Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure H: The House of Darkness and Light

       The buildings of Göbekli Tepe.

Enclosure H is one of the more recently discovered buildings at Göbekli Tepe. Like the other structures I’ve already discussed, this enclosure comprises an oval structure with T-shaped pillars in its outer wall and another two in the centre. It has revealed some of the most intricately decorated pillars found so far.

Pillar 56, in the outer wall, has been partly excavated and depicts 55 creatures, the highest number found on any pillar at Göbekli Tepe. There are so many images they merge together, with many of them sharing outlines. They include ten long-legged wading birds; the same number of snakes; a vulture with its wings spread; several big cats; and a bird of prey with a snake in its claws. A bucranium (cattle head) is found at its throat.

One of the central pillars is decorated with a large predatory feline, leaping towards the viewer just as the foxes are portrayed in Enclosure B. Other pillars in the outer ring are also decorated with big cats.

Another pillar is decorated with a large horned aurochs, which appears to be in its death throes. This pillar seems to have been reused and this is probably not an original decoration. 

                    A hawk with its prey. (Peter Wallack, Wikicommons).

In Broken Skies, Enclosure H is the House of Darkness and Light, the fifth building raised by the Irin shamans. It reflects and teaches the understanding of the ever-turning cycles of existence: life and death, winter and summer, darkness and light. These opposites of the pulse of creation exist in perfect balance with each other. Darkness, literal or metaphorical, is a necessary part of existence. If the sun was always shining, if nothing that lived ever died, the world would soon become untenable. The finch falls to the hawk, the deer falls to the wolf, and both predator and prey are the stronger for it. The weak fall, and the strong survive. The species as a whole benefits. The dead aurochs and snake in a bird of prey’s claws represent this brutal balance between predator and prey, and this is just one example of the philosophy the hunters and shamans of Göbekli Tepe lived by. The vast number of creatures portrayed on the pillars represents how everything that exists is bound by those same laws.

 

    A flock of starlings evading a bird of prey. (Mostafameraji, Wikicommons).

Enclosure H is in a different part of the site to the enclosures already discussed in earlier posts, but it is clear that its pillars were moved and reconstructed at some point in prehistory. It is possible they were once part of a building adjacent to the other four, as my story suggests.