one largely complete group offers researchers a chance to study the full symbolic arc of ancient healing beliefs much as an ancient audience would have seen it. The statue’s dating also lines up closely with the construction of Aspendos’s theatre under Marcus Aurelius, hinting that it may belong to the same wave of ambitious public building that reshaped the city in the late 2nd century AD.

The City Behind the Statue

Aspendos, located in the Serik district of Antalya on Türkiye’s Mediterranean coast, has been inhabited since the 5th century BC, when it grew into an important Pamphylian port known for exporting salt, wine, olive oil, grain, and prized horses.

Most visitors today know Aspendos for its Roman theatre, widely considered one of the best-preserved Roman theatres in the Mediterranean world and still in use today. It was built between roughly AD 161 and 180, under Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The wider site also holds a monumental aqueduct system, a nymphaeum, an agora, a basilica, a stadium, and baths, most dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Excavation work has continued steadily since 2014 under Professor Veli Köse of Hacettepe University’s Department of Archaeology.

Against that backdrop, a city long defined by grand public architecture, the newly uncovered statue fits naturally. Aspendos did not just build a theatre people would remember for centuries. It also gave its god of healing a prominent place to stand.

Sources

Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism (via Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy)