Lake Nemrut on the southern slope of the caldera in 2007. The main thread in terms of ecology is overgrazing. Lake Nemrut Lake Nemrut () is a freshwater crater lake in Bitlis Province, eastern Turkey. It is part of Nemrut Caldera (), a volcanic caldera atop Volcano Nemrut. The caldera is a registered natural monument and the wetlandsis registered as a Ramsar site of the country. The caldera is located west of Lake Van in the Tatvan, Ahlat and Güroymak districts of Bitlis Province. It is named after the biblical figure King Nimrod. The caldera is far from Tatvan, and from Ahlat.
Urartu local residents began to plunder the Toprakkale ruins, selling its artefacts to European collections. In the 1880s this site underwent a poorly executed excavation organised by Hormuzd Rassam on behalf of the British Museum. Almost nothing was properly documented. The first systematic collection of Urartian inscriptions, and thus the beginning of Urartology as a specialized field dates to the 1870s, with the campaign of Sir Archibald Henry Sayce. The German engineer Karl Sester, discoverer of Mount Nemrut, collected more inscriptions in 1890/1. Waldemar Belck visited the area in 1891, discovering the Rusa stele. A further expedition planned for 1893 was