ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – A metal monolith that mysteriously appeared and disappeared in a field in southeastern Turkey turned out to be a publicity gimmick for a government event Tuesday in which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a space program for the country.
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 with the inscription “Look at the sky, you will see the moon” in the ancient Turkish Gokturk alphabet, was reported to have disappeared Tuesday morning, adding to the mystery.
An image of the monolith was later projected onto a screen when Erdogan presented Turkey’s space program at a televised event.
“I now present to you Turkey’s 10-year vision, strategy and goals and I say, look to the sky, you will see the moon,” said Erdogan.
Earlier, the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted the field’s owner as saying he was baffled by both its appearance and 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.
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’.