Yumurtatepe Tümülüsü

Yumurtatepe is an artificial hill in Yenimahalle between the Çamlıca and Demetevler neighbourhoods, near the northern edge of the Atatürk Forest Farm land, and it takes its name, "Egg Hill", from its egg-like shape. This green mound, rising suddenly among the surrounding apartment blocks, is one of the old mounds and tumuli that have remained inside Ankara's urban fabric. Its story has two layers: one belongs to archaeology, the other to the memories of the early Republic. Tumulus or settlement The tumuli west of Ankara were long known as Phrygian burial mounds, and the records counted Yumurtatepe among them. According to Kültür Envanteri, the hill was identified in 1967 as tumulus number 20 within the METU Phrygian Necropolis Rescue Project. When Yenimahalle Municipality began development work in the area, the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations carried out a rescue excavation between 1986 and 1987. The excavation found the remains of an oval structure 70 centimetres high, about half a metre below the surface at the very top of the hill. To look for a burial chamber, the General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration carried out a survey using an electromagnetic method. This survey suggested that there might be a space suitable for a burial chamber 10 to 15 metres deep, west of the centre of the hill, but the excavations produced no result. As a result of these studies the researchers concluded that this was not a Phrygian tumulus but a small centre of the Early Bronze Age. Kültür Envanteri describes it as a strategic site dated to the Early Bronze Age III, while Wikipedia writes that it may have been used not as a large settlement but as an outpost. A 2023 article on the western tumuli of Ankara by Ela Alanyalı Aral of METU and her colleagues also notes that, of the twenty tumuli on the METU map, Yumurtatepe was found not to be a tumulus. In contrast, the architectural historian Ali Cengizkan, in a piece published in 2024, treats the hill as the Phrygian tumulus known in the literature as number 20. In short, the word "tumulus" has stayed in its name, but the scholarly interpretation varies between sources. The western tumuli of Ankara To understand Yumurtatepe you need to look at the network of tumuli around it. Tumuli are monumental burial mounds made of heaped earth, and according to Alanyalı Aral's article the tradition was carried into Anatolia by the Phrygians who migrated from Thrace and was continued by later cultures. The same article writes that Ankara is thought to have been founded by the Phrygians in the 8th century BC and that the western tumuli were first described, with a sketch, in a 1910 article by the English archaeologist Reginald Campbell Thompson. Of the twenty known tumuli, nineteen lie west of the city centre and one to the north-west. Of these, only tumuli number 9 and 10 can still be read in their shape today, even though they have been damaged by the roads passing round them. Researchers think these mounds formed a line following ancient roads from the Engürü plain towards the Atatürk Forest Farm, Beşevler and Bahçelievler. Cengizkan also recalls that the central rise on the Atatürk Forest Farm owes its name, Beştepe or "Five Hills", to the five tumuli there. Even if Yumurtatepe is not a tumulus, it stands at the northern end of this line as part of the same landscape. The Hill of Memories Cengizkan's piece recalls a second name for the hill. According to the memoirs of Münir Hayri Egeli, when new buildings were being discussed in the administration office of the Forest Farm, Atatürk turned down a proposal for a facility on the small hill opposite the road that joined the Ankara to Istanbul highway to the farm, and said he imagined a simple grave for himself there. According to Egeli, the hill was afterwards called the Hill of Memories. Cengizkan also relates that Ernst Egli, who worked on planning the farm, protected these hills and their surroundings under the name Hill of Martyrs in his plan of the mid-1930s. This account is an interesting trace of the ideas that existed before Anıtkabir was later built on Rasattepe. Protection and visiting As Cengizkan relates, the hill was registered on 14 January 1972 and recorded as a first-degree archaeological site on 5 March 1991. The hill is best seen from the nearby roads, from a low angle. According to the caption of an older photograph on Commons, the buildings of Çamlıca, Urankent and Demetevler could be seen in a wide sweep from the top of the hill. Because it is a first-degree protected site, do not climb its slopes, do not scrape the soil and do not pick anything up from the ground. We found no official notice stating whether access to the top is allowed; the safest course is to get up-to-date information from Yenimahalle Municipality or the conservation board. For photographs, the side light of the afternoon brings out the soft outline of the hill. Demetevler station on Ankara Metro line M1 is about one and a half kilometres from the hill as the crow flies. Combining Yumurtatepe with the Atatürk House on the Atatürk Forest Farm lets you think about this memory alongside the founding years of the farm.