The lion in the middle of town
The emblem of Köyceğiz came out of an illegal dig. The only text that explains it is a plaque bolted in beside it.
Photograph: The Lion of Kaunos on the square at Köyceğiz — 23 October 2011 · Köyceğiz · Kjf webmaster, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Everyone crossing the square walks past it: a white marble lion, seated on a low plinth under a plane tree. It is the district's emblem; the film festival held twelve times was named after it. For anyone who wonders where it came from, the only source is the plaque at its side.19
- Object
- Seated lion, white marble
- Provenance
- Kaunos — Dalyan, Köyceğiz1
- How it surfaced
- Illegal excavation, 19651
- Context
- A monopteros: a round structure with female statues between its columns and four lions at its corners1
- Date
- The reign of Augustus — 27 BC – AD 141
- This lion
- One of the four1
- When the context was dug
- 1972–73 — seven years after the object1
- Today
- On the square at Köyceğiz, in the open air1
- The other three lions
- Whereabouts unknown — we could find no public record
This is how a museum label begins. Most of these lines rest on a single plaque; two of them no source could fill.
Photograph: The information plaque beside the statue · Köyceğiz · Kjf webmaster, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
It was found during an illegal excavation at Caunos in 1965. Archaeological excavations carried out at its site in 1972–73 revealed the remains of a round structure, the Monopteros. This structure, built as a sacred monument, is dated to the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD). It was determined that between the columns of this round structure were female statues and four corners lion statues. This statue is one of the four lions, which likely had apotropaic function.
This is how the plaque looked in 2011. Only the last sentence of the Turkish text falls inside the frame; the passage below is the plaque's English text.1
Three accounts, one object
Three texts about this lion are in circulation today. They do not say the same thing and none of them answers the others. This page cannot decide which is right — but this is exactly what a museum is for: to put a claim next to its source, and to show a contradiction rather than hide it.
Sources disagree“…one of the four lions, which likely had apotropaic function.” The plaque calls the structure a sacred monument and gives the lions an apotropaic role — warding off evil.
It never mentions an ox head.
“The crushed ox head under the right paw of the Lion of Kaunos represents the enemy civilisations of the Kaunian period.” Here the same object is not a guardian but a trophy of victory.
No source is given for the claim.
A square substructure and a circular superstructure: a monopteros about 5.50 m high and 2.90 m in diameter. Three female statues and a herm were recovered. Together with the corner lions this leads to reading the building as a funerary monument.
The plaque says “sacred monument”; this reading says “funerary monument”.
Sixty years of one object
- 1840
R. Hoskyn identifies the ruins as Kaunos from an inscription. The city enters the scholarly record.3
- 1965
The lion is taken out in an illegal excavation. The object survives; its context does not. Where it lay, in which layer, next to what — none of it is recorded.1
- 1966
Baki Öğün opens the first scientific excavation at Kaunos. In his own words: “It was love at first sight. Seeing the ruins, I was as happy as a child.”3
- 1972–73
The team excavates the findspot; the monopteros comes to light. Everything known about this object today rests on that hole, reopened seven years later.1
- 2001
Öğün dies in office after 35 seasons. His student Cengiz Işık takes over as director.3
- 2006–2018
The Köyceğiz Kaunos Golden Lion Turkish Film Festival runs twelve times, named after the lion on the square. After 2018 it is never held again.9
- 2014
Kaunos is submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.8
- 2021
Işık's student Ufuk Çörtük becomes excavation director. The third generation at Kaunos.3
- 2023
Fethiye Museum, where the Kaunos finds are displayed, closes to visitors over earthquake safety. There is still no reopening date.10
- 2026
The excavation has run without a break for 60 years. Number of museums in the district Kaunos lies in: zero.7
The dig is still going
Kaunos sits directly across from Dalyan, a neighbourhood of Köyceğiz. The excavation has not missed a season since 1966 — sixty years as of 2026. The team is led today by Assoc. Prof. Ufuk Çörtük, who also wrote the excavation's own research history.37
Recent seasons have concentrated on the 3,250 m² monastery complex inside the archaic walls: cisterns, vaulted rooms, multi-room building groups, narrow streets. In 2023 a structure with a mihrab and two coins from the reign of Mehmed II were found — the first hard evidence against the assumption that Turks settled at Dalyan rather than at Kaunos itself. In 2025 the water channel of the agora fountain was repaired and the fountain began to run again after 2,300 years; the same season a health building of the 2nd–3rd century yielded scalpels, probes, cannulas and catheters.56
None of this is told in Köyceğiz.10
Bases of honorific monuments at Kaunos whose statues are lost. The inverse of the lion on the square: here the context stands and the object is gone.
