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wpe21.jpg (17914 bytes)

These are modern Obsidian points. This black volcanic glass was the
economic fuel that powered Catal Huyuk.

The Religion of Obsidian

A remarkable wallpainting uncovered at Catal Huyuk throws an
interesting light on the city's economic and religious foundations.
"Painted on the north and east wall of a shrine... soon after 6,200
B.C .... it represents that rarest of all genres of early painting, a
landscape, and needless to say it is unique," writes Mellaart. The
painting consists of a stylized portrayal of the terraced houses of
the city itself, with a geologically perceptive rendition of an
erupting, twin-peaked volcano, The painting clearly represents an
actual eruption of Hasan Dag, a twin-peaked, then-active volcano eight
miles to the east of the city, which dominated the skyline on a clear
day.
Looking at the erupting volcano with the eyes of an art historian,
several features suggest that the painting is not simply a landscape,
but is an icon of the Volcano Goddess. 

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The contours of the volcano are breast-like and the overall shape of
the volcano closely matches schematized "bison-woman" paleolithic
designs and other goddess representations; it looks distinctly like a
body, much more so than like a mountain. The spots on the volcano's
flanks, described as "glowing firebombs of lava," are very similar to
the "leopard-skin spots" that are a characteristic sign of the Goddess
of Catal Huyuk throughout the city's artwork. The painting is a vivid,
nearly naturalistic rendering, and the spouts of lava pouring from the
cone shapes at its base accurately portray the tendency of volcanoes
to erupt from vents at their base. But the painting is also a shrine
mural, an expression of religion, and clearly a representation of the
Mother Goddess of Obsidian, and the city which was built and
consecrated by Her graces.
This mural is from a fairly early period in Catal Huyuk's history,
painted as the city was approaching its prime, and in it we can
perhaps see the heart of Catal Huyuk's economy and the very reason for
its existence. The finest Anatolian obsidian was mined at the base of
Hasan Dag. Catal Huyuk, located near rivers in a flat, game-filled
plain, was an ideal trading site for the obsidian. In "The Time
Falling Bodies Take To Light", W.I. Thompson likens the obsidian to "a
dark, cthonic milk which flowed out of the breast of the volcano,
Hasan Dag," and suggests that "Even as far back as the neolithic,
religion was good for business.... The relationship between neolithic
religion and economics may have been as intimate as the more familiar
'Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," Thus, Catal Huyuk was
perhaps built on religion and obsidian, and very probably on the
"Religion of Obsidian." (note; the suggestion 'built on religion' is
based on the archeological discoveries that as many as 1 in 2 of the
rooms excavated were shrines.)
Obsidian may have been considered a sacred material charged with
"mana," the power of the Goddess. The trade in obsidian may have been
surrounded with rules, taboos, and risks of all types. A sacred
material may require special treatment -- a blessing, perhaps even a
desecration -- before it can be safely handled by ordinary people. The
evidence suggests that Catal Huyuk's dozens of shrines (along with
their attendant priestesses and priests), as well as the city's
artwork, artisanry, and architecture, may have all been inspired and
supported by a religious control of the sacred obsidian trade.
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An obsidian arrowhead from Catal Huyuk.

Anatolian obsidian, "purchased" in Catal Huyuk with an exchange of
valuable lumber or Mediterranean seashell, would wind its way a
thousand miles southward to Jericho, another important trading center
near the Dead Sea. Jericho craftsmen, paying for the black volcanic
glass with equally black chunks of bitumen from the shores of the Dead
Sea, would work the obsidian into a variety of stone tools that were
sharper and harder than steel. 

Jericho, which began as a village in about 9,000 B.C.. is also
sometimes called the first city. A thousand years before people set
foot in Catal HUyak, Jericho was surrounded by walls ten feet thick
and fifteen feet tall. But neolithic Jericho at its biggest was
substantially less than half the size of Catal Huyuk, and it was
clearly only an armed trading post and village, a secular place very
different from the unwalled Temple City of Catal Huyuk. Jericho and
Catal Huyuk seem to have formed the two ends of a trading network that
made possible the spread of agriculture, pottery, durable buildings,
and metallurgy (and possibly philosophy, religion. and the crude
beginnings of writing, mathematics, and astronomy) throughout the
Mediterranean basin, and eventually into Mesopotamia to the east.
Egypt to the southwest, and Greece and Europe to the northwest. This
trade network, and the ideas and technologies which it spread. may
have been the single most important precondition for the emergence of
the monument building empires of the Tigris-Euphrates and Nile
valleys.
What brought the end of Catal Huyuk's culture and the abandonment of
the city? We have no idea. Probably. after a time, the surrounding
region was deforested in the quest for firewood, overhunted, and
damaged by agriculture -- a familiar pattern. Possibly the rivers
which supplied Catal Huyuk with timber, transportation, and trade
changed their course, isolating the city. In the later centuries of
the city's existence disastrous fires apparently occurred more
frequently. and the destruction of the community's wealth by these
fires must have hastened the city's end. Clearly the demise of Catal
Huyuk cannot be attributed to war; the fires look accidental. there
are no signs of murder or massacre at burial sites, and there is
little emphasis on weaponry. Catal Huyuk West, the daughter city, also
shows no signs of massacre or warfare. The walls of Jericho did not
prevent the frequent destruction of that settlement, while Catal
Huyuk, which had no walls to speak of, was never touched. James
Mellaart attributes this in part to the unusual architecture of Catal
Huyuk, which he described as "inherently defensible," but
psychohistorian W.I. Thompson suggests that it was the city's
religious status that kept it immune from attack:

