Hellenistic mosaic floor found at Kültepe-Kaniş, a site famous for Assyrian merchant tablets

Archaeologists digging at Kültepe-Kaniş, near Kayseri in central Türkiye, have uncovered a building with a mosaic floor from the Hellenistic period. According to Türkiye’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, it is the first structure of its kind found at the site. The discovery matters because Kültepe is best known for something far older, and the mosaic suggests people kept living and building there much later than the record has shown.

A site famous for Assyrian merchants

Kültepe is one of the most important Bronze Age sites in Anatolia. It is famous for cuneiform clay tablets left by Assyrian merchants who traded there, and those tablets give historians a rare look at business, family life and law in the early second millennium BC. For decades, the story of Kültepe has mostly been the story of that merchant era.

The new find shifts the focus. Reports describe a Hellenistic structure, which places it in the centuries after Alexander the Great, roughly the last three centuries BC. That is well over a thousand years after the merchant colony flourished. The excavation team also reported four cultural layers from the Hellenistic period, according to HeritageDaily’s account of the announcement.

What the team found

The excavation is a joint project of Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Ankara University and South Korea’s National Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. Prof. Fikri Kulakoğlu of Ankara University directs the dig. Minister Ersoy announced the discovery and described it as an important addition to the archaeological record of Kültepe-Kaniş.

Local news from December 2025 gives an earlier glimpse. Kulakoğlu told the İHA news agency that the team had found a very well preserved patch of mosaic floor, about one square meter, at the edge of that season’s excavation area. He said it was the first time the team had reached the corner of a mosaic structure at Kültepe, and that he expected to open up more of it the following year. The October 2026 announcement appears to report the follow-up work.

How old is the mosaic?

Our headline gives an age of about 2,100 to 2,300 years. I could not find that exact range in the sources I could read. The reports call the building Hellenistic, and that period spans roughly 323 BC to 31 BC, which would make the structure somewhere around 2,000 to 2,300 years old. The more precise range may come from the ministry statement, which I could not locate, so treat the figure as approximate.

Why a mosaic floor matters

Mosaic floors usually belong to well-built, often wealthy, buildings. Kulakoğlu noted in December 2025 that inscriptions point to a rich city, so a mosaic structure there was plausible. Finding one gives archaeologists a way to study who lived at Kültepe in the Hellenistic centuries, how they decorated their homes or public buildings, and how the settlement connected to the wider Greek-influenced world.

It also challenges an easy assumption. When a site is known for one famous era, later periods can fade from view. Early excavators at Kültepe focused on the Bronze Age, and Kulakoğlu said previous researchers had heavily damaged some later remains. The new layers show that the mound kept a life of its own long after the merchants were gone.

What we still do not know

Many questions remain open. The reports do not say whether the building was a house, a public structure or something else, nor do they describe the mosaic’s pattern or materials. The size of the building and the exact dating method are also unclear. Further seasons of excavation, and eventually a full scientific publication, should fill in those gaps.

For now, Kültepe has added another chapter to a story that most people thought they already knew.

Sources

• Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism announcement by Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, as reported by HeritageDaily; original statement not located
• HeritageDaily: Hellenistic mosaic-floored structure unearthed at Kültepe-Kaniş
• Dünya: Kültepe’de mozaik heyecanı (December 2025, İHA interview with Fikri Kulakoğlu)