Karahan Tepe's Three Rooms: The Great Ellipse, the Pillars Shrine, and the Pit Shrine

Quick Answer

Karahan Tepe’s three interconnected rooms — Structure AD (the Great Ellipse), Structure AB (the Pillars Shrine), and Structure AA (the Pit Shrine) — form a ceremonial complex carved directly from limestone bedrock. AD is a massive elliptical enclosure (23 × 20 m) with rock-cut thrones and anthropomorphic buttresses. AB contains eleven standing pillars (ten carved from bedrock in situ) and a giant human head on a serpentine neck. AA is a shallower shrine with a deep bedrock pit and an incised snake-and-fox frieze. Connected by a porthole window and a serpentine groove, the three rooms appear to have formed a processional route through the Pre-Pottery Neolithic ritual world (c. 9600–8000 BC).

At a Glance

• Excavator: Prof. Dr. Necmi Karul (Istanbul University), systematic excavations since 2019
• Structures: AD (Great Ellipse, 23 × 20 m) → AB (Pillars Shrine, 7 × 6 m) → AA (Pit Shrine, 8.5 × 7 m)
• Key connector: 70 cm porthole window (AD↔AB); serpentine bedrock groove (AB↔AA)
• Eleven pillars in AB: 10 carved in situ from bedrock + 1 crescent-shaped serpent-guardian
• Giant stone head: ~3× life size, emerging from the west wall of AB, mouth open as if speaking
• Loincloth choice: leopard-pelt at Karahan Tepe (vs. fox-pelt at Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D)
• Ritual closure: all three structures were deliberately buried in antiquity

The first time I stepped inside Structure AD at Karahan Tepe, I stopped talking mid-sentence. After twenty-five years of guiding tours, I am rarely at a loss for words. But standing on that carved bedrock floor, looking up at rock-cut buttresses more than four metres tall, language simply failed me for a moment. These three rooms are one of those rare sites that have genuinely silenced me — not because of their size alone, though the Great Ellipse measures twenty-three metres across, but because of the extraordinary experience they were designed to create. They were not simply buildings. They were a journey.

Since 2019, when Professor Necmi Karul of Istanbul University began systematic excavations on the hill’s eastern and northeastern slopes, three sub-surface structures have been uncovered beneath thick layers of soil and deliberate rubble fill. Designated Structures AD, AB, and AA — named in the order of their discovery — they form a single interconnected complex carved from the living limestone bedrock, used for what appears to be elaborate ritual practice, and then meticulously buried sometime during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. A fourth, smaller enclosure designated Structure AC lies to the east of AA but has not yet been fully excavated.

What makes Karahan Tepe’s architecture so distinct is that these are not buildings in the conventional sense. They are spaces subtracted from solid stone — carved downward into the earth rather than built upward from it. Nothing else from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic comes close.

And what makes these chambers remarkable is not just their individual features — the thrones, the phallic pillars, the giant head, the snake reliefs — but the way they connect. A porthole window links AD to AB. A deep serpentine groove carved into the bedrock connects AB to AA. Carved stairways provide entry at specific points. The complex reads as a single architectural programme, a choreographed sequence of spaces designed to lead participants from one experience to the next.

Structure AD: The Great Ellipse — A Hall of Giants

Structure AD is the central and largest unit of the complex, and it is the space that most visitors see first. Popularly called the Great Ellipse for its roughly oval plan, it measures approximately 23 by 20 metres — roughly the footprint of a basketball court, comparable in scale to the largest enclosures at Göbekli Tepe, though fundamentally different in construction.

The northern, eastern, and southern perimeter walls are built from dry-stone masonry roughly 1.5 metres thick. Set into this wall at regular intervals were originally eighteen T-shaped pillars, between which stone benches were placed — a layout that mirrors the arrangement found at Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D and at Nevalı Çori. At least one surviving bench top is clearly the recycled stem of an older T-shaped pillar, still bearing carved decoration on its front narrow edge. This recycling tells us something about the long duration of the building’s use: it was modified and repaired over generations.

