The Great Mother of Anatolia
As a historian of religions learning about goddesses was a required part of my undergraduate training, but that training took place for the most part in California, and consisted of studying scholarly works about them and seeing pictures of their various representations. Soon after I came to Turkey, however, I had occasion to visit the archaeological museum in Ankara. I will never forget stopping in front of a tiny, terra cotta statue of a goddess inside a glass case and exclaiming What a beautiful reproduction! When my English speaking guide gently corrected me: That isnt a reproduction, he said, I was quite literally stunned. The image was completely familiar to me. I had seen it countless times in books, and had even used it in slide presentations for my classes, but to be face to face with the real thingwell, that was something.
It was then I realized that fate had brought me to the very place that had spawned the goddesses I had been so fond of while a student. Later, when I was a teacher, how often had I used the phrase the Anatolian plain while lecturing? It didnt mean much to me then; now, it was a real place only a few hundred kilometers away.
Who was this goddess? From what culture did she come? How many centuries ago did her worship flourish? And, what happened to her? These are all interesting questions, but the answers are even more interesting . . .
To begin with, the image of the divine as female is as old as humanity. The goddess was prevalent in all known cultures in prehistoric times; archaeologists have unearthed artifacts related to goddess religion that are 30,000 years old! One of the most famous is the so-called Venus of Willendorf (circa 30,000-25,000 bce) that was found in Austria. A small figure made of limestone, only a fraction over four inches high; it shows the characteristic pendulous breasts and stomach of the goddess. Artifacts like this one provide evidence that the goddess was worshipped in the Late Paleolithic periodthe Ice Ageand probably earlier. The archeological record indicates that goddess religion flourished throughout the Neolithic period as well. While doing excavation in Çatylhöyük (located about 60 kilometers outside present-day Konya, in the Anatolian plain) archeologists found evidence of a highly developed civilization dating back to between 65005400 bce. The site revealed twelve successive layers, each containing the remains of different cities. The topmost layer, untouched since the Neolithic period, showed a very well organized site, with mud-brick houses built around courtyards. Underneath the sleeping platform with each house, space was allocated for the burial of family members. In some cases, the bones, decorated with red ochre, were arranged in a fetal position (suggesting the idea that there was a belief that death meant a return to the womb of the earth mother. James Melaart, the archeologist who made these discoveries in the early 1960s, thinks that it is clear that the women of Çatylhöyük created the religion and carried out all-important religious functions. It was women, as religious historian Anne Barstow writes, who gained authority in the community and became predominant in the priestly caste. From this base they created the communitys religion, a religion devoted to the conservation of life in all forms, devoted the mysteries of birth and nourishment and life after death. In this part of the world we know that the worship of the goddess predates even Çatylhöyük, since we have also found evidence of goddess worship in the caves of the Taurus Mountains, close by the site of the city. There, she took the form of a stalactite.
The names of the Great Goddess changed, but her basic persona, which was the bearer and protectoress of all life, remained. Excavators at Çatylhöyük found shrines, bulls horns, and goddess images that demonstrate a continuum linked to other mother goddesses of classical times like Artemis (whose cult flourished at Ephesus, and thus preceded that of the Christian Mary, who was imaged there with a crescent moon, just as her predecessor), Cybele and Aphrodite. While the sun and the bull were associated with male deities and with the masculine principle, it was the moon that was usually associated with the goddess, because of the fact that the moon, just as the female, has a cyclic character. Besides the symbol of the crescent, there was the serpent (serpents were considered to represent the divine energy of the universe, not evil), all kinds of animals, especially leopards and birds, and the so-called double ax. The color red, more particularly, the color of red ochre, the substance still used to make red toprak boyası (earth paint) here and of henna, still used to color a new brides hands, was also connected with the goddess. Red is the color of blood and the blood of the goddess was not the blood of war, but of the menses, of new life. This is the reason why women in traditional cultures are segregated during the time of their menstrual periodthis is the time when they are most powerful, most sacred, and most intimately connected to the mother goddess. They are considered taboo not because they are unclean, but because they are sacred and incredibly powerful.
After a period of inactivity that began in 1963, the work of continued excavation and analysis resumed in Çatylhöyük in 1993. For some reason, though, there does not seem to be too much attention paid by Turkish commentators (neither scholarly nor popular) to the fact that the populations of this ancient city, and of other ancient places here, were dedicated to the worship of the goddess. For example, in the November 1995 issue of Art Décor (pp. 206-210) there is a substantial article about the renewed archeological activities at ÇatylHöyük but the word goddess is not mentioned even once, not even in the description of a photograph of a goddess figurine.
Besides the fact that women in these ancient communities enjoyed a status in the culture which is unknown today, we have also found evidence that sexuality was not regarded as a base, physical function, or even as a largely romantic function, but as an essentially sacred activity. Sacred sexuality had a public as well as private role. At each New Year, the king had public sexual intercourse with a priestess who was believed to actually embody the goddess. It was thought that this act of sacred sexualitythe hieros gamos, or sacred marriage as it was calledwould insure prosperity and abundance for the entire kingdom throughout the coming year. (1) In the private sphere, the same act was carried out. A small statue, carved from green schist, depicting a couple in sexual embrace, was found at Çatylhöyük. It dates from the seventh millennium. This religious rite continued for centuries. Much later, at Ephesus, as part of the worship of Artemis (or Diana, as she was also called there), men could visit the temple to have intercourse with a hierodule (sacred prostitute) who, like the priestess in Mesopotamia, was believed to embody the goddess. Now, guidebooks describe the remains of this sacred place in Ephesus merely as a brothel.
What accounts for the demise of the Great Goddess? With the advent of the three patriarchal religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, there became increasingly less place for her. Her worship was denigrated and sometimes systematically stamped out. Vestiges remain, however, in the sacred books of each of these three religions, and although it is a challenge for the uninitiated to pick them out, it can be done. Some would argue that the goddess is very much present, indeed; and is only resting. In any case, from all that I have seen since coming here, I would say that her traces are not only present, but also as vital and compelling as ever.
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1. See Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sacred Marriage Rite: Aspects of Faith, Myth, and Ritual in Ancient Sumer, Blooming 1966, pp. 29-66.
If this article has piqued your interest, and you would like to do some further reading, here is a list to help you get started:
Carol Christ. Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987.
Elinor W. Gaddon. The Once and Future Goddess. Harper & Row, 1989.
Maria Gimbutas. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982
James Mellaart. Çatal Hüyük: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia. New York: Mc-Graw Hill, 1967.
Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.
Marina Warner. Alone of all her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. New York: Random House, 1976.