Gobekli Tepe Read online

  Yet before even the Sabaeans flourished in Harran, the city was connected with the earliest events of the Bible. Here the prophet Abraham and his family stayed prior to their departure to Canaan, God’s Promised Land. Local tradition asserts that the prophet hailed from the nearby city of Şanlıurfa, the original “Ur of the Chaldees.” So strong is this belief that even today thousands of Kurdish Muslims arrive in the city, anciently known as Orfa, Orhay, or Edessa, in order to visit a cave shrine said to be the birthplace of the great prophet.

  According to medieval belief, Abraham arrived at Harran and at once set about converting the local population to his monotheistic faith. Yet the Harranites claimed their teachings were older, having derived from Seth, the son of Adam, and Enoch, a later antediluvian patriarch. Some of the Harranites did convert to Abraham’s faith and departed with him to Canaan. Those who did not are said to have remained in the neighborhood of Harran, declaring that “we acknowledge the religion of Seth, Idris (Enoch) and Noah.”1

  So much did the inhabitants of Harran honor Abraham’s presence in the city that a temple was set up to him and his father, Terah, which apparently stood 2 parsangs (around 7 miles, or 11 kilometers) southeast of the city, close to the border with Syria.2 Abraham was the perceived father of the Jewish people, and his descendants were responsible for bringing together the source material for the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, traditionally ascribed to Moses the Lawgiver.

  Everywhere around Harran are sites associated with stories from the book of Genesis. On Cudi Dağ (Mount al-Judi), in the mountains to the east of Harran, Noah’s ark is said to have made first landfall after the waters of the Great Flood receded. Here too Noah established his first post-Flood settlement, leaving his son Shem to continue his journey into the Eastern Taurus Mountains, where also Seth, the son of Adam, lived after his father and mother’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden (see chapters 35 and 37). Even Harran itself, where Abraham dwelled with his family, had more ancient biblical connections, as tradition insists that Cainan, a grandson of Shem, founded the city. He was the originator of Chaldaism, the knowledge of the stars as practiced by the Sabaeans of Harran.3

  More significantly, the book of Genesis records that the primordial Garden where Adam and Eve, the First Couple, existed in a state of innocence and bliss before the time of the Fall was located at the source of the four rivers of Paradise, two of which can easily be identified as the Tigris and Euphrates (see chapter 27). They take their rise in the mountains to the northeast of Harran. Here somewhere lies the original Garden of Eden, tended over by the angels of God, returning me to the pressing questions that had preoccupied my childhood: Who or what are angels? Where did they come from, and did they have some kind of earthly tangibility?

  As I climbed Harran’s giant occupational mound, which rises above the ruined city, and stared out toward the mesmeric Astronomical Tower, I felt I was getting closer to some real answers. For even as the first Bible stories were being played out across the region, Harran was already extremely old. Archaeological fieldwork has shown that its earliest inhabitants occupied the site as much as eight thousand years ago,4 having arrived here from another occupational mound, located just 6 miles (10 kilometers) away, which dates back an incredible ten thousand years.5

  Known as Tell Idris, the very name of this prehistoric mound reveals its association not just with the earliest events of the Bible but also with the angelic beings said to have guarded the Garden of Eden. For Idris is the Arabic name for the antediluvian patriarch Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. He is accredited with the authorship of one of the strangest and most mystifying religious texts ever written.

  Called the book of Enoch, it recounts how Enoch, while resting in his bed one night, is approached by two strange beings of angelic appearance. Named Watchers (Hebrew ‘îrîn), they ask him to accompany them on a tour of the Seven Heavens, one of which includes the Garden of Righteousness, where the four rivers of Paradise take their rise, while another leads to the abode of the angels.

  When in the Watchers’ heavenly settlement, Enoch is shown a prison in which a whole group of these angelic beings are incarcerated. On asking what crime they have committed, the patriarch is informed that two hundred of their number disobeyed the laws of heaven by descending among mortal kind and taking wives for themselves. As a consequence, these women gave birth to giant offspring called Nephilim (a Hebrew word meaning “those who fell” or the “fallen ones”).