At the centre of this great space, two enormous T-shaped pillars once stood in holes cut into the bedrock. Today they survive only as fragments scattered across the floor. Piecing the fragments together suggests they were just slightly smaller than the unfinished monolith still attached to the bedrock quarry on the hill’s western slope — a block approximately 5.5 metres long. These central pillars, like their counterparts in Enclosure D, would have dominated the interior space.

But what sets Structure AD apart from anything at Göbekli Tepe — and indeed from any known Neolithic structure — is its western half.

The Thrones and Buttresses

The western section of Structure AD was not built from masonry but carved directly from the hillside’s limestone bedrock. Three enormous stone benches have been hewn from the rock, each with a raised kerb at the base, each resembling nothing so much as a throne. When I guide groups to this spot, I ask them to sit still for a moment and imagine: in the firelight of a winter ceremony, community elders seated on these stone thrones, facing east across the enclosure toward the great central pillars. Whatever authority they held — spiritual, political, both — these thrones proclaimed it in solid stone.

Separating the three thrones are towering rock-cut buttresses, originally four in number though only three survive intact. Each rises to a maximum height of 4.3 metres from ground level, carved entirely from the eastern slope. These buttresses functioned as monolithic alternatives to the T-shaped pillars that lined the rest of the enclosure. Karul’s team has confirmed their anthropomorphic character: at least two of the three surviving examples display carved relief showing what archaeologists at the site interpret as leopard-pelt loincloths below their presumed waistlines.

This detail is extraordinarily important. At Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D, the two central pillars — Pillars 18 and 31, the most elaborate carvings at the entire site — are depicted wearing fox-pelt loincloths held by carved belts, with human arms and hands reaching toward the front. The leopard-pelt loincloths at Karahan Tepe suggest a parallel but distinct tradition: both communities dressed their anthropomorphic beings in animal skins, but the choice of animal differed. Fox at Göbekli Tepe, leopard at Karahan Tepe. Different totem, shared grammar.

Reliefs of animals adorn the sides of the rock buttresses. On the south side of the most southerly buttress, a standing quadruped — possibly a leopard — faces the hillslope with its legs upright, oriented toward the person who would have been seated on the throne beside it. Limestone statues, carved platters, and bowls were found on and around the benches — objects that Karul interprets as having been deliberately left in place when the structure was decommissioned.

Structure AB: The Pillars Shrine — Where Stone Becomes Spirit

If the Great Ellipse is Karahan Tepe’s public hall, Structure AB is its inner sanctum. Connected to AD’s north-northwestern side through a remarkable porthole window — a 70-centimetre rectangular opening cut from a thin wall of rock deliberately left in situ for this purpose — the Pillars Shrine is accessed by descending five crudely carved steps from the porthole into a space that feels utterly unlike anything else in the Neolithic world.

Carved entirely from the hillside, Structure AB is trapezoidal in shape with rounded corners, measuring approximately 7 by 6 metres. Its southern end is narrower than its northern end, and its limestone walls rise to 2.3 metres — tall enough to stand in, but low enough to create a sense of enclosure that is almost claustrophobic. Beyond the wall tops, the artificially levelled rock surface suggests that the shrine was originally roofed, perhaps with wooden beams resting on horizontal ledges visible at the same height on both the eastern and western walls.

Eleven standing pillars fill the interior. What makes this extraordinary is that ten of them were not quarried and transported — they were carved directly from the bedrock itself, the surrounding rock having been chipped and carved away to leave them standing as freeform columns emerging from the floor. Four of the largest pillars line up along the western wall, each approximately 1.6 to 1.7 metres tall with slightly wider heads that give them an unmistakably phallic appearance. The six smaller pillars in the back rows range from 1 to 1.4 metres in height and 30 to 50 centimetres in diameter, five of them positioned in a zigzag pattern.

