gobekli tepe - genesis of the gods (11 page)

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

I
t 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
)
.
”