ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – A metal monolith that mysteriously appeared on a field in southeastern Turkey has now disappeared, Turkish media reported Tuesday, four days after it was discovered.
The three-meter-high (about 10 feet high) metal plate with an ancient Turkish script was found by a farmer in Sanliurfa province on Friday. It was discovered near the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Gobekli Tepe, which is home to megalithic structures dating back to the 10th millennium BC, thousands of years before Stonehenge.
However, the shiny structure was reported to have disappeared Tuesday morning, days after authorities said they were investigating its appearance by looking at closed-circuit television footage and looking for vehicles that might have transported it to the site.
It was not immediately clear whether it had been removed by the authorities. Officials in the Sanliurfa governor’s office were not immediately available for comment.
The state-run Anadolu Agency quoted the field’s owner as saying he was baffled by both its appearance and its disappearance.
“We don’t know if it was placed for marketing purposes or as an advertisement on my field,” Anadolu quoted Fuat Demirdil. “We saw that the metal block was no longer in place. Residents also cannot solve the mystery of the metal block. “
The agency also quoted local resident Hasan Yildiz as saying the block was still on the field Monday night but had disappeared by morning.
The monolith bore an inscription that read, “Look at the sky, you will see the moon” in the ancient Turkish Gokturk alphabet, according to reports.
Other mysterious monoliths have appeared similarly and some have disappeared in numerous countries in recent months.
Gobekli Tepe was the setting of the Turkish Netflix mystery series ‘The Gift’.