The zigzag arrangement is itself significant. If you enter the shrine through the porthole window and descend the steps, you would need to navigate between these smaller pillars to reach the larger ones along the western wall. The zigzag pattern may have functioned as a processional pathway, physically guiding supplicants through the space in a specific sequence.

The Eleventh Pillar: Guardian of the Shrine

The eleventh pillar stands apart from the others in every sense. Unlike the other pillars in Structure AB, it was not carved from the bedrock but was fashioned separately and placed upright in a rectangular slot cut into the stone floor. It is approximately the same height as the tallest rock-cut columns, but its form is entirely different: crescent-shaped, with a slightly wider upper termination that creates the unmistakable impression of a striking snake.

A linear indentation on its western side corresponds to the position of a mouth, and some observers have reported seeing what may be an eye carved above it. Whatever the details, the overall effect is clear: this standing stone was meant to represent a serpent, positioned to face anyone entering through the porthole window. It functions as what might be called a genius loci — a guardian spirit of the place.

The Giant Stone Head

The most iconic feature of the Pillars Shrine — and arguably of all Karahan Tepe — emerges from its western wall. Carved directly from the bedrock, approximately 2.1 metres above the floor, a giant human head projects outward on the end of a long vertical neck. The head is enormous, roughly three times the size of a normal human face. On the underside of the neck are a series of parallel striations, carved perpendicular to the angle of projection, that emphasise the head’s serpentine character.

This is not simply a human face — it is a human–serpent hybrid, blurring the boundary between species in a way that resonates with the shapeshifting motifs found across the broader Taş Tepeler symbolic world. The head is turned slightly toward the entrance porthole, its orientation just south of east — giving the impression that it is turning to look at anyone entering the room. Its flat top initially makes it look as though it is wearing a helmet; in fact, the flat top probably marks the lower limit of the wooden roof that once enclosed the shrine.

The mouth is carved in high relief and is elliptical in shape — open, as if speaking. On the bench near the head, two small niches are cut into the rock, depicting a figure with protruding forehead, thick lips, and a beard. These smaller faces, combined with the giant head above them, create a layered portrait gallery — as though multiple beings inhabited the western wall simultaneously.

This orientation is not decorative. Researchers have argued that the porthole window and the giant head together form a deliberate winter solstice alignment — on the shortest day of the year, the rising sun enters through the 70-centimetre opening and strikes the carved face on the opposite wall. If the interpretation holds, the Pillars Shrine functioned not only as a ritual chamber but as a precision instrument of the sky: a stone calendar keyed to the turning of the year.

Standing in the Pillars Shrine with my tour groups, surrounded by phallic stone columns, facing a three-times-life-size head on a serpent’s neck that seems to watch you enter, I always pause and let the silence speak. Whatever this room was for — initiation, divination, communion with spirits, rites of passage — its architects understood something about spatial psychology that modern designers might envy. The room was designed to change you.

On the ground: On our Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe guided day tour, the moment we reach the viewing platform above Structure AB is almost always the quietest moment of the day. The head does its work.

Structure AA: The Pit Shrine — Where the Journey Ends

The third room in the sequence is reached not through a doorway but through a deep winding groove carved into the bedrock between it and Structure AB. This serpentine channel is more than ornamental — its end points correspond closely to carved stairways that provide access to each structure, so that when you finish in one shrine, the groove literally guides you to the entrance of the next.

Structure AA — the Pit Shrine — is trapezoidal with rounded corners, approximately 8.5 by 7 metres. At just over 1.1 metres deep, it is much shallower than the other two installations, creating a very different spatial experience: where the Pillars Shrine enclosed you in its rock walls, the Pit Shrine opens you to the sky.

Along the western wall runs a curved bench approximately 3.6 metres long. On its front vertical face, an extremely long snake has been incised using the scraping technique — a method that involves scratching the design into the limestone surface rather than carving in relief. The snake’s head displays two incised eyes and turns upward, facing north. Immediately beyond the snake’s head is a standing fox, also in incised relief, also facing north. The pairing is deliberate: the two creatures face the same direction and occupy the same register, suggesting a specific narrative relationship between them. A small niche cut beneath the fox’s chin — a detail easily missed — may have served as a receptacle for offerings.

