MILID

modern Arslantepe (Turkish: Lion Mound) ancient city near the upper Euphrates River in east-central Turkey, 4 miles (6.5 km) northeast of the town of Malatya. The site was first inhabited in the 4th millennium BC and later became an important city of the Hittites until the dissolution of their empire early in the 12th century BC. It survived as an independent city-state, sometimes linked with the neo-Hittite federation (a postimperial Syrian-Hittite culture) and sometimes subject to Assyria. Removed to a new site in Roman times, it became the capital of Lesser Armenia. Later, it was successively occupied by Sasanid Persians and Arabs and finally became an important centre of the Christian Jacobite sect. In the 12th century AD it fell to the Seljuq sultanate of Rum. Milid was excavated from 1932 onward by French archaeologists, and the bas-reliefs found there are among the best surviving examples of Hittite art.