Here’s where he gets to his point:
One of the limestone pillars [in Enclosure D] includes a scene in bas relief on the upper portion of one of its sides. There is a bird with outstretched wings, two smaller birds, a scorpion, a snake, a circle, and a number of wavy lines and cord-like features. At first glance this lithified menagerie appears to be simply a hodgepodge of animals and geometrical designs randomly placed to fill in the broad side of the pillar.
The key to unlocking this early Neolithic puzzle is the circle situated at the center of the scene. I am immediately reminded of the cosmic Father—the Sun. The next clues are the scorpion facing up toward the sun, and the large bird seemingly holding the sun upon its outstretched wing. In fact the sun figure appears to be located accurately on the ecliptic with respect to the familiar constellation of Scorpio, although the scorpion on the pillar occupies only the left portion, or head, of our modern conception of that constellation. As such the sun symbol is located as close to the galactic center as it can be on the ecliptic as it crosses the galactic plane.
Bear with me, and I’ll explain all this. Meanwhile, let’s continue with Burley’s article because it’s his next statement that really has me sitting up and paying attention:
What’s important here is for some unknown reason the builders of Göbekli Tepe constructed a temple apparently highlighting a time 11,600 years in their future. Yet this scene is intentional. The symbolism is clear and in keeping with many mythologies describing this very same event—occurring at the very time we live in today!
Burley then presents a graphic that “illustrates the crossing of the galactic plane of the Milky Way near the center of the galaxy, with several familiar constellations nearby.” A second graphic shows the same view with the addition of the ancient constellations represented on the pillar:
Note that the outstretched wings, sun, bird legs and snake all appear to be oriented to emphasize the sun’s path along the ecliptic … The similarity of the bas relief to the crossing of the ecliptic and galactic equator at the center of the Milky Way is difficult to reject, supporting the possibility that humans recognized and documented the precession of the equinoxes thousands of years earlier than is generally accepted by scholars … Göbekli Tepe was built as a symbolic sphere communicating a very ancient understanding of world and cosmic geography. Why this knowledge was intentionally buried soon afterward remains a mystery.
I don’t immediately understand everything that Burley is saying in all this, but I understand enough to get started on it and fortunately I have astronomy software—Stellarium—on my computer that can simulate the ancient skies taking account of precession. More importantly, the program can show me the sky of our own time and will allow me to scroll through it day by day, month by month, going forward or back as I wish, enlarging and inspecting any specific elements that I’m interested in. Most often I study ancient skies, not modern ones, but tonight it’s our own time I need to take a look at.
Figure 46: The celestial imagery of Pillar 43.
Or, rather, not exactly our own time, July 2014 as I sit in front of my computer in ŞanlIurfa, but a year and a half earlier, the winter solstice, December 21, 2012—the much hyped “end date” (that passed with not so much as a whimper, let alone a bang) of the famous Mayan calendar.
Message on a pillar?
Here’s what I’m aware of already as I open Stellarium on my computer. When Paul Burley talks about the sun depicted on the Göbekli Tepe pillar being located “as close to the galactic center as it can be on the ecliptic,” and when he also makes a point of telling me that Scorpio is involved, I know he can only be referring to one epoch—the epoch of the year 2000, give or take a maximum of about 40 years on either side (i.e. from 1960 to 2040). The great band of stars and clouds of interstellar dust arching across the sky that we call the Milky Way, and that is in fact our own home galaxy viewed edge on, is crossed by the ecliptic—i.e. the sun’s apparent path through the heavens—twice a year. One of these gigantic interchanges is in the North between the constellations of Gemini and Taurus; in our epoch the sun stands here at the northern hemisphere’s summer solstice, i.e. around June 21. The second interchange is in the South between the constellations of Sagittarius and Scorpio, and in our epoch the sun stands here at the northern hemisphere’s winter solstice, i.e. around December 21.