Cut into the floor at the room’s northern end is an irregularly shaped pit with rounded corners, descending approximately 2.3 metres into the bedrock. At ground level on its western side, a carved recess is large enough for a person to crawl inside. The function of this pit is among the site’s greatest mysteries. Was it used for ritual immersion? For the storage of sacred objects? For interment of the dead? Or for something we have no ethnographic parallel to imagine? The evidence, for now, does not settle the question.

The Processional Route: Understanding the Complex as a Whole

The most compelling reading is that AD, AB, and AA form a processional route. Structure AD was the primary entry point — the large public space where communal activities took place. From there, select participants passed through the porthole window into Structure AB, descending into the enclosed world of the Pillars Shrine with its phallic columns, snake guardian, and watching head. After completing whatever rites this space demanded, participants followed the serpentine groove carved into the bedrock to emerge at the Pit Shrine, Structure AA, with its paired snake-and-fox imagery and its mysterious deep pit.

The architectural grammar supports this. The porthole window between AD and AB is too small for casual passage, requiring the supplicant to bend or perhaps crawl through — a physical act of transition from one world to another. The carved steps at each entry point regulate the pace of movement. The serpentine groove between AB and AA physically channels the body along a prescribed path.

If this reading is correct, then Karahan Tepe’s three rooms represent something that has no known parallel in the Neolithic: a deliberately designed initiatory architecture — a sequence of spaces calibrated to transform the experience of those who moved through them. The public spectacle of the Great Ellipse gives way to the enclosed intensity of the Pillars Shrine, which in turn opens onto the shallow, sky-exposed Pit Shrine.

The Burial: Putting the Rooms to Rest

All three structures were deliberately buried in antiquity, but Karul’s careful excavation has revealed that the burial process was not uniform — each room was treated differently.

Structure AB, the Pillars Shrine, was filled in a meticulous sequence. First, a reddish-buff soil containing flat limestone pieces was spread across the floor. Then larger stones were positioned between and atop the pillars. Finally, oversized flat capstones were laid to seal the structure, their edges precisely aligned with the building’s boundaries. The entire process was confined to the interior space — no fill material spread beyond the walls. This was not collapse or abandonment. It was ritual closure, performed with the same care that had gone into the building’s construction.

Structure AD received a different treatment. Rather than systematic filling, it appears to have been partially demolished — a deliberate destruction that Karul describes as concurrent with the filling of other parts of the complex. Structure AA’s filling followed the pattern of AB but at a shallower depth, with objects and broken pottery fragments placed deliberately within the fill.

The practice of burying sacred buildings — treating architecture like a living entity that must be ritually “killed” when its time is done — is one of the most distinctive features of the Taş Tepeler tradition. At Karahan Tepe, the care and intentionality of the process reaches its most documented expression.

Why These Rooms Matter

Karahan Tepe’s three interconnected chambers matter because they reveal something that individual pillar fragments and carved reliefs cannot: the experience of Neolithic ritual as a spatial journey. At Göbekli Tepe, we can study the enclosures as magnificent individual spaces. At Karahan Tepe, we can trace the path that the worshipper walked — from the public assembly of the Great Ellipse, through the porthole into the serpent-guarded inner sanctum, along the winding groove to the pit where earth and sky meet.

Consider the labor alone. Every cubic metre of limestone was chipped away by hand. There were no metal chisels, no wheels, no pulleys — only stone tools, patience, and a degree of social organisation that our conventional narrative of the Neolithic struggles to accommodate. These rooms were created by hunter-gatherers who had not yet domesticated plants or animals, working together with the coordination normally reserved for much later, more hierarchical societies. The textbook sequence says humans first settled down, then farmed, then built permanent structures. Karahan Tepe rearranges the order — sacred space, carved from living rock, came first.

