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  So the headless figure represents not only the human skeleton but also a dead man whose soul has departed in the form of a ball-like head that is now under the charge of the vulture, which is itself arguably a bird spirit with human attributes, a were-vulture, if you like. Clearly, Göbekli Tepe’s Pillar 43—the Vulture Stone, as we shall call it—conveys in symbolic form the release of the soul into the care of the vulture in its role as psychopomp, or soul carrier, on its journey into the afterlife (Schmidt’s suggestion7 that the vulture is playing with a human head as part of some macabre game is simply inadequate to explain what is going on here).

  VULTURE WINGS

  Evidence of vulture-related shamanism has been found also at other sites across the region. For instance, during the 1950s at an open-air settlement called Zawi Chemi Shanidar, which overlooks the Greater Zab River in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq, American archaeologists Ralph and Rose Solecki discovered the wings of seventeen large predatory birds, along with the skulls of at least fifteen goats and wild sheep.

  Among the species of bird represented by the bones, many of them still articulated, were the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) and griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), as well as various species of eagle. They were found positioned by the wall of a stone structure, which probably served a cultic function.8 The excavators were in no doubt that the wings had been severed from the birds at the point of death and worn as part of a ritualistic costume.9 In other words, shamans utilized these wings as “ritual paraphernalia”10 in order to adopt the guise of the vulture in its role as a primary symbol of the cult of the dead.

  The wings were radiocarbon dated to 8870 BC (+/- 300 years),11 although modern forms of recalibration (due to recent reassessments of the amount of carbon-14 present in organic matter during former ages) means they probably date to the end of the Younger Dryas period, ca. 9600 BC12; that is, shortly before the construction of the large enclosures at Göbekli Tepe, which as the crow flies is about 280 miles (450 kilometers) west of Zawi Chemi Shanidar.

  STAR MAP IN STONE

  If Göbekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone does show a human soul being accompanied into the afterlife by a psychopomp in the likeness of a vulture, then there has to be a chance that its rich imagery contains themes of a celestial nature. Scholars working in the field of archaeoastronomy have been quick to point out that the scorpion shown at the base of the shaft could signify the constellation Scorpius.13 Certainly, in Babylonian astronomical texts such as those found on the Mul-Apin tablets, the stars of Scorpius are identified with a constellation named Scorpion (MULGIR.TAB).14

  In the cosmological art of the Maya in Central America, a scorpion is often shown at the base of the world tree (see figure 9.3), a symbol interpreted by some scholars as the Milky Way standing erect on the horizon. This has led to the scorpion being identified with the constellation Scorpius, which lies immediately beneath the Milky Way’s Great Rift.15 Thus it is conceivable that there existed a universal identification of the stars of Scorpius with the symbol of a scorpion that originated in the Paleolithic age, the reason it appears on Göbekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone, carved ca. 9500–9000 BC.

  CYGNUS AS A VULTURE

  If Pillar 43’s scorpion does represent the Scorpius constellation and is thus symbolizing the point of crossing between the ecliptic and the Milky Way’s Great Rift, then the vulture with articulated wings and clownlike feet at the top of the stone completes the cosmic picture. Its wings, head, neck, and body have a familiar ring to them, for they form a near perfect outline of the Cygnus constellation, with the vulture’s head in the position of Deneb and its outstretched wings matching those of its celestial counterpart as it appeared 11,500 years ago (see figure 9.4). This identification with Cygnus, first noted by Professor Vachagan Vahradyan of the Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University,16 is remarkable and unlikely to be coincidence.

  Thus the abstract imagery on Pillar 43, with its headless matchstick man next to the scorpion, and the ball-like head above the left wing of the vulture, probably shows the transmigration of the soul from its terrestrial environment, signified by the stars of Scorpius at the base of the Milky Way’s Great Rift, to its final destination in the region of the Cygnus constellation at the top of the Great Rift.

