The Vulture

Feeding vultures. Arindam Aditya, Wikicommons

The vulture was a highly revered bird to the people of Göbekli Tepe and other cultures across the prehistoric Middle East. Human bodies were typically excarnated – left for vultures and other carrion eaters to devour – before the bones were buried or deposited in caves, rivers or other locations. Bodies were often placed on raised platforms, indicating it was important that birds, rather than foxes or other animals, did the work, and the vulture, which can spot a carcass from six miles away, is characterised for its devouring of all carrion of any species.

Vultures devouring human bodies in a mural from Çatalhöyuk in central Turkey, c6500BC

People would have rapidly made the connection between contact with dead and decaying bodies and illness in the living, and in a time before any understanding of bacteria and contagion, the logical explanation would be the angry or vengeful spirit of the deceased still clinging to its body and seeking recompense. Probably every culture worldwide has some sort of appeasement or funeral ceremony to honour the deceased.

People would also have rapidly realised that the carcasses picked clean by vultures, leaving no decaying flesh, posed no health risk. I believe the vultures were seen as guiding the spirits of the dead into the next world as they recycled their bodies in this world. As above, so below. In many European cultures which originated in the ancient Middle East, birds such as swans and geese are still believed to carry souls to the next world.

Pillar 43 in Göbekli Tepe’s Enclosure D. 

Over 50% of the animal bones excavated at Göbekli Tepe are carrion-eating birds, the majority of these vultures. They may have been attracted to the site through the exposure of human bodies or animal remains from feasting, or were perhaps hunted for ritual purposes. Pillar 43 in Enclosure D, called The Enduring in Broken Skies, is engraved with a vulture holding what is believed to be a human head balanced on its wing. The head is commonly believed the location of the spirit, and this scene may represent a vulture guiding a spirit into the afterlife. Several stone ‘totem poles’ from the site also depict a human head clutched in the talons of a bird.

Pillar 12 in Enclosure C. The base of Pillar 18 in Enclosure D.

A hatchling vulture

Seven squatting flightless birds are depicted around the base of Pillar 18 in the centre of Enclosure D, and similar birds are seen on other pillars. They’ve been interpreted as many things from ducks to dodos, but I feel they represent hatchling vultures. If vultures guided spirits to the afterlife, it would be a reasonable supposition that their young guided the spirits of newborn children back again. Even today it is a common tradition that birds, such as storks, bring a newborn spirit into the world. As above, as below. This is the line I’ve taken in Broken Skies. And how this reflects in the greater cosmology will be covered next week.