bitmap image

As a ceremonial center situated near the routes of the obsidian trade,
Catal Huyuk was an important cultural force, for as a religious center
it could exert an influence to keep trade open and peaceable. Like a
Hong Kong, Geneva, or a Zurich, Catal Huyuk did not have to defend
itself because the need for it was recognized by all concerned in
Anatolia and the Near East.
Catal Huyuk, like so many other great powers and organized religions,
may simply have grown corrupt and self-centered, losing the people's
faith. At its peak Catal Huyuk seems to have boasted one temple for
every two houses, but, as centuries passed, the ratio dropped to one
shrine for five houses, and the houses themselves showed finer burials
and more extravagant grave goods. Religious architecture became less
important, and the clergy increased in number and grew richer.
Perhaps, after a time, just as with contemporary religions, people
lost respect for the sacred institution, disillusioned by too much
corruption and too little faith. In its final years, the city may have
simply lost its reputation, its most priceless possession. Perhaps
people simply stopped coming to Catal Huyuk to trade for obsidian;
maybe some unknown neighbor down the road was now offering a better
deal. The city-dwellers tried to save their livelihood by moving to a
new site, but Catal Huyuk West never approached the size or grandeur
of her mother. An epoch of civilized achievement came to a quiet end,
the shrines and temples were ritually defaced one last time, and the
mound was given over to the ruin-weed (rue) and the empty sky. 
bitmap image

In this wall painting at Catal Huyuk, rows of hands frame a honeycomb
pattern on which are depicted insects and grubs on a field of stylized
flowers.

The Religious Philosophy
of Catal Huyuk

Like Catal Huyuk the temple cave of Lascaux in France stands head  and
shoulders above its contemporaries as an example of the aesthetic
heights and spiritual genius of a civilization long past. Painted in
about 17,000 B.C., preserved by the unchanging conditions of its
cavern, and sealed off from entry sometime after 10,000 B.C., Lascaux
is perfect, the Sistine Chapel of Cro-Magnon man. Paleological expert
Andre Leroi-Gourhan, using Lascaux's perfect preservation as the
starting point for a complete analysis, has made discoveries which
have caused the re-examination of many of the old ideas about cave
art.
Using statistical models, Leroi-Gourhan concluded that the animal
figures were symbols representing conceptual-religious themes, and
that the figures were related to each other in unvarying pattems, with
the shapes of the cave body itself being used to define the beginning
and ends of "phrases" or "sentences" made up by combinations of animal
symbols.
Horse and Bison are always paired, the center of the Holy Story. Deer,
ibex, cow, goat, signs, and partial animals surround the central
thesis of Bull-Horse, which Leroi-Gourhan likens to the sacred couple,
with Bison and Horse as a non- anthropomorphic perfected
representation of male and female forces. Camivores and dangerous
animals mark the ends of the Holy Story, the no-man's land through
which none dare pass. Leroi-Gourhan's models and ideas can not yet
explain or define the content of the ancient paleolithic philosophy
recorded in these symbolic cave paintings. The evidence, however, is
very compelling for a higher conceptual philosophy, a teaching story
with a definite intent, being concealed in the animal art of Lascaux. 
wpe2A.jpg (5166 bytes)
One of the bull designs on a shrine wall at Catal Huyuk.
I provided the coloring.

Mellaart, W.I. Thompson, Marija Gimbutas, and others have connected
the animal art in Lascaux with the animal art of Catal Huyuk (hundreds
of representations of bulls, rams, leopards, vultures, and other
animals). The horse as a sign for the female Goddess in Lascaux has
been replaced by Her anthropomorphic plaster sculpture, the central
icon found in most of Catal Huyuk's temples. But the bison is still
completely present as a non-anthropomorphic symbol of perfect male
virility and energy, although, in keeping with non-ice-age Anatolia,
the extinct bison has been replaced in Catal Huyuk by the aurochs bull
(a massive scythe-horned beast and an ancestor of modem cattle, which
was hunted in huge herds on the Konya plain). The bull is always
paired with the Goddess; when bull heads are found in shrines not
apparently dedicated to the Goddess, they are surrounded by
breast-like knobs -- the very walls of the shrine have become the body
of the Goddess, from which the bulls emerge. Other survivals of the
paleolithic sacred animal alphabet can be found in Catal Huyuk's
camivore imagery. Leopards are the ultimate sign of Goddess power, and
perhaps represent the untouchable, unknowable edges of Goddess
mystery; on only one occasion is the traditional Goddess icon replaced
with another sign in a Goddess shrine, and there She is represented by
two leopards, facing each other. Perhaps the paleolithic symbol for
"Endings, the dangerous edges of the Sacred World (carnivores)" was
assigned to the unknowable Great Goddess. Breasts are found, modeled
in plaster with the skulls and teeth of boars (a deadly, unpredictable
animal, much feared by hunters), foxes, and weasels (both have
bloodthirsty folk- lores); and the beaks of griffin vultures are
molded into the breasts, the teeth forming its nipple -- all this
amounting to a shocking (to us) combination of Goddess and camivore
imagery.
Also, just as at Lascaux, the stag is found in several paintings,
properly painted in at the edges of the main compositions.
Other potential survivals of the paleolithic temple-cave grammar can
be mentioned, but at this time the statistical modeling needed to
confirm this hypothesis has not been done.

[16]This article continues on page 3.