  Figure 9.3. Mayan cosmic tree, symbol of the Milky Way, with a scorpion by its base perhaps signifying the constellation Scorpius.

  Figure 9.4. Göbekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone (Pillar 43) with the Cygnus constellation overlaid.

  Figure 9.5. The Milky Way’s Great Rift overlaid with the scorpion and vulture from Göbekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone (Pillar 43), showing their match with, respectively, the stars of Scorpius when just above the western horizon and, at the same time, Cygnus (the vulture) as it crosses the meridian high in the sky.

  Absolute confirmation of this pictorial journey into the afterlife comes from the fact that in 9500 BC, when Scorpius came into view on the western horizon shortly after sunset, the Milky Way’s Great Rift would have stretched upward into the night sky to highlight Cygnus as it crossed the meridian on its upper transit at an elevation of approximately 70 degrees. It is almost certainly this relationship between the two constellations that is depicted on Göbekli Tepe’s Vulture Stone, especially as the pillar’s clown-footed vulture and scorpion are in similar positions to their celestial counterparts (see figure 9.5).

  The fact that Enclosure D’s Vulture Stone is also in the north-northwest, next to the holed stone and on the same basic alignment as its twin pillars, is another potential clue as to its astronomical function, in particular its connection with Cygnus and the Milky Way’s Great Rift. Yet how exactly did the Göbekli builders envision the sky world, which seems to have been intrinsically linked to the symbol of the vulture? The greatest clue comes from the holed stone, which, as we have seen, probably acted as a seelenloch, or soul hole, through which the soul had to pass in order to reach its otherworldly destination.

  10

  COSMIC BIRTH STONE

  If the twin monoliths at the center of Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D were once oriented toward the setting of Deneb in the epoch of their construction, then, as we have seen, a person standing or crouching between them would have been able to view this astronomical spectacle through a holed stone located immediately east of the Vulture Stone. It would have been a similar case in Enclosure C, where the entrant would also have been able to witness the setting of Deneb through the aperture of a holed stone (Pillar 59) when positioned between the twin central pillars.

  It is time now to better understand the purpose of these holed stones, focusing our attentions on the example in Enclosure D, which remains in situ. It has carved parallel lines that curve around the hole to form what appear to be naïve renderings of human legs bent at the knee. After coming together beneath the hole the “legs” trail off toward the bottom right-hand corner of the stone, leaving a parallel opening between the knee and the presumed ankles. That the twin sets of parallel lines represent legs, and not something else, is confirmed by the fact that the lower left-hand edge noticeably bulges as if to signify the person’s right-hand buttock (see figure 10.1).

  Figure 10.1. Left, decorated holed stone in the north wall of Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D. Note the lines flowing around the hole, suggestive of an abstract female form. Right, the broken holed stone in a similar position in Enclosure C.

  THE KILISIK STATUE

  If the incised lines on the sighting stone do show a pair of legs bent at the knees, then the large hole directly above them can only signify one thing—the person’s, or should I say the woman’s, vulva. A similar hole is seen on the mini T-shaped statue found in 1965 at Kilisik, a village in Adıyaman province, some 46.5 miles (75 kilometers) north-northwest of Göbekli Tepe.1 In addition to having arms and hands, like the T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe and Nevalı Çori, the statue has an additional line that rises at an angle on both its wide faces to meet the hands on the front narrow face. It seems clear that the figure is lif
ting up its garment to expose its belly and genitalia (see figure 10.2).

  Strangely, the belly or womb area of the statue is sculpted into a much smaller human form represented by a crude head, body, and arms, executed in a style reminiscent of a macabre stone totem pole unearthed at Göbekli Tepe and now in Şanlıurfa’s archaeological museum. This too shows smaller human forms in the position of the womb or stomach of a much larger standing figure (see plate 24).