The reader will recall that precession has the visual effect, as viewed from earth, of causing the constellations that “house” the sun at the four key moments of the year—the two equinoxes and the two solstices—to shift very slowly around the belt of the zodiac, with the sun spending 2,160 years “in” each zodiacal constellation at each key moment, before the whole system slips round far enough for the sun to have passed completely from one constellation into another. When this happens at the equinox, it happens at the other three “stations” as well. Indeed, it is a good mental exercise to imagine a circle—which represents the ecliptic, i.e. the annual path of the sun—and to mark out at equal intervals around the circumference of this circle the twelve constellations of the zodiac. Now place four spokes arranged in the form of a cross inside the circle. Where each of the four ends of the cross touch the edge of the circle, you have one of the key stations of the sun—the northern hemisphere’s spring equinox (March 21), summer solstice (June 21), autumn equinox (September 21), and winter solstice (December 21). In our epoch, the zodiacal constellations housing the sun at these four stations are Pisces on the March equinox, Gemini on the June solstice, Virgo on the September equinox, and Sagittarius on the December solstice.
Figure 47: The precessional shift from the Age of Pisces into the Age of Aquarius. As the position of the sun against the background zodiacal constellations on the spring equinox shifts from Pisces into Aquarius, so the summer solstice will shift from Gemini into Taurus, the autumn equinox from Virgo into Leo, and the winter solstice from Sagittarius into Scorpio.
However, precession has the effect of very slowly rotating the spokes of the cross. We are nearing the end of the “Age of Pisces” now (i.e. of the 2,160 years when Pisces houses the sun on the March equinox) and the end of the spoke that was in Pisces will soon rotate into Aquarius (hence the song, “this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius”). But because the cross is, if you like, welded together to form a single fixed unit, all its spokes must move together with the result that as the March equinox shifts from Pisces into Aquarius, so the June solstice will shift from Gemini into Taurus, the September equinox from Virgo into Leo, and the December solstice from Sagittarius into Scorpio.
I want to avoid undue complications as far as possible here, but let us now return to the Milky Way which, as we’ve seen, is crossed by the path of the sun twice a year. Remember that at each crossing point a pair of zodiacal constellations sits on either side of the Milky Way, effectively forming the pillars of two celestial gates through which the “road” of the Milky Way passes—Gemini and Taurus in the North (with the sun presently housed by Gemini at the June solstice) and Sagittarius and Scorpio in the South (with the sun presently housed by Sagittarius at the December solstice). The relationship of these two pairs of zodiacal constellations to the Milky Way is not affected by precession and NEVER CHANGES. Gemini and Taurus will always mark the northern “gate” of the Milky Way and Sagittarius and Scorpio will always mark the southern “gate” of the Milky Way.
Of the two, however, it is the Sagittarius–Scorpio gate that is the most important, because it so happens that the part of the Milky Way seen through this gate as we look up at the night sky forms the very center and heart of our galaxy. Not only that, but because it is the galactic center, in the midst of which, astronomers now believe, sits an immense black hole—“a hyperdense object from which even light cannot escape”55—there is a notable bulge in precisely this area. Last but not least, in the midst of this so-called “nuclear bulge” is another absolutely distinctive feature that astronomers call the “dark rift,” which figures prominently
in many ancient mythologies,56 and which is created by a series of overlapping, non-luminous molecular dust clouds.
As a result of precession, the December solstice sun is presently housed by Sagittarius and thus, as viewed from earth, “targets” the galactic center like the bead on the barrel of a rifle. The last time this grand celestial line-up of earth, December-solstice sun and the galactic center occurred was a full precessional cycle of 25,920 years ago and the next time it will happen is a full precessional cycle of 25,920 years in the future. We live, in other words, in a very special, indeed rather unique, moment in terms of cosmic and astronomical symbolism. I will elaborate in the next chapter on the symbolic aspect, and why the December solstice matters in particular, but first it is important to make something else clear.
Figure 48: The celestial gateways: Sagittarius/Scorpio at right, with the sun presently housed by Sagittarius at the winter solstice; and Gemini/Taurus at left, with the sun presently housed by Gemini at the summer solstice.
