5.1.2: Çatal Hüyük--Ancient Remnants

Goddess figures first appeared in the Paleolithic era, when nomadic hunters needed the intervention of divine energy to find and capture animals to sustain the tribe. Feminist Theorist Anne Barstow explains that the women’s movement of the 1970s argued that women were identified with all that “is bodily, procreative, and finite,” and as such they aligned with Nature. Men, conversely, identified with “reason, creativity and transcendence,” (10) and while this may offer insight to the rise of male gods in the Olympian pantheon, it also might explain why such a figure found worth in early peoples. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, physiological (biological) needs must be first met–water, food, shelter–before any other need can be met. To assure survival, it would have been practical to appeal to the procreative powers of a divinity who could not only make the animals multiply, but who could also call them to the hunters.

While some theorists question the existence of a Goddess culture, credible archeological evidence–specifically the excavations and discoveries at Çatal Hüyük [cha-tal hay-OOK], a Neolithic site in Anatolia, Turkey (c. 7000 BCE) and frescos found in Delphi–exists to support the theory that early tribes worshiped a Mother Goddess, who would later transform into the Great Goddess, a more awesome and fearsome figure.

The archeological trove of Çatal Hüyük was described by James Mellaart, who spent two years excavating the site, as evidence of a culture that practiced not only Goddess worship but also was likely a matriarchal society. His findings included a majority of female bones ceremoniously buried in the foundations of shrines and a trove of frescos, sculptures and figurines of goddesses, many of which depicted birthing. Most notable was the voluptuous clay figure of a goddess in the act of birth, flanked by two felines (possibly leopards) which Mellaart noted as representation of the goddess as “Mistress of the Animals,” but as the figure was located in a grain bin (Mellaart 138), it also links with the goddess as “Mistress of the Harvest” (Barstow 12).

Commonly partnered with bull iconography, a potent symbol of male energy, the female goddess figures at Çatal Hüyük may reflect the socio-political status of women in this Neolithic culture. David Leeming, author of The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, states, “Deities tend to reflect the political and social realities of those who depict them. Whether or not a dominant goddess in several forms presided over prehistoric Paleolithic and early Neolithic matriarchies is unclear” (Leeming 156). While Mellaart argues strongly for a matriarchal structure in Çatal Hüyük, Ian Hodder who continued excavations at the site argues for a more egalitarian society, one in which gender didn’t differentiate or determine status or quality of life (Hodder 83).

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): At 16.5 centimeters tall, one of the major finds at Çatal Hüyük, “The Seated Woman,” represents the feminine connection to nature, procreation, and agriculture. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey, c. 6000. (CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia)

The question of patriarchy or matriarchy matters to researchers because it serves to support or refute the existence of a goddess cult, and the society of Çatal Hüyük, Mellaart and Barstow argue, reflected a religion created by women, who exercised a measure of authority over the economy and community. From this vantage point, they fashioned “a religion devoted to the conservation of life in all forms, devoted to the mysteries of birth and nourishment and life after death” (Barstow 15), even as the culture also venerated animistic symbols of power.

Religious scholar Karen Armstrong offers another angle to understand the powerful position a primal goddess figure held within a largely male-hunter-centric society. She reasons underlying and unspoken enmity of feminine to be at the core, ironically. The goddess depicted in the Seated Woman figurine of Çatal Hüyük “gives birth eternally, but her partner, the bull, must die. Hunters risked their lives to support women and children. The guilt and anxiety induced by hunting, combined with the frustration resulting from ritual celibacy, could have been projected onto the image of a powerful woman, who demands endless bloodshed.” Though they provided the meat for the community, the hunters would have also been acutely aware that women provided renewable life through birth, and were thus more essential than the dispensable hunters. The Great Mother then became the basis for continuity of life, “a life that required the ceaseless sacrifice of men and animals” (Armstrong Myth 39).

Incarnations of the Mother Goddess varied depending on the seasonal and circumstantial needs of the tribe or culture, likely evolving along with the needs of the people. While evidence of the Mother Goddess is scant due to lack of very early written records from pre-literate societies, figurines suggest her ongoing importance both as an object of veneration and, perhaps, as an instructional object. The famous Venus of Willendorf is noted for its anatomical correctness, leading researchers to believe she may have served to teach women about childbearing or initiation into womanhood.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): The Venus of Willendorf, c. 26,000 BC (the Gravettian period); limestone with ochre coloring; Naturhistorisches Museum (Vienna, Austria) (CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia)

Religious scholar, Mircea Eliade, describes the coalescence between birth and death as a cosmic reunification. A wide variety of myths, including Native American, refer to a primordial time when Mother Earth birthed people in the same fashion she births flora. This generates for people a sense of “mystical solidarity with [their] native soil. . . . the religious experience of autochthony;” the sense of kinship with a place, one that transcends a familial or genetic connection. As such, dying people yearn to “return to Mother Earth, to be buried in [their] native soil” (140-41). Birth, he continues, is intrinsically woven into the continuum. Representative effigies of birth goddesses, such as Eileithyia [eye-LYE-thee-ah] (daughter of Zeus and Hera), are often depicted kneeling on the ground reflective of the ancient birthing practices of primitive people. By kneeling during birth, a woman symbolically connects herself, her child and the act of birth with the “Great Genetrix,” who will guide her through the mysteries of birth, life, and death, offering protection via sympathetic magic (141-42).

Likewise, the mythological practices and beliefs of the Paleolithic people allowed them to mature into a new era of human development, the Neolithic, where they came to understand that death, while terrible and terrifying, was still an essential element of human experience and transformation. In consideration of the power of death, it too became an aspect of the Mother Goddess, foretelling her transformation into the Great Goddess.

This transformation hinged largely upon the agricultural revolution that also marked the entry into the Neolithic age, a revolution which is, consequently, due to the efforts of women. Egyptologists cite the beginnings of agriculture in the Near East approximately at 8000 BCE, and the tasks involved in farming, cultivation and harvesting fell to the hands of women while the tribal men chased protein on the plains and savannas. Women passed along the knowledge they gained to each subsequent generation, and with the knowledge, a certain degree of reverence for women’s wisdom also generated. By 4500-4000 BCE in the earliest prehistoric era in ancient Egypt, the Badarian, the graves of women were notably larger than men. Where most ancient cultures revered a Mother (Earth) Goddess alongside a Sky God, the Ancient Egyptians venerated Nut [nOOt], the goddess who held up the heavens with the arc of her body (Lesko 6).