Gobekli Tepe Page 7

  THE WESTERN CENTRAL PILLAR

  Enclosure D’s other central pillar (Pillar 31), positioned to the west of the one just described, also sports a belt and buckle, although in this instance both are almost featureless (other than a small bovine scratched into the belt on its eastern side). Like its neighbor, the T-shape sports a fox-pelt loincloth, while around its “neck” is a small bucranium, or ox head, worn as a pendant or emblem of office. French prehistorian Jacques Cauvin saw the bull in early Neolithic symbolism as representative of male domination over nature.8 This might well be so. Yet if the combined circle and crescent symbol on the neck of the eastern pillar does represent the sun, then there has to be a distinct possibility that the bucranium on its western neighbor represents the moon, the twin pillars displaying some kind of dual, solar-lunar polarity.

  Figure 4.4. H, eye, and crescent symbol together on the neck of the eastern central pillar (Pillar 18) in Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D.

  That bucrania perhaps symbolized the crescent moon in the Upper Paleolithic is shown by the Venus of Laussel, a carved stone relief of a naked full-bodied woman, 17.5 inches (45 centimeters) in height and carved into a block of limestone. Dating to ca. 27,000–20,000 BC, she was discovered in 1911 at the entrance to a rock shelter at Laussel in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. In her right hand she holds a bison’s horn on which are inscribed thirteen vertical notches, interpreted by some prehistorians as symbolizing the thirteen-month lunar cycle.

  Should these speculations prove valid, it implies that some of the glyphs displayed on the T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe have distinct spatial, temporal, and celestial values. The C and H ideograms, along with the eye symbol and bucranium, all suggest as much. So are the anthropomorphic pillars personifications of higher intelligences—some kind of divine company that reflects these otherworldly influences? We now begin to explore the true function of Göbekli Tepe’s quite extraordinary monumental architecture.

  PART TWO

  Cosmos

  5

  GATEWAY TO HEAVEN

  It is impossible today to assess the exact number of stones in each of the main enclosures uncovered at Göbekli Tepe. There were certainly twelve stones in Enclosure D’s main circle. Eight remain in Enclosure C’s outer wall and eleven within its inner ring, with the likelihood of a twelfth having once existed. Seven are known from Enclosure B (not counting the two central pillars), while Enclosure A is so different in style that guessing its original design becomes difficult. Enclosure F is so small, and from such a later date, that it is unlikely to have been built with the exact same motivations as its predecessors; ditto the Lion Pillar Building on the summit of the mound.

  Having said this, it does appear that a twelvefold division of stones did once exist in Enclosures C and D, arguably Göbekli Tepe’s oldest and most accomplished structures uncovered so far, while twelve T-shaped pillars are known to have existed in the walls of Nevalı Çori’s Level II cult building, the number increasing to thirteen during its next building phase, Level III, ca. 8000 BC. (The level system runs from the oldest layer, Level I, ca. 8500 BC, to the most recent occupational layers, Levels III–V, ca. 8000–7600 BC.)

  That the earliest enclosures at Göbekli Tepe might originally have had twelve T-shaped pillars within their elliptical walls raises the question of whether this number had any significance to the hunter-gatherers who created these strange structures over eleven thousand years ago. Was it simply by chance that twelve stones were chosen for the purpose, or might there be some deeper meaning behind the use of this myth-laden number?

  A CLOCKWISE MOTION

  A clue to this mystery lies in the fact that at least half of the standing pillars in Enclosures C and D have reliefs both on their shafts and on their T-shaped “heads.” Yet the head decoration appears only on the right-hand “faces” of the figures, never on their left sides.1 If these facial carvings had to be viewed in any kind of order or sequence, then it implies the entrant would have had to perambulate the enclosures in a clockwise motion. Doing so in a counterclockwise direction would have meant not being able to see any of the cranial reliefs.

  Of course, this could all just be coincidence or a simple case of design preference on the part of the Göbekli builders. However, a preferred navigation of the sacred enclosures in a clockwise fashion, along with the possible celestial nature of the glyphs on key pillars in Enclosures C and D, does hint at some kind of synchronization with the motion of the celestial bodies—the sun, moon, and planets—which all rise in the east and move around to the south before setting in the west.