  The small figure on the Kilisik statue very likely represents a fetus inside a woman’s womb, the large incised hole immediately beneath the belly emphasizing not just the position of the vulva but also the birth canal. That a very similar, although much larger hole, has been bored through Enclosure D’s potential sighting stone, which is itself surrounded by incised lines arguably signifying the legs of a woman, suggests this hole is also an exaggerated vulva (presumably the holed stone at the same position in Enclosure C played a similar role).

  Figure 10.2. Stone statue of a T-shaped figure found in 1965 at Kilisik in Adıyaman province, some 46.5 miles (75 kilometers) from Göbekli Tepe. Note the hole forming the figure’s vulva and the small human figure carved into the stomach area.

  This means that when in 9400 BC the setting of Deneb aligned with the hole in the sighting stone in Enclosure D, the star’s presence would have been framed within the abstract woman’s vulva. Clearly, this carefully executed synchronization between star and stone was created to mark the moment of alignment with the opening of the Milky Way’s Great Rift in its role as the suspected entrance to the sky world, where souls departed to in death and, presumably, emerged from at birth. We can go further, for the angle made by the woman’s lower legs, as they trail off toward the right-hand corner of the stone, is similar to the angle of the Milky Way and Great Rift when the star Deneb is at approximately 45 degrees in elevation. In other words, the manner of placement of the woman’s legs seems to emphasize that her vulva marks the entrance to the Great Rift (see figure 10.3).

  So if the abstract female form seen on the holed stone in Enclosure D symbolizes the Cosmic Mother, is the purpose of the synchronization between star and stone to indicate that she is about to give birth? Should this surmise prove correct, there can be little doubt that this was a highly symbolic act seen to take place both in a material sense within the womblike enclosure, and in a celestial form, with the cosmic child imagined as emerging into life from the opening of the Great Rift (exactly like the rebirth of the solar god One Hunahpu in Mayan myth and legend). In this manner, the cosmic child would have been seen to come forth from Cygnus, then descend the Great Rift to the “ground”; that is, the horizon, where the ecliptic, the sun’s path, crossed the Milky Way in the vicinity of the stars of Sagittarius and Scorpius.

  COSMIC BIRTH

  Almost exactly what we see represented in abstract form on the sighting stone in Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D is found also on the Venus and Sorcerer panel inside France’s Chauvet Cave, which, as we have seen, was created by Upper Paleolithic cave artists some thirty-two thousand years ago. Here too the abstract legs of the “Venus” seem to signify the twin streams of the Milky Way on either side of the Great Rift, with the head of a young bovine overlaid upon the position of the womb (see figure 6.3 below). In this context, the bucranium likely represents the Cygnus constellation in its role as the head of a bull calf, which in prehistoric times was seen as an abstract symbol of the female womb or uterus, complete with its hornlike fallopian tubes (see figure 10.4 on p. 110). The uncanny resemblance between the two is something our ancestors would appear to have realized at a very early stage in human development,2 making the bucranium, and the bull calf in general, primary symbols of birth and death in the Neolithic age.

  Figure 10.3. Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D, showing the location of the holed sighting stone in its perimeter wall. Note the Milky Way’s Great Rift on the horizon.

  We are reminded also of the 3-D frescoes from Çatal Höyük showing bulls being born from between the legs of divine females (who have the heads of leopards), and the ancient Egyptian belief that the goddess Hathor, in her role as the Milky Way, gave birth each morning to the sun god in the form of a bull calf. The cult of Hathor was virtually synonymous with that of Nut, the sky goddess, who was herself a personification of the Milky Way, her womb and vulva occupied by the stars of Cygnus (see figure 10.5 on p. 110).3

  Nut was the mother of Osiris, the god of death and resurrection, and also of Re, the sun-god, who was reborn each morning from between her loins. In death, the pharaoh would assume the identity of Osiris and reenter the womb of his mother, Nut, in order to reach an afterlife among the stars. In other words, as the resurrected god Osiris the deceased would return from whence he or she had come originally, which was the Milky Way’s Great Rift in the vicinity of the Cygnus constellation.

