Sphinx on display at the museum

ÇORUM - Anatolia News Agency

Boğazköy Sphinx is currently on display at the Boğazköy Museum. AA photo

The return of the Boğazköy Sphinx from Germany to Turkey is a very significant development in terms of Ankara’s bid to repatriate various cultural artifacts, Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay has said.

Günay made the comments during a visit to see the sphinx, which is now on display at the Boğazköy Museum in the northern province of Çorum.

“This sphinx is more than 3,000 years old, and it is very important to have it in Turkey again,” Günay said, noting that it was back in Turkey after close to 95 years in Germany.

A pair of sphinxes from Hattuşa, which is in Çorum, was taken for restoration to Germany in 1917. One sphinx was returned, but the other remained on display at a museum in Germany until recently.

The sphinx was recently at the center of a Turkish move to apply restrictions on German archaeologists working in the country.

The sphinx belonged to Hattuşa, which was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. It was located near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of the Kızıl River. Hattuşa was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1986