Urfa Man
C. 9000 BCE statue from Turkey
The Urfa man, also known as the Balıklıgöl statue, is an ancient human shaped statue found during excavations in Balıklıgöl near Urfa, in the geographical area of Upper Mesopotamia, in the southeast of modern Turkey. It is dated c. 9000 BC to the period of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and was considered as "the oldest naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human". It is considered as contemporaneous with the sites of Göbekli Tepe (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A/B) and Nevalı Çori (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), and belongs to the Taş Tepeler tradition of monumental statues of men holding their erect phallus. The site of Yeni Mahalle, which originally contained the statue, was carbon dated to 8600 BCE.
Discovery
The statue was found during construction work, and the exact location of the find has not been properly recorded, but it may have come from the nearby Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site of Urfa Yeni-Yol. This is not far from other known Pre-Pottery Neolithic A sites around Urfa: Göbekli Tepe (about 10 kilometers), Gürcütepe. It is reported that it was discovered in 1993 on Yeni Yol street in Balıklıgöl, at the same location where the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Yeni Mahalle was investigated from 1997.
The statue is approximately 1.90 meters tall. The eyes form deep holes, in which are set segments of black obsidian. It features a V-shaped collar or necklace. The hands are clasped in front, covering the genitals.
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