In a quarter century of guiding, I have taken thousands of people through ancient spaces — from the rock-cut churches of Cappadocia to the temple complexes of Ephesus. But there is something at Karahan Tepe that precedes all of them, something raw and unmediated. When you descend those carved steps into the Pillars Shrine and the giant head turns its gaze toward you, you are not looking at antiquity through glass. You are standing where the first architects of sacred space intended you to stand, feeling what they intended you to feel.

That is what these three rooms preserve: not just stones and carvings, but the architecture of transformation itself.

Key Takeaways

• Karahan Tepe’s three interconnected structures — AD (Great Ellipse), AB (Pillars Shrine), and AA (Pit Shrine) — form a single ceremonial complex carved from limestone bedrock.
• Structure AD measures 23 × 20 m with 18 T-shaped pillars, three rock-cut thrones, and buttresses up to 4.3 m tall showing leopard-pelt loincloth reliefs.
• Structure AB contains 11 standing pillars (10 carved from bedrock in situ), four with phallic heads, plus a crescent-shaped snake-guardian and a giant human head on a serpentine neck.
• Structure AA features a long incised snake paired with a fox, a deep bedrock pit, and a curved bench.
• The three rooms are connected by a porthole window (AD↔AB) and a serpentine groove (AB↔AA), forming a processional route.
• All three structures were deliberately buried in antiquity, each through a different but intentional ritual process.
• The complex represents the earliest known example of deliberately designed initiatory architecture.

Planning Your Visit

Karahan Tepe is now open to the public with viewing walkways above the excavated enclosures. Our Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe guided day tour covers both sites in a single day with the archaeological context needed to understand what you are looking at — particularly at Karahan Tepe, where the processional logic of the rooms only becomes clear when someone walks you through it.

A practical tip for photographers and for anyone who wants to actually see the carvings: visit in the first or last hour of daylight. Midday sun flattens everything — the reliefs disappear into their own shadows. Raking light from a low angle brings every carved line, every tool mark, every pillar relief back to life. The animals on the buttresses, the snake on the AA bench, the striations on the giant head’s neck — all become visible only when the sun is low.

Your Next Read

Suggested path: Structure AB: The Tree of Life Shrine → Karahan Tepe vs. Göbekli Tepe → Karahan Tepe’s Winter Solstice Alignment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Karahan Tepe’s three rooms? They are three interconnected sub-surface structures designated AD (the Great Ellipse), AB (the Pillars Shrine), and AA (the Pit Shrine), carved from limestone bedrock and dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (approximately 9600–8000 BC).

What is the giant stone head at Karahan Tepe? It is a roughly three-times-life-size human head carved from bedrock, projecting from the western wall of Structure AB (the Pillars Shrine) on a long neck with serpentine striations. Its mouth is open as if speaking, and it faces toward the room’s entrance.

How are the three rooms connected? Structure AD connects to Structure AB through a 70-centimetre rectangular porthole window cut from the rock. Structure AB connects to Structure AA through a deep serpentine groove carved into the bedrock, with carved stairways at both ends.

What are the phallus pillars at Karahan Tepe? In Structure AB, four pillars along the western wall are approximately 1.6–1.7 m tall with slightly wider heads that give them a phallic appearance. They were carved directly from the bedrock rather than quarried and transported.

Why were the rooms buried? All three structures were intentionally filled with soil, stones, and rubble in antiquity — a ritual practice common across the Taş Tepeler network. The burial process varied: AB was meticulously filled in stages, AD was partially demolished, and AA was filled more simply. The practice is interpreted as ritually “putting to rest” a sacred space.

Can you visit Karahan Tepe’s three rooms? Yes, Karahan Tepe is open to visitors. The excavated structures on the Western Terrace, including the three interconnected rooms, are visible from walking paths. The site is approximately one hour’s drive east of Şanlıurfa.

Fazlı Karabacak is a licensed Turkish tour guide with over 25 years of experience and the founder of Serendipity Turkey. He specialises in archaeological and cultural tours across Turkey, with particular expertise in Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe, and the wider Taş Tepeler network.