Aksepil Ancient City

AKsepil Ancient city is located at the northern part of the desert outside of Lop county. It is about 55km far from Hotan city. The Aksepil ancient city was built about 2nd century B. C, the meaning of Aksepil in Uyghur language is white city wall.

The city wall is about 7 to 8km in diameter. Now the greater part of the wall is covered by shifted sand or damaged by wind only 93m is left. The height of the left part of the wall is 5m, width of foundation is 2.5m, and width of top of the wall is 1.5m. There were rifle pits on top of the wall. They excavated ancient coins, Pottery, small golden Buddha Statues, and some writing in Karoshti and Brahman languages were found. Aurel Stein excavated this place two times, first was in 1901 and second was in 1906. He took away many relics from the ruins. The famous Chinese Archeologist, who’s name is Huang Wen Bi excavated here as well and he found a coin of an Yutian horse in 1929. The Aksepil ancient city is under the Autonomous Regional preservation of Cultural Relics since 1957.