Gobekli Tepe

by Andrew Collins

  40

  A TRIP TO PARADISE

  Friday, September 14, 2012. The drive by dolmus (a Turkish minibus) from Mush to the Alevi town of Varto, in the foothills of the Armenian Highlands, was breathtaking. After leaving the great plain, the road follows the course of the Eastern Euphrates, which runs alongside the road for part of the way. Once that had veered away toward the east, the vehicle climbed ever higher until, finally, we entered Varto itself. The town is a bustling hive of activity even in the baking hot sun, and having left behind the dolmus, we journeyed on foot until we reached a local hospital, where Idris picked up a car for us to complete the journey (it belonged to a work colleague).

  After departing Varto, we moved into a beautiful green landscape, utterly different from the dusty, volcanic earth that proliferates on the plain of Mush, and very soon my eyes became focused on something I never expected to see on this journey—the summit of Bingöl Mountain looming up ahead. Seeing it as a single mountain is in fact inaccurate, for Bingöl is in reality a north-south oriented ridge, or massif, with two separate peaks, linked by a saddleback indentation.

  MOUNTAIN LION

  Unbelievably, the car journey took us right alongside the mountain, which was on our right-hand side at a distance of no more than 4–5 miles (6.5–8 kilometers). What I saw transfixed me, for the twin peaks give the mountain’s elevated summit the likeness of a large feline, most obviously a lion, its protruding head, shoulders, and forelegs made up of the northern peak, with the saddleback indentation and southern peak creating the creature’s body, hind legs, and tail (see plate 31). The whole thing looks as if it is emerging from the mountain’s rocky surface in order to rise into the sky. The form is unmistakable and cannot have been missed by those who inhabited the region in the past. Of course, not everyone is going to interpret this rock simulacrum as a lion, although the likeness is striking enough for it to have impressed some people along the way, including perhaps the Armenians who would come here each spring to venerate Anahita, the goddess of fertility and the waters of life. She is depicted in Persian religious art as a shining being standing on a lion.

  PEOPLE OF TRUTH

  A lion sitting astride a world mountain, guarding the axis mundi or world pillar as Bingöl Mountain appears to do in Armenian myth and legend, reminded me also of a similar leonine beast featured in the creation myth of a Kurdish religion named Ahl-e Haqq, which means “People of Truth.” Although this ethnoreligious group, known also as the Yâresân, exists mostly in Iraqi Kurdistan and northwest Iran, some still remain in remote parts of eastern Turkey. According to them, a charismatic leader named Sultan Sahak founded the Ahl-e Haqq religion during the fourteenth century, although beyond that their origins remain obscure.

  As part of the Yâresân creation myth, the divine essence, called Khavankar, brings into existence the seven Haftan, or archangels, and two of them, Ruchiyar and Ayvat (or Yar), become a cow and lion, respectively. The divine essence then creates a fish in the primordial waters and places a large white stone on its back. The cow then steps on the white stone, and the lion stands on the back of the cow. The divine essence places the earth on the horn of the cow, and on the head of the lion he places the “Supreme Sphere”; that is, the vault of heaven.1

  The relationship of the fish, cow, and lion expresses a three-tiered universe, with a watery abyss in the lower world, a material existence in the middle world, and a cosmic realm in the upper world, all of them linked via an imaginary line of ascent.

  COSMIC LION

  Elsewhere in Yâresân myth the lion is the avatar of Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of Muhammad,2 just as he is in the beliefs of the Alevi, who probably share similar traditions. The Alevi see Ali as the first of the twelve imams, or spiritual leaders, and depict him as a lion surrounded by twelve stars. This echoes the lion-headed figure named Zurvan Akarana featured in the religion of Zurvanism, a form of Zoroastrianism once practiced in Armenia. He is the kosmokrator, or controller of the revolution of time, symbolized by the seven planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Clearly, throughout the region the lion was seen as some kind of cosmic being associated with the stability of the world pillar that links the world mountain with the celestial pole, the turning point of the heavens.

