Donuktaş Temple
Donuktaş is a large temple ruin located in Tarsus district of Mersin province. The first source about Donuktaş is Barbaro, who was in Istanbul in 1545 as a Venetian sledgehammer (ambassador). Barbaro is of the opinion that this building may be the remains of a palace. Apart from this, there is no record of Dunuktaş until the 19th century. Donuktaş has attracted the attention of Western historians and travelers since the 19th century. French historian Victor Langlois, in his book Voyage Dans la Cilicie et Dans la Montagnes du Taurus published in 1861, claimed that this structure was the tomb of the Assyrian king Sardanapalus, and this view was supported by the German archaeologist Robert Johann Koldawey in 1890. However, the British historian William Burckhardt Barker, in his 1853 book Cilicia and its Governors, is of the opinion that this building was a royal tomb, but that this king could not be Sardanapalus, who was burned in Nineveh after his death. Turkish archaeologists, on the other hand, have started to conduct surveys since 1982. According to the information given by Professor Nezahat Baydur, the researches were carried out in 1982, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992. After these studies, it was understood that the building was not built in the Assyrian period, but later in the Roman Empire and in the 2nd century, and it was a temple. The temple may have been dedicated to Sandon, the founding god of Tarsus, or to Jupiter, the chief god in the pre-Christian Roman period. Research was resumed in 2007 under the direction of German archaeologist Winfred Held.
