The site includes a Late Assyrian palace, an early shrine to Ishtar and a Hellenistic temple, surrounded by city walls and gates adorned with lions carved from stone.

[3] In 2007 and 2008 work at the site resumed when surveys were conducted by a team from University of Bologna and Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums of the Syrian Arab Republic.

The dating of the reliefs is uncertain, though one contains an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser III of the Neo-Assyrian Empire[5] In February 2015, in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) publicly ordered the bulldozing of a colossal ancient Assyrian gateway lion sculpture from the 8th century BC.

The most important discoveries from Arslan Tash were, however, the ivory objects of high artistic quality which today are kept at the Archaeological Museum in Aleppo and in the Louvre.

[9] Among them is the Arslan Tash ivory inscription that carries the name 'Hazael'; this was part of a bed that may have belonged to the Biblical king Hazael of Aram-Damascus.