ITCHY FEET TRAVELS

Ankara, Turkey

July 8, 2023

My disappointment in not being able to see Catalhoyuk vanished in a heartbeat as soon as I stepped into this section of the Museum of Anatolian Civilization in Ankara. There it is! The model of one of the rooms – I had only seen the drawing in the museum in Konya but here it is in 3D! There is the ladder coming down over the oven. And there is the mother goddess above the bull heads. Oh, and there is a mural on the wall. Just like it was described. There are also models of the skeletons showing the burials beneath the floor. I have a huge grin plastered on my face as I stare.

And then I turn the corner and cannot breathe for a minute. There they are! All the murals I had seen pictures of and read about. Drawn by people in this settlement, arguably one of the very first ones in the world, if not the first. I imagine the artists painting these in 6000 BCE. There may have been cave paintings before this time, but these were created to decorate the walls of each of the houses. This is interior decoration from more than eight thousand years ago! There are plenty of scenes of bull and deer hunts, the animals drawn with amazing detail. And these figures are no mere stick figures. Some are men, some are women showing incredible detail and a sense of action; one man even has a beard!

A couple of murals show leopards, easily identified with their spotted skins. Both show the animals facing each other. Is it a fight? Is it a ritualistic mural? I have no idea but from what I have read, it is conjectured that leopards were deemed special.

Nor are they only hunting scenes or animals. A couple of the murals show patterns like the ones we see on kilims even today. One shows a vulture with wide-spread wings, pecking a human form with no head. But the most fascinating of all is the one that appears like a staggered line of dwellings, two or three deep. And above it a spewing volcano. Is this a depiction of this settlement? The description of the display provides ample food for thought.

An adjacent display is of the pottery and tools found in Catalhoyuk. Polished obsidian used as mirrors and strings beads on necklaces are among toy figures of animals. Needles and combs made of bone are among pottery as finely made as any today.

Fascinating as they are, all these still pale in comparison to the hundreds of figurines found at this site. They are all of women. Every single one of them. Like the ones I saw in Konya, these too are obese figures but there is so much more detail to these. Another peculiarity is that most clearly depict older women. The one shown seated between the pair of animals is thought to be a Mother Goddess. As is the one with a leopard.

But what of the others? Were they priestesses or women of high status? I remember the murals I saw in  Crete of the Minoans and Myceneans where they were largely only women as well.

From the earliest dawn of human history, women had been revered and clearly held a superior position in society. This was true in every culture, every civilization.  I cannot help thinking how different it is today for so many women in the world.  Ironically, for many in the very same cultures, several thousand years later.