Göbekli Tepe: Stars and Wild Beasts

Continuing from last week, I will look at the summer Zodiac and its link to Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D, named The Enduring in Broken Skies.

In May, the sun in Göbekli Tepe’s time was in Libra. The scales is a relatively recent interpretation; in ancient star maps, Libra was the claws of the adjacent scorpion. I have made this constellation a bee, at its most active this month as it builds up its colony after the winter and gathers nectar from the surge in wild flowers. Honey is also gathered, at great risk to the gatherers.

This sky-sign is represented by Pillar 30, which has a snake sliding down its head and another four snakes and a possible onager on the front of its body, which seems to have been trimmed down at some point. No other depictions have so far been found, although unidentified insects are found on pillars elsewhere in the enclosure.

                                              Pillar 33

In June, the sun was in Scorpio. This constellation is at the base of the Milky Way, and is commonly interpreted as a snake or a scorpion in star-maps. The snake which in many mythologies twines around the base of the World Tree, itself a representation of the Milky Way, is linked to Scorpio, so I have made this sky-sign a snake.

The snake basks in the sun at this time of year and so is most frequently encountered. Many in this area are deadly poisonous.

This sky-sign is represented by a now-missing pillar which stood between Pillars 30 and 43. A fragment of this was found nearby. For the purposes of the story, I have exchanged this pillar with Pillar 33 further round the enclosure. Several pillars are known to have been recarved and rearranged during their history, so my rearrangement is plausible.

Pillar 33 is one of the most elaborately decorated, and its main focus is the snake. Three birds, possibly bustards, are found on its head, along with another which was picked off in ancient times. On its body are two cranes and two small foxes, along with the bodies of twelve snakes whose heads are found on the front of the pillar, facing twelve more snake’s heads whose bodies are on the opposite side of the pillar. In between the opposing heads are several more snakes sliding down the pillar, a six-legged insect, a spider and what may be a sheep.

                                   Pillar 43

In July the sun was in Sagittarius. The centaur (human-horse hybrid) is of Greek origin, and in Babylonian cosmology these stars represented a winged panther-horse hybrid with a scorpion’s tail. So I shifted the scorpion asterism from Scorpio to Sagittarius. The scorpion, like the snake, is associated with hot weather.

This sky-sign is represented by Pillar 43, one of the most famous of Göbekli Tepe’s pillars. This is decorated with a vulture balancing a round object on its wing; a headless man; several other birds including an ibis and a rock partridge; and a large scorpion.

In August, the sun was in Capricorn, represented by Pillar 42. The strange fish-goat is found on the earliest Middle Eastern star-maps, and I have kept it as a water-goat. People love to swim in rivers and lakes in the hot months, and strong swimmers often drown inexplicably in a moment. They may be entangled in underwater weed or sucked down by invisible and powerful eddies. Folklore is full of water-monsters which were once blamed for these deaths. In my star-plan, the water-goat is their common ancestor.