  More significantly, the book of Enoch relates how the rebel Watchers, who are described as extremely tall (like “trees”), with pale and ruddy skin, powerful eyes, white hair, and long, viper-like faces (see chapter 32), are said to have taught their mortal wives the arts and sciences of heaven. For this heinous crime they were rounded up and incarcerated.

  Although these stories are understandably dismissed as allegorical fantasy by theologians and Bible scholars alike, there is an air about them that tells of a forgotten event in humanity’s distant past—one connected integrally with Harran and the surrounding region, for it was here that the Neolithic revolution began.

  On the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, in the region that is today made up of eastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq, and northwest Iran, animal husbandry occurred for the first time, as did the domestication of wild cereals and the first metalworking and smelting. Here too some of the earliest baked and fired statuettes were produced, along with the construction of rectilinear and curvilinear buildings, some incorporating decorated standing stones and steles. With them came the first construction of terrazzo mortar floors, the first evidence for brewing beer, and perhaps even the first use of grapes to produce wine.

  In the same region, as early as 8000 BC, diamond-hard stone drills were employed to pierce holes through large oval beads of carnelian and agate to produce beautiful necklaces, and green malachite powder was first used as a cosmetic to beautify the eyes.

  Among the forbidden arts of heaven that the Watchers are said to have gifted mortal kind are the use of metals and metalworking, and the means for women to beautify themselves. They are also said to have provided the first polished mirrors, an interesting fact, as the earliest known mirrors, made of the black volcanic glass obsidian, were manufactured at early Neolithic sites in central Turkey, such as Çatal Höyük and Aşıklı Höyük.

  Is it possible that some memory of the prime movers or driving elite behind this great transition in technology and innovation is recalled in the stories of the Watchers providing mortal kind with the rudiments of civilization? Is this what these human angels are—instigators of the Neolithic revolution?

  Here at Harran are further clues to this baffling mystery. From the summit of its occupational mound the eye is drawn beyond the Astronomical Tower to the low ridge of mountains that dominates the northern horizon. Amid those peaks and in full sight of the Sabaean city is an archaeological site of incredible importance to world history.

  Known as Göbekli Tepe, its existence, and the work currently being carried out there by a dedicated team of specialists, might one day help answer the pressing questions that have haunted me since childhood. Here, on a hilly ridge close to the southernmost limits of the Anti-Taurus Mountains, is the oldest acknowledged monumental architecture anywhere in the world. It takes the form of a series of circular and rectangular stone sanctuaries constructed as early as 9500 BC by an advanced group of hunter-gatherers who might well have been responsible for catalyzing the genesis of civilization in a manner echoing the very human-like activities of the Watchers in the book of Enoch.

  Who were the builders of Göbekli Tepe, and what motivated them to construct such extraordinary monuments so soon after the end of the last ice age? What part of the ancient world did they come from, and what did they look like? Is it possible that a memory of their existence was preserved by the peoples of the region and later carried by the descendants of Abraham into the Holy Land, where it inspired the st
ories of angels trafficking with humankind preserved in religious texts such as the book of Enoch and book of Genesis?

  Remarkably, an ancient Hebrew work known as the book of Jubilees, which also tells the story of the Watchers, relates how Cainan, the legendary founder of Harran, uncovered an inscription carved on a stone stela. When translated it was found to contain the antediluvian science of astrology as taught by the Watchers.6 This knowledge went on to form the basis of the beliefs of the Chaldeans; that is, the pagans of Harran, whose progenitor is said to have been Cainan’s father, Arphaxad, the son of Shem and grandson of Noah.7 The name Arphaxad simply means “Ur of the Chaldees,”8 taking us back to the site of Abraham’s birthplace in nearby Şanlıurfa.