  This clockwise, or sunwise, movement is seen in the shadow cast by a vertical pole or sundial gnomon. For this reason, the hands of the first analog clocks were set to move “with the sun”; that is, clockwise, and not counterclockwise, or anticlockwise, something that was seen as against the natural order of the universe.

  THE SUN’S PATH

  These realizations invoke compelling thoughts. The ecliptic, the sun’s course through the heavens, is divided into twelve divisions, or “months,” a consensus reached long ago based on the placement along its circular course of twelve key constellations, which each rise with the sun across one complete calendar year. Each remains visible in this role for a period of around thirty days, or one month, before giving way to the next constellation in line, the whole process occurring twelve times in all before the first constellation returns to the predawn sky.

  These zodiacal constellations provide us with a twelvefold division both of the solar year and the vault of heaven, with the combined twelve 30-degree sections making up a 360-degree circle. Thus in this manner both time and space are intrinsically bound together in recurring cycles, which through the passage of the seasons and the movement of the planets control the destiny of humankind, this being the root of astrology.

  The problem here is that the creation of the zodiac, along with the twelvefold division of the ecliptic and the establishment of the zodiacal houses, is thought to have taken place only around three thousand years ago, with all its different elements coming together finally in the Greek zodiac, which evolved into its current form during the first millennium BC. Despite this, a twelvefold division of the heavens did exist before this time. For example, as early as 2400 BC the Indus Valley civilization divided the celestial horizon into twelve parts.2 Excavations at Lothal in India between 1955 and 1960 revealed knowledge among the inhabitants of an eight- and twelvefold division of the horizon and sky. They utilized a thick, ringlike instrument made of shell, which divided the horizon into 360 degrees—all this coming some fifteen hundred years before the Greeks “invented” the zodiac.3

  COSMIC HARMONY

  The twelvefold division of the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe suggests a basic knowledge of cosmic geography in the design and layout of its monumental architecture. If correct, then the apparent 5:4 size ratio of Enclosures B, C, D, and E, which are all ovoid, suggests not only a basic understanding of cosmic harmony and proportion but also an interest in the interaction between different time cycles, most obviously those relating to the earth’s eccentricity, its axial tilt, and the precession of the earth’s orbit against the starry background (see chapter 7 for more on the Göbekli builders’ apparent interest in precession). Although many of these cosmic notions were not fully recognized until fairly recent times, there is some hint that they were known at least in principle during the age of Pythagoras and Plato.4

  So the next most obvious question would be to ask whether the carved art at Göbekli Tepe confirms its builders’ interest in a twelvefold division of the night sky. The answer, unfortunately, is frustratingly disappointing, for although certain zoomorphs found carved on the T-shape pillars do resemble the signs of the zodiac (such as scorpions, rams, goats, bulls, birds, and lions), there are too many other creatures featured to make any realistic comparisons with existing zodiac forms.

  Despite such drawbacks, some kind of astronomical or celestial motivation
behind the construction of the various enclosures at Göbekli Tepe cannot be ruled out. If this is the case, then the T-shaped pillars found within the walls of its sacred enclosures might well act as symbolic markers representing the twelvefold segmentation of the heavens and the twelvefold division of the year. Yet what does this tell us about the true function of these monuments?

  CENTER OF THE WORLD

  With the rings of T-shaped stones acting as the divisional markers of a symbolic clock face, the main enclosures’ pivotal axis would have been their twin central pillars. In cosmological terms these constitute the site’s axis mundi, or “axis of the earth,” a concept familiar to shamanic societies worldwide. This was a symbolic axis or world pillar—symbolized usually by a rope, pole, or tree trunk and often associated with a “world mountain” or “cosmic mountain”—seen to link the center of the earth with the rotation of the starry canopy via the celestial pole and marked in the night sky by the Pole Star. Each different tribe, culture, or territory had its own axis mundi, while shamanic cultures often had movable axis mundi represented by poles erected for this express purpose. Indeed, an axis mundi would often be the pole inside a communal tent, the smoke hole at the top of the structure acting as the entrance to a sky world thought to exist beyond the physical world.