  The significance of the lion to the Alevi faith was brought home to me later that day when, on leaving Muska, I saw a large feline carved in relief on the wall of a single-story house. Is it possible that the lion simulacrum is linked with Bingöl’s role as Katar Erkri, the “Summit of the Earth”?3 In China, a peak called Kulkun (in the modern Bayan Kat Mountains) was known as “King of Mountains, the summit of the earth, the supporter of heaven and the axis which touches the pole.”4 Similar legends, I suspect, were once attached to Bingöl Mountain.

  ARRIVAL AT MUSKA

  What I had learned the night before about our destination seemed almost unbelievable. Muska, where Idris’s friends live, is the site of Hızır Çeşmesi, the Fountain of Hızır (the Alevi form of al-Khidr), with its accompanying dream incubation house. Although Muska is the generally used name of the village, which has a population of around 120 people, its modern Turkish name is Beşikkaya Köyü. However, this name is rarely used by the local population, since it was imposed on the village by Turkish authorities as part of a concerted attempt to rid the region of any kind of unwanted cultural ethnicity. I was hoping we could visit the fountain, which from the few pictures I had managed to view online, looked absolutely idyllic, with the spring water emerging from the base of an old gnarled tree.

  The very last of the scattering of houses making up the village ceased as we now entered a small enclosed valley, beyond which to the east and north were mountain slopes, part of a northern extension of the Bingöl massif. I looked out on the landscape below, which seemed abundantly rich in green trees, lush meadows, and beautiful mountain streams. It was unimaginable the difference between here and the more arid conditions on the plain of Mush.

  Getting out of the car, I saw instantly several pieces of obsidian just lying about on the track. I picked up a few examples as we began a walk across what appeared to be an extended garden area. Here we navigated the outpouring of a mountain brook that ran down from a plush green environment up ahead. No one was about as, with the sound of trickling water all around us, we entered a sheltered canopy of trees at the base of the mountain valley. I recognized it immediately as the Fountain of Hızır, which seemed absolutely bizarre, as our actual destination was a property immediately beyond it on slightly higher ground. This all seemed a little weird—Idris’s friends just happening to live next to one of the most holy sites in Alevi tradition.

  FOUNTAIN OF HIZIR

  Before me now stood an eight-sided column, painted canary yellow, with a spout on each facade, from which came mountain water of the purest kind. This really was a fountain and not a well, with the water somehow being projected through the column by the action of gravity. The structure was not old—fifty to seventy years at the most—although the site was as old as the hills themselves. There were inscriptions in black on the column, but none offered any real words of wisdom. One read “Hızır Çesmesi hepimizindir cevreyi temiz tutalim,” which means “Fountain of Khidr is for everyone, let’s keep the environment clean”! It was advice clearly taken, because the entire site was still as nature intended, although the childish graffiti scrawled into the fountain seemed unnecessary.

  The source of the spring was beneath an overhanging tree close by. Off to our left some 20 feet (6 meters) away, and sheltered by overhanging branches, was the building used for dream incubation. It was simple and unassuming, and for some reason it reminded me of a waiting room on a railway station (sans the bad smells, of course).

  At the fountain, Idris and I sampled the water, which tasted good. It was much needed, and just maybe it would have some beneficial effect on our health. I took time to take in the ambience of the place, realizing that I had been led, almost by chance, to somewhere quite special inde
ed.

  To say that this site was scenic would be to do it an injustice, for the sunlight glinting off the sparkling waters seemed almost to bring alive the sheer abundance of life that prospered here. Trees, plants, and flowers seemed to grow with an almost enchanting beauty. It was as if this place was imbibed with the spirit of life itself, making me wonder whether this really was the Ma’ul Hayat, the Fountain of Life, where al-Khidr, the genius loci of the site, was given immortality, or the Ab’i Hayat, the Waters of Life, where Alexander the Great achieved immortality himself following a quest that had brought him right here to Bingöl Mountain.

