ARCHAEOLOGY
PAUL SIEVEKING reports on an enigmatic statuette from a museum vault, a Neolithic ‘nativity scene’ that predates the birth of Christ by 3,000 years and a claim that Abraham vandalised Turkey’s most ancient site.
WHAT IS IT?
Until 26 March, an enigmatic statuette was exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, part of a temporary exhibition of some 200,000 antiquities held in the museum vaults and not on permanent show. The 14in (36cm) figure was carved from granite, without the benefit of metal tools, as it dates from the late Neolithic, about 5,000 BC. It has a pointed nose and long neck leading to a markedly round belly, flat back and cylindrical stumpy legs. “It could depict a human-like figure with a bird-like face, or a bird-like entity which has nothing to do with man but with the ideology and symbolism of the Neolithic society,” said Katya Manteli, an archæologist with the museum. Experts also cannot be sure of its provenance, as it belongs to a personal collection. They assume only that it is from the northern Greek regions of Thessaly or Macedonia. How they are so certain of its age is not explained. It could depict a human, but is asexual, with no sign of breasts or genitals. [R] BBC News, 14 Feb 2017.
ABRAHAM, IDOL- SMASHER
A new Turkish documentary claims the ancient temple site of Göbekli Tepe to be the work of Telah, idol-worshipping father of the patriarch Abraham. Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Anatolia has circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars, by some margin the world’s oldest known megaliths, erected before the shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture. (See “Paradise regained?” by Sean Thomas, FT220:46-51; FT289:23, 310:18.) The site dates back to 11,800-8,600 BC, far too old to be associated with Abraham, who is usually placed around 1800 BC.
The documentary was produced and funded by the Diyarbakir provincial governor’s office, the Turkish Development Ministry, and the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, the nation’s public broadcaster. While Andrew Collins and Graham Hancock have implied that Göbekli Tepe was constructed by a lost civilisation related to or identical with the Nephilim and/or Atlantis, it appears that the Turkish documentary makers were simply going for some old-fashioned Qur’anic literalism coupled with a dash of Turkish nationalism.
The narrator describes the site and says (in Turkish): “Who can tell us that it was not Aser [Terah], father of Prophet Abraham, who built the statues in Göbekli Tepe? Or can we claim that the temple where the idols that Prophet Abraham broke was not Göbekli Tepe?” One broken pillar, featuring a sculpture of a fox, is identified as the specific idol broken by the hand of Abraham himself. The claim refers back to an Islamic tale, found in the Qur’an (21:51-71), and based on earlier Jewish folklore that Abraham’s father made idols that the young patriarch smashed in his zeal for monotheism. In the Qur’anic account, Abraham has a conflict with the people of Ur, in which they vouch for the efficacy of their idols. To prove them wrong, “in the people’s absence he went into the temple where the idols stood, and he brake them all in pieces, except the biggest of them; that they might lay the blame upon that” (21:58). The people of Ur then try to burn Abraham alive for his desecration, but God saves him from the flames. For Ur, read Edessa: by Late Antiquity the site of the Mesopotamian city of Ur had been forgotten and the birthplace of Abraham became identified with the Turkish city of Edessa (now called Sanlıurfa), which is only seven miles (12km) southeast of Göbekli Tepe. jasoncolavito.com, 10 Jan 2017.
OLDEST NATIVITY SCENE?
Neolithic rock art in the Egyptian Sahara, painted in reddish-brown ochre, depicts a star in the east, a newborn baby between parents and two animals. It was found on the ceiling of a small cavity by geologist Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato, near Florence, during an expedition to sites between the Nile valley and the Gilf Kebir Plateau.
“It’s a very evocative scene which indeed resembles the Christmas nativity, but it predates it by some 3,000 years,” said Morelli. He found the drawing in 2005, but only now has the amazing find been publicised. It features a man, a woman missing her head because of a painting detachment, and a baby drawn slightly above the adults, as if rising towards the sky. On the upper part is a headless lion, a mythical beast which appears in several rock art drawings from the same area, while below is a baboon or anthropomorphic monkey. In the east, the artist has drawn what appears to be a star. The researchers called the site the “Cave of the Parents”. livescience.com, 23 Dec 2016.