  The concept of an axis mundi is most easily understood through its place in Greek cosmological architecture, for here it was marked permanently by an omphalos, a word meaning “navel.” These were bullet-shaped or conical stones of varying sizes set up in the inner sanctums of chief sanctuaries to signify the center of the physical world (very much like the Shiva-lingam of Hindu tradition, a navel-like stone set up in a temple’s most holy place, usually a darkened crypt immediately beneath the main building).

  According to Greek mythology the site of the original omphalos was determined when the sky god Zeus let fly two eagles, one from either “end” of the earth. Where they came together would be the absolute center of the world, which, in the version of the story handed down to us, turns out to be Delphi (omphali existed in other Greek kingdoms as well). Here the omphalos was said to allow direct access to the realm of the gods, a fact borne out by its supposed placement in the temple’s adyton, or Pythia, where a priestess, known as the Oracle, would deliver prophecies after breathing vapors rising from a chasm in the rock.

  Although the origin of the term omphalos has been lost, it is very likely linked to the idea that it was connected to the so-called cosmic axis, or turning point of the heavens, by an invisible umbilical cord. This was a concept based on the belief that the earth, as the offspring of the greater universe, was nourished in a fetal state within some kind of cosmic womb, seen in terms of the starry vault of heaven.

  PLACE OF THE PLACENTA

  Is it possible that the elliptical shape of the large enclosures at Göbekli Tepe, with their 5:4 size ratios, symbolizes the womb chamber, within which is the ovoid placenta that nourishes a prenatal child during pregnancy via the umbilical cord? Completing the picture would have been the site’s occupational mound, constructed around the enclosures to represent a belly swollen by pregnancy. It is a theme expressed, of course, in the name Göbekli Tepe, which, as we saw in chapter 1, means in Turkish “navel-like (göbekli) hill (tepe).”

  There is no way of knowing exactly when Göbekli Tepe gained its current name, although the chances are it replaced an earlier one meaning exactly the same thing, a process that might have been going on since the site’s final abandonment around 8000 BC. Evidence of this comes from the fact that the Kurdish name for the tell, which local people see even today as sacred, is Gire Navoke, which means “hill (gire) of the swollen belly (navoke),” with an emphasis on fertilization and pregnancy (Armenians, who formerly occupied eastern Turkey when it was part of Armenia Major, call Göbekli Tepe Portasar, meaning the “hill of the navel.” However, no historical evidence exists to show that this name was used prior to news of the site’s discovery in the year 2000.)

  Possibly significant in this respect is that in the language of the Sumerians, who thrived on the Mesopotamia Plain from ca. 2900 BC to 1940 BC, the word for placenta, ùš, is more or less identical to that used for blood and death (úš), as well as the word for base or foundation place (uš), as in a place to set up the central pole for a tent.5 Such a term might easily have applied to Göbekli Tepe, where the “pole” in question was represented by the enclosures’ twin central pillars.

  In various indigenous cultures and civilizations the placenta was, and still is, considered a very sacred object, the disposal of which was of great importance not just to the future of the postnatal child, but also to the well-being of the family. Among the Acholi tribe of Uganda and the Sudan, for instance, placentas are buried in a spirit house made of stone at the center of a lineage shrine known as the abila.6 In Eastern Asia, Japan in particular, the placenta is buried with great dignity, often beneath a tree (another symbol of the sky pole). The site is thereafter venerated as a sacred place, with the placentas of emperors becoming the subject of annual festivals relating to the fecundity of the land and the prosperity of the people.7

  TEMPLE OF THE TWINS

  Placentas, when featured in ancient myth and ritual, are often associated with the theme of twins, a matter that may well have some bearing on the presence of the twin pillars at the center of the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe. For example, among the Baganda tribe of Uganda the placenta and umbilical cord of the king are considered the source of his “twin” (mulongo), which is seen as the ghost or spirit of the placenta.8 During the monarch’s life it is kept under constant watch in a specially built Temple of the Twin, and at the first sight of the lunar crescent each month it is brought into the king’s presence for a special ceremony. Once the ceremony is complete, the “twin” is “exposed in the doorway of the temple for the moon to shine upon it, and also anointed with butter.”9 This exposure to the light of the moon takes place also on a second night, before the “twin” is hidden away for another month.