If, hypothetically, some ancient civilization wished to deploy its knowledge of the regular movements and changes in the heavens in order to draw attention to a particular moment in the flow of time, a possibility that we have considered with the monuments of Giza, then the precessional world ages, while useful, are not really precise enough to spell out an exact date. After all, the broad configurations of each precessional age hold good for 2,160 years. If we want to be more specific than that, then we are going to need to find a celestial event in the period we wish to draw attention to which is (a) an artifact of precession and (b) occurs in a much narrower window than that of a full precessional world age of 2,160 years.
Such an event occurs in our time. It is the arrival of the sun at the December solstice in the southern gate of the Milky Way between Sagittarius and Scorpio, where it targets the galactic center. There are certain imprecisions, mainly to do with the width of the sun’s disc and over what period we can say it lines up exactly with the center of the Milky Way when viewed from earth, but nonetheless, we are not talking about 2,160 years here. The exact targeting of the galactic center occurs in a window that is no more than 80-years wide and we will continue to be in that window for approximately another 25 years.
This creates an interesting situation with regard to the message of Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe, because if Paul Burley is right, the reliefs on that pillar use symbolic language to depict the December solstice sun at the southern gate of the Milky Way between Sagittarius and Scorpio.
In other words, those reliefs are speaking to our time.
They are speaking to us.
Chapter 15
The Place of Creation
As I sit in my hotel room in ŞanlIurfa in July 2014 spinning the skies on my computer screen, I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that Paul Burley has had a genius insight about the scene on Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe. Burley’s language in his paper is careful—almost diffident. As we saw in Chapter Fourteen, he says that “the sun figure appears to be located accurately on the ecliptic with respect to the familiar constellation of Scorpio.” He speaks of other “familiar constellations” nearby. And he draws our attention to the large bird—the vulture—“seemingly holding the sun upon an outstretched wing.” He does not say which constellation he believes the vulture represents, but the graphics he includes to reinforce his argument leave no room for doubt that he regards it as an ancient representation of the constellation of Sagittarius.1
We’ve already seen that there is evidence for the identification of constellations going far back into the Ice Age, some of which were portrayed in those remote times in forms that are recognizable to us today. From the last chapter the reader will recall Michael Rappengluck’s work on the zodiacal constellation of Taurus, depicted at Lascaux some 17,000 years ago as an auroch (ancient species of wild cattle) with the six visible stars of the Pleiades on its shoulder.
Acknowledging such surprising continuities in the ways that some constellations are depicted does not mean that all the constellations we are familiar with now have always been depicted in the same way by all cultures at all periods of history. This is very far from being the case. Constellations are subject to sometimes radical change depending on which imaginary figures different cultures choose to project upon the sky. For example, the Mesopotamian constellation of the Bull of Heaven and the modern constellation of Taurus share the Hyades cluster as the head, but in other respects are very different.2 Likewise the Mesopotamian constellation of the Bow and Arrow is built from stars in the constellations that we call Argo and Canis Major, with the star Sirius as the tip of the arrow. The Chinese also have a Bow and Arrow constellation built from pretty much the same stars but the arrow is shorter, with Sirius forming not the tip but the target.3
Even when constellation boundaries remain the same from culture to culture, the ways in which those constellations are seen can be very different. Thus the Ancient Egyptians knew the constellation that we call the Great Bear, but represented it as the foreleg of a bull. They saw the Little Bear (Ursa Minor) as a jackal. They depicted the zodiacal constellation of Cancer as a scarab beetle. The constellation of Draco, which we see as a dragon, was figured by the Ancient Egyptians as a hippopotamus with a crocodile on its back.4
There can therefore be no objection in principle to the suggestion that the constellation we call Sagittarius, “the Archer”—and depict as a centaur man-horse hybrid holding a bow with arrow drawn—could have been seen by the builders of Göbekli Tepe as a vulture with outstretched wings.
