摘要: Justification of Outstanding Universal Value　　The archaeological site of Arslantepe and its 4th millennium Palace in particular are a unique visible testimony to the crucial process of State formation

Justification of Outstanding Universal Value

　　The archaeological site of Arslantepe and its 4^th millennium Palace in particular are a unique visible testimony to the crucial process of State formation and the transformation of society from egalitarian to hierarchical and politically centralized. Moreover, the palace is the first example in the world of this type of architectural and functional organization of power, which antedates of five-six centuries the well-known 3^rd millennium palaces of the Near East. It shows that in this region of Eastern Anatolia a new type of secular power started to develop very early, not being mainly based any more on a religious/ceremonial consensus, but already founding its strength on the exploitation of resources and human labour and being exercised through the employment of a sophisticated administrative system and the starting use of force, as a group of metal weapons found in one of the representation halls in the palace testify. Among these, nine swords attest the use of this weapon for the first time in the world – at least a millennium before the already known examples. All these processes and events took place in a group of connected buildings constituting an exceptional homogeneous architectural complex, which is of an Outstanding Universal Value for its extraordinary historical significance (the first example of a “palace” system), its anthropological value as a tangible document of a crucial process of social change, its exceptional state of preservation, and its architectural and artistic value. It certainly transcends the local importance, being the expression of historical processes of common value for the entire international community. Its permanent protection is therefore of the highest importance for the preservation of a unique monument and document of a crucial stage in the history of humankind.

　　Criterion (ii): The Arslantepe 4^th millennium levels show fundamental changes in human relations in the period of State formation, which involved Eastern Anatolian and Mesopotamian societies in the course of the entire 4^th millennium BCE. This interchange of cultural traditions and social values resulted in the emergence of new social and political systems based on hierarchies and social differences, economic privileges and new power relations which led to new developments in monumental architecture, administrative technology and iconography of power in artistic representation. Arslantepe exhibit the most largely excavated public complex of this period and the best preserved example of such a development in the entire Upper Mesopotamia and its northern “periphery”.

　　Criterion (iii): Arslantepe is an exceptional testimony to the first emergence of State society in the Near East, original though related with the great 4^th millennium Uruk civilization. The extensive excavations of the palace complex, full of material in situ, has allowed to reconstruct the characteristics of this civilization, the life of these first elites and their activities with incomparable details, enlightening the emergence of a centralized government controlling the economy of the population. All these anthropological and historical achievements, which are explained to the public in the Arslantepe Open Air Museum, write a new page in the history of the Near Eastern proto-state civilizations and the early developments in human society.

　　Criterion (iv): The Arslantepe 4^th millennium “palace” complex is an outstanding example of a new type of monumental public architecture for two main reasons: 1) it is the earliest example of a public palace, substantially antedating the well-known 3^rd millennium examples of the Syro-Mesopotamian areas and revealing a precocious development of new forms of secular power based on economic and administrative control; 2) This architectural complex of buildings, excavated over about 2000 square metres, is very large and in an extraordinary state of preservation, with walls more than 2-2,50 metres high, original white plasters and wall paintings, unique in their subject and style. This conditions make the Arslantepe 4^th millennium palace the only place in the world where the public can still enter such a kind of monument and learn in situ the history of one of the basic stages in human developments.