  Was the stone stela found by Cainan and said to reveal the astrological knowledge of the Watchers a reference to the beautifully carved T-shaped pillars found at nearby Göbekli Tepe, some of which, as we see in part two of this book, seem to reflect a profound knowledge of the starry heavens during the epoch of their construction? Was this the true source of the Harranites’ starry wisdom, adopted from their forerunners, who inhabited Tell Idris and other similar early Neolithic settlements on the Harran Plain as much as ten thousand years ago?

  Further linking the Harran region with the Watchers is the belief that the city of Şanlıurfa, where a settlement site belonging to the same culture responsible for Göbekli Tepe was uncovered near Abraham’s birthplace during the 1990s, was founded either by the patriarch Enoch9 or by “Orhay son of Hewya,” with hewya meaning “serpent.”10 Almost certainly, this serpentine founder of the city is an allusion to the Watchers, who are themselves occasionally described as Serpents (see chapter 34). Was it here, in Şanlıurfa, that Enoch met with the two Watchers who took him on a tour of the Seven Heavens, a mountainous realm that included the Garden of Righteousness?

  What exactly was the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve are said to have lived in a state of perpetual bliss before the time of the Fall? Was this the true home of the Watchers of the book of Enoch? Could its discovery hold the key to understanding the origins behind humankind’s contact with angels during some former age? Did it exist at Göbekli Tepe or somewhere else—in the mountains to the northeast, perhaps, where the four rivers of Paradise take their rise?

  Only by understanding the mysteries of Göbekli Tepe would any real answers be forthcoming, and so it is here that our quest must begin, starting with its rediscovery in 1994 by a brilliant-minded German archaeologist, to whom we owe its existence today.

  I will ask the reader to bear with me now as I switch from a first person to a third person narrative in order to determine who built Göbekli Tepe, and why. My personal quest is resumed in part four, when a powerful dream initiates a fresh search for the source of the terrestrial Paradise.

  It is an intellectual adventure that will culminate not only in the discovery of Eden but also in the realization that the true meaning behind humanity’s fall from grace, in the wake of the Neolithic revolution, is integrally bound up with the secret writings of Seth, the son of Adam. These forgotten books of Seth, glimpses of which can be found in Gnostic literature, tell us that in order to truly return to Paradise and partake of the immortality offered by the Tree of Life, we must first become like angels ourselves, as once we were in the Garden of Eden.

  PART ONE

  Construction

  1

  A LIFETIME’S WORK

  One day in October 1994 Professor Klaus Schmidt, an archaeologist working with the German Archaeological Institute and the University of Heidelberg, made the trek out to a bleak limestone plateau, situated close to the southernmost limits of the Anti-Taurus Mountains, just 8 miles (13 kilometers) northeast of the Turkish city of Şanlıurfa. It was a decision that would change his life forever and alter the very way we perceive the rise of civilization in the ancient world.

  Schmidt’s intention was to inspect a large artificial mound composed of earth and rock debris, which sits on a mountain ridge that rises to a height of just under half a mile (780 meters) above sea level. Stretching away toward the south lay the Harran Plain, where the patriarch Abraham is said to have set out on his journey to the Promised Land some seven thousand years after the incredible events that gave rise to the almost alien world that awaited discovery here at Göbekli Tepe, the “hill of the navel.”1

  SITE V52/1

  Schmidt knew that as early as 1963 a joint team from the universities of Istanbul and Chicago had visited the site and identified a number of “knolls,” or rises, that cover an area of some 3.5 acres (1.44 hectares)—a figure extended to 22 acres (9 hectares) following a geomagnetic survey of the site in 2003.2

  The 1963 expedition noted that immediately west of Göbekli Tepe’s rounded summit prehistoric stone tools lay strewn across a wide area. They belonged to an age when the inhabitants of southeast Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) were making the transition from hunter-gatherers to settled pastoralists and farmers.