  Figure 10.4. Left, womb or uterus, complete with fallopian tubes. Center, the stars of Cygnus overlaid on a bovine head. Right, an abstract uterus design from the Pazyryk culture of Siberia, from approximately the sixth to third century BC.

  Figure 10.5. Ancient Egyptian sky goddess Nut in her role as a personification of the Milky Way, with the stars of Cygnus marking her womb and vulva, and the Great Rift signifying the gap between her legs (after R. A. Wells).

  BIRTH CHAMBER

  How exactly the entrants to Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D, or indeed its neighbor, Enclosure C, might have celebrated the act of cosmic birth is open to speculation. Perhaps the new soul was believed to emerge from the opening of the Great Rift and then in some unimaginable manner enter a pregnant woman waiting between the enclosure’s twin pillars. A ritual act like this might have taken place either at the point of conception, sometime during pregnancy, or, perhaps, shortly before birth. It might even be that some births actually took place between the enclosure’s central pillars, mimicking exactly what the incised lines on the holed stone were attempting to convey.

  So not only were the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe built to honor the departure of the soul in the company of the vulture in its role as psychopomp (remember, the Vulture Stone is next to Enclosure D’s holed stone or Cosmic Birth Stone, as we shall call it), but they were also designed to bring forth new life. Presumably souls entering the world would be accompanied by a psycho-pomp in the guise of a bird, most probably the vulture, which in some painted panels uncovered at Çatal Höyük is shown with an oval inside its back containing a human baby. Today, in many parts of Europe and Asia newborn babies are accompanied into the world by the stork. Yet in the Baltic (and seemingly in Siberia4) a white swan replaces the stork.5 Clearly, in these areas of the globe, the swan or stork plays the same role as the vulture once did in the Near East.

  In Egyptian and Hindu myth, a primordial goose or swan brought forth the universe with its call, although in many countries the swan was said to have laid the egg that either formed the universe or became the sun (such as Tündér Ilona, the Hungarian fairy goddess, who “when she was changed into the shape of a swan” laid an egg in the sky that became the sun6). This once again ties in with the belief that cosmic creation takes place in the vicinity of the Cygnus constellation and Great Rift, resulting in the rebirth of the sun each day.

  COSMOLOGICAL BELIEFS

  Everything points toward Enclosure C and Enclosure D’s holed stones being not just confirmation of Deneb’s place in the mind-set of the Göbekli builders but also of the site’s role as a place where the rites of birth, death, and rebirth were celebrated both in its carved art and within the architectural design of its larger enclosures, which formed symbolic wombs complete with twin souls and axes mundi.

  The Göbekli builders would appear to have used the holed stones as seelenloch to enter an otherworldly environment associated with both the act of cosmic birth and the creation of human souls, which came forth from there prior to childbirth and returned there in death. During their ecstatic and altered states of consciousness, shamans at Göbekli Tepe perhaps believed they were to become
as fetuses in order to reenter the cosmic womb, the source of primordial creation, an act integrally associated with the star Deneb and the Milky Way’s Great Rift.

  Further confirmation of the holed stones’ function as symbolic vulva is found in the work of scholars attempting to understand the cosmic design of megalithic dolmens, which, as we know, often have circular holes in their entrance façades. The burials found inside them are often placed in fetal positions ready for new life, leading to theories that the stone structures are symbolic wombs or uteri, their portholes representing the vulva, prompting one expert on the origins of Judaism and Islam to observe that whosoever “enters or leaves a dolmen [through the hole “drilled with enormous effort”] does this in the posture of a child at delivery through the vagina. The burial-dolmen itself is therefore symbolically a uterus.”7

  These are incredible revelations that entirely alter our current perceptions of the mind-set of those behind the creation of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic world in southeast Anatolia. Yet as we see in part three, such cosmological thinking pales into insignificance when compared with other major factors that might well have been behind the creation of Göbekli Tepe’s main enclosures. For it seems likely that monumental architecture on this scale was built in response to something terrible that had happened in the world.