  FISH FARM

  Just beyond the Fountain of Hızır is, rather surprisingly, a prefabricated factory unit, which, it must be pointed out, blends in pretty well with the environment. Between it and the Fountain of Hızır is a cluster of industrial-sized pools, for I learned that Idris’s friends run a commercial fish farm, a strange site perpetuation echoing the manner in which al-Khidr achieves immortality by catching and eating a fish swimming about in the Fountain of Immortality.

  Slightly uphill of both the factory unit and the Fountain of Hızır was our final destination—an unassuming cottage, in the garden of which introductions were quickly made. Welcoming us was the owner of the house, a tall, thin, bearded man in his sixties, who at this point I had no idea was a renowned Alevi poet and musician named Hıdır Çelik. Youths also were present, apprentices at the fish farm and relatives perhaps of Hıdır. A couple of men from the community greeted us, as did Hıdır’s daughter, Gülüzar, who seemed to be in her twenties.

  She and a female friend started to prepare salad for a meal, as black tea was served, and one of the youths now reappeared with a whole bag of fresh fish and started cooking them on a grill supported above an open fire. Gülüzar washed cutlery and glasses in the mountain brook, which actually ran through the garden, making it clear that this was their main source of water. Neither Hıdır, his daughter, nor anyone else present other than Idris spoke English, so all conversations were in Turkish or Kurdish. At suitable moments, I took my leave to gaze down at the Fountain of Hızır not 50 yards (46 meters) away. I watched a shepherd herding his flock of sheep along the edge of the mountain slope and went across to the outdoor bathroom positioned on a nearby hill ridge, providing me with an opportunity to refine my collection of obsidian pieces, disgorged by Bingöl Mountain when it was still an active volcano.

  Were pieces of obsidian like this instrumental in instigating the construction of places like Göbekli Tepe, and through it initiating the Neolithic revolution? The earliest known mirrors are highly polished disks of obsidian found at Çatal Höyük in southern-central Anatolia, and also at Aşıklı Höyük, a ten-thousand-year-old town complex discovered in the 1960s near Aksaray in central Turkey. I thought it fitting therefore that among the forbidden arts of heaven that Azâzêl, one of the leaders of the Watchers, is said to have revealed to humankind was “the fabrication of mirrors, and the workmanship of bracelets and ornaments.”5

  An obsidian bracelet, more than nine thousand years old, discovered at Aşıklı Höyük during the 1990s, is deemed so unique that it was given special attention by researchers from the Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes in Istanbul and the Laboratoire de Tribologie et Dynamique des Systèmes in Lyon, France.6 They determined that it was made using highly specialized manufacturing techniques and is almost perfectly regular in shape. Additionally, they found that the symmetry of the central annular ridge is within a degree of accuracy, while the mirrorlike surface of the bracelet would have required “the use of complex polishing techniques capable of obtaining a nanometer-scale surface quality worthy of today’s telescope lenses.”7

  Could the technique of producing finely polished obsidian mirrors and bracelets have been introduced to the early Neolithic world of central and eastern Anatolia by Swiderian master craftsmen, remembered in myth and legend as the Watchers and Anunnaki, as well as the Peri of Persian and Kurdish folklore? Were some of these individuals in fact Neanderthal human-hybrids of striking appearance, whose original homeland was the Russian Plain, or even the Carpathian Mountains of Central Europe? It did seem possible.

  POETRY READING

  Following food and a tour of the fish farm, Idris and I were given copies of the Alevi poet’s book of poems, written partly in Turkish and partly in Zâzâ, the native language of the Alevi, who are mostly Dimli Kurds.8 There were calls for Hıdır to read a poem or two, which he did in his native tongue. His words sounded emotive and meaningful.

  After more tea, it was time to leave, and with the car dropped off safely in Varto, there were just moments to spare before the final dolmus departed for Mush. We never did encounter the PKK on our travels, and no one seemed in any way concerned that elsewhere in Bingöl Province, as well as in other parts of eastern Turkey, a very real war was being waged every day, with it rarely even getting a mention in the international media.