  After the king’s death the “twin,” that is, the placenta and umbilical cord, is buried in the temple, along with his jaw, which thereafter functions as a point of communication with the dead monarch’s spirit, the relics being brought out on special occasions for oracular purposes.10 At the same time a new Temple of the Twin is created for the next king, with the whole process being repeated (rather like the periodic construction of new enclosures at Göbekli Tepe).

  Even in ancient Egypt the placenta formed the twin of the king, quite literally the seat of his soul double or alter ego. As in Baganda tradition, it was retained and carefully protected throughout his life and, following his death, was most probably buried in a special room, where it served as his ka, or double. To the ancient Egyptians the royal placenta was seen as a divinity in its own right, its cult attested as early as the late Predynastic period, ca. 3250–3050 BC.11

  More disturbingly, it is reported that in addition to placing placentas in the abila cult shrine, the Acholi tribe of Africa is said to have buried alive twins placed in jars at the same spot.12 Whatever the reality of this macabre act, it further emphasizes the connection between twins and the placenta, which derives in the main from the primordial belief that when a child is born, his twin, symbolized by the placenta, is the one who dies, and thus becomes a spirit double of the living person. In this knowledge, it was considered that during pregnancy the womb always contains twins, each with his or her own soul and destiny.

  The association between twins and the placenta is expressed also in the creation myth of the Dogon of Mali, in West Africa, where a double placenta forms inside the cosmic egg of Amma, the creator god, each one attached to a pair of twins.13 A Dogon pictogram showing the double placenta inside Amma’s egg closely resembles the elliptical appearance of the sanctuaries at Göbekli Tepe (see figure 5.1). More incredibly, vertical strokes drawn to represent the two sets of twins inside the egg eerily echo the placement and orientation of the twin pillars at the cente
r of the enclosures.

  TWIN PORTALS TO THE SKY WORLD

  This information makes it highly likely that similar themes might have featured among the beliefs and practices of the Göbekli builders. If so, then the twin sets of pillars in the various enclosures at Göbekli Tepe could well signify human twins, either twins that exist in the womb during pregnancy or twins that are seen to have reentered some kind of symbolic womb in death (something that every entrant might have been seen to do when he or she entered the enclosures for shamanic purposes). Indeed, if the central pillars do symbolize twins, one representing the human soul, the other signifying the soul double, or ghost, then this practice might be related to a belief expressed by the Karo Batak peoples of Sumatra, which asserts that of the twin souls, a person’s true soul is that of the placenta, which was probably seen as “the seat of the transferable soul.”14 In other words, in order to enter and navigate the spirit world, shamans or initiates had first to transfer the consciousness from their physical body to that of their twin; namely, the placenta soul. Thus the twin central pillars at Göbekli Tepe might have enforced a similar belief in the minds of entrants standing between them.

  Figure 5.1. Dogon pictogram showing the two sets of twins inside the double placenta within Amma’s egg. Note how the vertical lines, representing the twins, eerily echo the twin central pillars in the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe.

  Allied to this belief is the fact that the twin pillars at Göbekli Tepe most probably signified portals or gateways; that is, entranceways into the conceived axis mundi that would have transferred you instantly to the sky world (hollows in tree trunks are often seen to serve this function among shamanic-based societies). An instantaneous dimension shift of this sort would have been achieved through the use of one or more shamanic processes, including ecstatic dancing, ritual drumming, long-term sensory deprivation, and, of course, the ingestion of psychotropic or soporific substances (something suggested at Göbekli Tepe, as we have seen, through the profusion of snakes in its carved art and also by the presence of large basalt bowls used perhaps in the preparation of drugs and medicine). All of these methods would have enabled the mind to, quite literally, jump between worlds without any kind of delay involving regular space or time.