  The survey team also recorded the presence at Göbekli Tepe (documented as site V52/1) of cut and dressed slabs of limestone bearing evidence of carved relief. Team member Peter Benedict, an anthropologist with the University of Chicago, concluded the fragments came from a lost Byzantine cemetery. It was a decision influenced perhaps by the fact that the local Kurdish community consider the tepe or tell—these being, respectively, the Turkish and Arabic words for a large artificial mound created by human occupation—as sacred, using it themselves as a cemetery for their dead. At its summit, modern graves lie within a walled enclosure clustered around a single fig-mulberry tree, a sight clearly visible to anyone approaching the mountain from the plain below.

  SUBLIME SOPHISTICATION

  Göbekli Tepe was not investigated further, with the entire matter being confined to a single report published in 1980.3 Instead, the joint Istanbul-Chicago team concentrated their efforts on excavating an important early Neolithic site at Çayönü Tepesi, located 4 miles (6 kilometers) southwest of the town of Ergani, northwest of the city of Diyarbakır. Having thrived, in the main, between ca. 8630 BC and 6820 BC, Çayönü is noted for the discovery there of a series of rectangular buildings with distinctive “grill-plan” subfloors composed of low, parallel walls of stone, possibly to allow air to pass freely beneath the main flooring. Here too was found some of the earliest evidence for the use of copper, beaten into shape, not smelted, along with evidence of animal husbandry in the form of pig domestication and the earliest known use of linen fabric, a piece being found still wrapped around an antler.

  The site’s lead excavators, American archaeologist and anthropologist Robert J. Braidwood (1907–2003) and Turkish academic Dr. Halet Çambel, also came across other examples of advanced building design and technical achievement at Çayönü. In addition to the grill-plan floors, one structure, dubbed the Flagstone Building, was found to possess a floor of polished limestone slabs up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length. Two tall stone pillars stood in the center of the room, with rows of orthostats (stone posts) set up against the interior walls.4

  Another structure, known as the Terrazzo Building, bore a slightly different, although no less impressive, style of flooring. It consisted of a 16-inch (40 centimeter)-thick setting of terrazzo, a hard, polished surface made from burnt and crushed lime and clay, stained red with a substance called ochre. Into this, two parallel rows of white pebbles had been inserted to create a linear design of simple beauty. Orthostats again lined the interior walls, while a pair of standing stones, like those in the Flagstone Building, had been set up in the middle of the room.

  Prior to the discovery of Çayönü, the use of orthostats had been found in just a few rare instances. For instance, at a proto-Neolithic site in northern Iraq named Qermez Dere, located on a south-facing mountain slope overlooking a vast desert expanse known as the Jezirah, stone pillars, their tops carved into the likeness of human shoulders and arms, were found to have stood at the center of two circular buildings with plaster floors. Both stru
ctures provided dates in the region of the early tenth millennium BC.5

  SANGUINE DISCOVERIES

  In one of the enclosures at Çayönü archaeologists discovered, both in the walls and beneath the floor, human skulls belonging to around seventy individuals. In one pit excavators came across large numbers of disarticulated human bones, most of them long bones, which, along with the skulls, suggested the presence of no less than 450 individuals. What fate had befallen them, and under what circumstances, remains unclear.

  Unsurprisingly, this apparent mortuary structure, which had a round apse at its northern end, became known as the Skull Building, although it was what excavators found on an enormous cut and polished stone slab, 1.1 U.S. tons (about 1 metric tonne) in weight and set up like an altar table, that most disturbed them. On its surface were clear traces of blood from aurochs (an extinct species of wild cattle) and humans, in the form of crystals and hemoglobin.6 Equally disturbing was the discovery next to the stone slab of a vicious-looking flint knife, like something out of an Aztec temple.

  Some pressing questions arise regarding the presence of human blood inside Çayönü’s cult buildings. Was it the result of human sacrifice or autosacrifice, personal blood-letting like that practiced in pre-Columbian times among Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Aztec and Maya? Perhaps the matter is best left alone until a much clearer picture emerges of what was really going on here. Yet whatever the answer, it would seem that, during the early Neolithic age, beauty, sophistication, and advances in technology and architectural design went hand in hand with dark, sanguine activities, just as they would thousands of years later among the peoples of Central and South America.