Photograph: Bases of honorific monuments in the harbour agora — the statues that stood on them are gone · Kaunos — Dalyan, Köyceğiz · Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Why this museum should be the one to tell it
Context disappears before the object does
The lion survived; its record did not. Everything we know about it we owe to the team going back seven years later and digging the hole the looters left. A museum is the institution that keeps an object and its context under one roof — so the next find does not have to be rescued backwards.
With nobody keeping the record, the account decays on its own
The plaque says “guardian”, the district's official page says “enemy civilisations”, and neither cites a source. The same page still describes a festival that ended in 2018 as one “held every year”. Not because anyone is lying — because no institution is responsible for correcting it.
Sixty years of excavation with no local public face
Every season produces reports, finds and new questions: a structure with a mihrab and coins of Mehmed II; the agora fountain running again after 2,300 years; a Roman health building with scalpels and catheters. The reports go to journals, the finds to Fethiye. Between the trench and the town there is nothing.
The room that tells the finds is shut
Kaunos lies inside the district, yet both the site and its finds are administered by the Fethiye Museum Directorate. That museum has been closed to visitors since 2023 over earthquake safety, with no reopening date. So the case that tells Kaunos exists neither in Köyceğiz nor, at present, open in Fethiye.
This is not about taking the lion off the square
The proposal is not to move the statue. The proposal is a room that shows where it came from, which three lions stood beside it, what those four were for, and who claims so on the strength of which source. The lion can stay on the square; its story gets an address.
- On-site document The information plaque on the square, Kaunos Aslanı / Lion from Caunos, Köyceğiz. Photograph: Kjf webmaster, 23 Oct 2011, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. source →
- Institutional source Köyceğiz District Governorate, “Kaunos Antik Kenti” (accessed 23 Aug 2026). source →
- Peer-reviewed Ufuk Çörtük, “Kaunos Antik Kenti Araştırma Tarihçesi”, bitig Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi 2/4 (2022), 298–321. Baki Öğün's words are quoted in this article (Öğün 1998: 175 ff.). source →
- Peer-reviewed Anadolu'da Dairesel Planlı Tapınaklar (Circular-plan temples in Anatolia), unpublished MA thesis, Akdeniz University — the measurements of the Kaunos monopteros and its reading as a funerary monument. source →
- Press Anadolu Agency, “Traces of the Ottoman period found in the excavations at Kaunos”, 18 Aug 2023. source →
- Press CNN Türk, “An 1,800-year-old hospital and a 2,300-year-old fountain found at Kaunos”, 15 Sep 2025. source →
- Press Türkiye Turizm, “Excavations at Kaunos have run without a break for 60 years”, 6 May 2026. source →
- Institutional source UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Ancient City of Kaunos — Tentative List, submitted 15 Apr 2014. source →
- Press Aydınlık, “The Köyceğiz film festival has not been held for 7 years”, 17 Dec 2025. source →
- Institutional source Ministry of Culture and Tourism, MüzeKart — Fethiye Museum: “Closed to visitors” (accessed 23 Aug 2026). The Kaunos site is administered by the same museum directorate. source → reason for the closure →
… people want this museum. Put your name on the wall too.
Sign — lay a brick