[4] Despite this, the monument was heavily vandalised by locals in 2000–2018, all the four faces of the base being covered with graffiti and no serious measures being taken by the authorities for its conservation.

The site was discovered and a collection of flint tools used during the Neolithic Revolution was made by Lorraine Copeland and Frank Skeels in 1965.

[9] The pyramid has been suggested to date to the first or second century BC due to similarities with architecture of tower tombs of the late Seleucid era at Palmyra in Syria.

[10][11] Thomson also entertained the notion, along with Charles William Meredith van de Velde that the construction may have been Assyrian.

[12] René Dussaud later suggested that although the reliefs resembled the Ishtar Gate, the edifice was likely a monument to the hunting prowess of a member of Syrian royalty from the first century BC.