Catalhöyük (Catalhoyuk) James Mellaart
I’m heading 400 miles west to one of the oldest cities in the world. It’s called Catalhöyük and, around 7000 BC, it was almost certainly the largest human settlement in existence. It was actually discovered in the 1960s by an English archaeologist called James Mellaart. And what he out here would shake the generations ideas about early religion.
One of the oldest cities in the world
In this town, more than 5000 people live together, cheek by jowl, in mud brick houses. In and around these houses, Mellaart uncoloured numerous female figurines and what he thought were small shrines. He believed the people who lived here worshipped the mother goddess. His key evidence was this. A remarkable figure found buried deep in a grain bin. This is a replica of his discovery.
She’s obviously a female banshee sitting on the throne flanked by two lions and she is a wonderfully voluptuous and potent.
There’s nothing actually to say whether she is a real woman or a goddess, but Mellaart was convinced. He wrote, the statues allow us to recognise that the main deity worshipped by the Neolithic peoples of Catalhoyuk was a goddess.
Mellaart’s conclusions captured the public’s imagination, but current excavations are revisiting this picture. I want to find out why figures like this were made.
Shahina Farid is the field director at Catalhöyük “Clearly they had a meaning, they had a symbolism to the Neolithic people. And the fact that they are made in this very voluptuous form, I don’t think we found any skinny women, means that they were aspiring to something that big and opulent and voluptuous.”
Some symbol of fertility and a life-giving force. But when we find the graves of women, size doesn’t indicate that they were larger women. So there is a difference between the portrayal of these women and how we find their human remains afterwards. So I like to think that they’re an ideal.
That beautiful figurine found in a grain bin. Do you think she was placed there for any reason?
Shahina. “We’re at the beginning of agriculture, the introduction of growing crops, and so to start seeing this symbol of this female at this time, we can interpret that she’s a life-giving force.”
Because women give birth and produce the next generation of children, it does suggest that there is some kind of connection being made between their life-giving powers and the fertility of the earth.
Catalhöyük marks a seismic shift in our ancestors relationship with nature. The survival of this community now depended on growing food. And the evidence suggests the fertility of the Earth was linked to women. So, who, or what, is that figurine?
Shahina. “I don’t think she’s a goddess at this stage and I think that we’re at the beginning of this role of the female form becoming a goddess.”
She’s kind of halfway to being a goddess.
Shahina. “Mother goddess did not come from nowhere. She has to start from somewhere. And we think that Catalhoyuk is one of the places where she started.”
Other evidence from Catalhoyuk suggests the people here saw a darker, more dangerous side to women’s ability to give life. This is another figurine found in the city. From the front, she’s plump and actually quite welcoming. She’s probably pregnant and she is very definitely fertile and fecund. But if you turn her around, then it’s a rather different story.
She starts to morph into something a bit more sinister. Her flesh starts to fall away from the bones, from the back it just looks like a skeleton. Now, I think there’s a good reason for this. Life in our societies, like Catalhoyuk, is very precarious. And when women gave birth, for every child that was born alive, one would be born dead. And so I think they were considered to be creatures who could actually create both life and death.
I believe this powerful idea shaped human religion for thousands of years, giving extraordinary status to the female. As the centuries wore on, through the middle east, Asia Minor and North Africa, we find the ground littered with striking female figures. And many of them were very definitely goddesses.
External Links
Catalhöyük - Wikipedia Page