  The following morning I left Mush for Göbekli Tepe, traveling purposely by coach in order to experience the nail-biting journey through the Eastern Taurus Mountains on the old obsidian route, first to Diyarbakır and then on to Şanlıurfa, where I planned to stay for the final three days of the trip. We passed close to the source of the Tigris River, as well as the site of Çayönü, and also Nevalı Çori, submerged by the floodwaters caused by the opening of the Atatürk Dam in 1992. We also passed within reach of Karaca Dağ, the source of so many strains of modern wheat, pinpointing this region—the heart of the triangle d’or—as the true foundation point for the emergence of agriculture in the Near East. All of these important marks on the pages of history are just a stone’s throw away from the road between Mush and Göbekli Tepe.

  41

  GÖBEKLI TEPE REVISITED

  Ifirst visited Göbekli Tepe back in 2004. Back then many of the enclosures were either only partially excavated or they were enclosed in temporary structures with corrugated roofs. At the time, I had the whole place to myself and encountered only the man who owns the pastureland thereabouts, and who is acknowledged as the “discoverer” of the site. His name is Şeymus Yıldız, and in the 1980s he kept coming across fragments of carved stone when tilling the fields, which he simply picked up and placed on boundary walls. He did report these finds to the archaeological museum in Şanlıurfa, but no one ever came to inspect them until the German archaeologist Dr. Klaus Schmidt turned up at the site in 1994.

  Today, nearly all the pillars in the large enclosures are fully exposed, while new structures are being unearthed to the west and northwest of the main group of sanctuaries. There are too many mysteries oozing from every corner of this enigmatic archaeological site to do it justice in one book, although I knew this was what I would be attempting to do upon my return to the United Kingdom.

  After hanging around the site long enough, I did finally manage to get an impromptu interview with Klaus Schmidt, who was very forthcoming on a number of different subjects. He told me, for instance, that he does not discount the possibility that some of the enclosures might have been built with celestial or astronomical considerations in mind. Yet he admits it is not his “favorite theory” regarding the purpose of the sanctuaries.

  UNFINISHED MONOLITH

  On the second day, I was able to walk out to the unfinished monolith, located on a northwest extension of the mountain ridge, a quarter of a mile (400 meters) away from the main enclosures. For the journey I was accompanied by one of Klaus Schmidt’s archaeological colleagues (name withheld at his request), with whom I was able to discuss many aspects of the discoveries at the site.

  The partly hewn pillar—bigger than anything seen in the enclosures so far—has major fracture lines across its surface, suggesting that the Göbekli builders broke it even before they had a chance to remove it from the bedrock. Most probably they moved on to another site elsewhere on the plateau and began carving out a new stone there. When a finished pillar was finally freed from the bedrock it would leave behind a gapi
ng hole. Within this, my archaeological friend informed me, a fierce fire would be kindled to burn the thousands of limestone chips that would inevitably result from fashioning a pillar of this size. These would then be pulverized to make the fill necessary to create the beautifully finished terrazzo floors seen in some of the sanctuaries.

  The bigger question left in my mind, however, was why supersize everything at the site, especially when no one before had even attempted to create stone sanctuaries on this scale. Only the great stone wall and tower at Jericho might be contemporaneous with the earliest building phases of Göbekli Tepe. Further back in time we have only the carved stone blocks fashioned by the Solutrean peoples to create rock friezes within the caves of southwest Europe.

  So why the sudden change in policy at places like Göbekli Tepe in southeast Anatolia during the tenth millennium BC? My archaeological friend suggested that Göbekli Tepe was the culmination of a natural evolution in building construction across a period of thousands of years, which was also the opinion of his mentor, Klaus Schmidt. I thought differently, citing fear as the greatest motivation—fear that something bad would happen if you didn’t do it. He did consider the possibility before deciding to differ with me on this point.

  JUTTING HEADLAND

  After the archaeologist’s departure, I spent some time in the baking heat walking out to the tip of a narrow headland that juts toward the northeast of the main east-west aligned mountain ridge. Although purely natural, I had a sense that this promontory might have played some role in the beliefs and practices of the Göbekli builders.