The Taş Tepeler ‘stone hills’ archaeological project which is an effort to understand Neolithic beginnings has progressed rapidly since its 2019 start and has already uncovered regional variations on common themes that link Gobekli Tepe with other sites. I was in Sanliurfa when the project started. After my visit to Gobekli Tepe my driver asked ‘you want Karahan?’ I usually take in a Turkish bath after trekking that arid, dusty windswept hill, and because my time was limited, I declined. I was also aware that it wasn’t quite as close as he was making out but I’ll accept the offer next time.
A panel discovered on a bench cut out of bedrock at the bottom of a circular building at Sayburç, just west of Sanliurfa City, depicts a compelling Animal Master which would seem straightforward until its PPN age is considered: e.g. it would happily pass as Bronze Age if you didn’t know anything about it. The figure is flanked by two big cats, which might bear relation to the two lions on pillars of the ‘Lion Pillars Building’ at Gobekli and the later, double-leopard design found at Catalhoyuk. On his left (the two scenes form one panel) is a lunging aurochs with a human coaxer brandishing a snake all in similar artistic style to Gobekli depictions.
The twin theme evocative of mythic founders continues at Karahan Tepe which, according to its excavator Prof. Necmi Karul, is late-PPNA-early-PPNB so slightly ahead of the early Gobekli enclosures. Karahan was built by the same culture but different people and the pairing phenomena continues in the smaller square buildings and the larger circular building (with a floor space 23 metres across) where the central pillars are collapsed on the floor. This amphitheater-like enclosure, named Str. AD, is larger in floor space than Gobekli’s Enclosure D but its central pillars were significantly smaller.
Statuary from the site also carry the twin theme: there’s a twin being (like an earlier version of the plaster-reed statuettes from ‘Ain Ghazal), paired foxes, and animal grappling portrayals. Although the doubling found here and elsewhere doesn’t itself imply brother relationships, myths involving brothers speak in synonymous likeness and event. Some scholars suspected the Gilgamesh and Enkidu pair had Mesopotamian existence long prior to the Gilgamesh Epic but didn’t have material culture to pin them to.
A source of attention is the pillar pit/special building carved out of bedrock named Str. AB with an ominous looking ‘human’ face rearing out of the stone. There are 10 stone phalluses which look like a model Cappadocia and probably represent ancestral powers and a standing beast (similar to a portable statue from Gobekli which might depict a mythic boar-hound hybrid) confronting those admitted to this chamber which was entered by a descending stairwell located at the northeast of Str. AD. The human-like head might therefore reflect an important underworld divinity and the pit used for initiation rites at significant gathering times of the year. A ritual progression from this pit to another beyond was proposed by Karul. This pit, named Str. AA, features relatively crude depictions of a fox under stone steps and a snake with spots which would look more at home at Catalhoyuk. AA also features a stone bench cut from bedrock but the pit itself was not completely dug before its burial.
The overall orientation of these pits relative to Str. AD is nevertheless interesting as the entrance to Str. AB echoes the place occupied by Pillar 43 of Gobekli’s Enclosure D which has received lots of attention for its summer solstice intersection with the Milky Way expressed in underworld imagery.
Here the standing beast of Str. AB finds counterpart in the peculiar ‘upright’ canine of Pillar 43 perhaps as an underworld guardian. The correspondence of this canine to Lupus or the ‘mad dog/gruesome hound’ of Babylonian constellations is somewhat remarkable given its place amid the other figures. In Sumerian times midsummer was when the influence of the underworld was closest which, in spatial terms, was a place entered via descending stone steps.
There are several factors about the AB pit, such as its rounded trapezoid shape, its circular entrance and the possible use of its pillars in percussion, that point to an archaeoacoustic dimension of this structure. A deeper analysis of the AB pit is forthcoming but it was most likely roofed making its environment more conducive to sound creation. In her ‘Listening for Ancient Gods’ (2016) an archaeoacoustic expert named Linda C. Eneix investigates the sound chambers of a number of ancient sites but focuses on a comparison of the subterranean structures at Neolithic Malta with Gobekli Tepe. Audio manipulations in vibrant regions of interiors (painted caves included) might have been experienced as supernatural voices of the ancestors, she believes. She recounts a personal communication she allegedly had with Klaus Schmidt where he remarked how the Gobekli pillars ‘sang’ when struck with the hand. More interestingly, she compares the circular perforations in stone from Anatolia with similar ones at Malta. At Malta’s Hypogeum these are named ‘Oracle Holes’ as it was thought sonic reverberations from cavernous interiors were heard outside. In this way, alongside the liminal and disorientating experiences subjects had in these din rooms the sound projected outward like oracles from the realm of the dead. The serpentine ‘water channel’ running into the top of the AB pit might point to another case of sound working if not ritual washing. Possibly, part of AA’s function was a cistern to these ends.
Harking back to Lupus in a sonic theme, Lincoln (1991) remarks on the ontology of the growl and why certain animals had meaning in otherworld settings:
The growl of the hellhound is yet another expression of this liminal position, for the growl is a halfway station between articulate speech and silence. It is a speech filled with emotion and power, but utterly lacking in reason. Like death itself, the hellhound speaks, but does not listen; acts, but never reflects or reconsiders. Driven by hunger and greed, he is insatiable and his growl is eternal in duration. In the last analysis, the hellhound is the moment of death, the great crossing over, the ultimate turning point.
Karahan is very impressive and was serviced by several smaller Tepe sites surrounding it and strongly appears to have held the same mystery-theatre-ritual-initiation use and storage place of those memories as the larger Gobekli to which it connected via tracks of Stone Age pilgrimage. Schmidt once described pre-excavated Karahan as a surrealistic painting by Salvadore Dali, it’s a shame he never got to see the equally imaginative structures hidden beneath.
Karul’s primary report: https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/arkeolojiveetnografya/issue/63476/909296
Footage of the site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om-vBEI5eeo