I spend hours on Stellarium toggling back and forth between the sky of 9600 BC and the sky of our own epoch, focusing on the region between Sagittarius and Scorpio—the region Burley believes is depicted on Pillar 43—and looking at the relationship of the sun to these background constellations.
The first thing that becomes clear to me is that a vulture with outstretched wings makes a very good figure of Sagittarius; indeed it’s a much better, more intuitive and more obvious way to represent the central part of this constellation than the centaur/archer that we have inherited from the Mesopotamians and the Greeks. This central part of Sagittarius (minus the centaur’s legs and tail) happens to contain its brightest stars and forms an easily recognized asterism often called the “Teapot” by astronomers today—because it does resemble a modern teapot with a handle, a pointed lid and a spout. The handle and spout elements, however, could equally effectively be drawn as the outstretched wings of a vulture, while the pointed “lid” becomes the vulture’s neck and head. It is the outstretched wing in front of the vulture—the spout of the teapot—that Burley sees as “holding the sun,” represented by the prominent disc in the middle of the scene on Pillar 43.
Figure 49: A vulture with outstretched wings makes a much better, more intuitive and more obvious way than an archer to represent the bright, central “Teapot” asterism within the constellation of Sagittarius.
Figure 50: Sagittarius and neighboring constellations as interpreted on Pillar 43.
But the vulture and the sun are only two aspects of the complex imagery of the pillar. Below and just a little to the right of the vulture is a scorpion. Above and to the right of the vulture is a second large bird with a long sickle-shaped beak, and nestled close to this bird is a serpent with a large triangular head and its body coiled into a curve. A third bird, again with a hooked beak, but smaller, with the look of a chick, is placed below these two figures—again to the right of the vulture, indeed immediately to the right of its extended front wing. Below the scorpion is the head and long neck of a fourth bird. Beside the scorpion, rearing up, is another serpent.
Part of the reason for my growing confidence in Burley’s conclusion, though he makes little of it in his paper, is that these figures, with only minor adjustments, compare intriguingly with other constellations around the alleged Sagittarius/vulture figure.
First and foremost, there is the scorpion below and a little to the right of the vulture, which we�
��ve seen already has an obvious resemblance to Scorpio, the next constellation along the zodiac from Sagittarius. Its posture and positioning are wrong—we’ll look more closely into the implications of this in a moment—but it’s there and it is overlapped by the tail end of the constellation that we recognize as Scorpio today.
Secondly, there’s the large bird above and to the right of the vulture with the curved body of a serpent nestled close to it. These two figures are in the correct position and the correct relationship to one another to match the constellation we call Ophiuchus, the serpent holder, and the serpent constellation, Serpens, that Ophiuchus holds.
Thirdly, immediately to the right of the extended front wing of the vulture there’s that other bird, smaller, like a chick, with a hooked beak. I email Burley about this, and about the different position and orientation of the scorpion on the pillar and the modern constellation of Scorpio, and we arrive, after some back and forth, at a solution. Constellation boundaries, as the reader will recall, are not necessarily drawn in the same place by all cultures at all periods and it’s clear that there’s been a shift over time in the constellation boundaries here. The chick on Pillar 43 appears to have formed a small constellation of its own in the minds of the Göbekli Tepe astronomers—a constellation that utilized some of the important stars today considered to be part of Scorpio. The chick’s hooked beak is correctly positioned, and its body is the correct shape, to match the head and claws of Scorpio.5
Fourthly, beside the scorpion on Pillar 43 is a serpent and beneath the scorpion are the head and long neck of yet another bird, with a headless anthropomorphic figure positioned to its right. The serpent matches the tail of Sagittarius (as we’ve seen, the vulture appears to be composed from the central part of Sagittarius only—the Teapot—so this leaves the remainder of the constellation available to the ancients for other uses). The best contenders for the bird, and for the peculiar little anthropomorphic figure to its right are parts of the constellations we know today as Pavo and Triangulum Australe. The remainder of Pavo may be involved with further figures present on the pillar to the left of the bird.
Magicians of the Gods Page 31