The southeastern Turkey archeological site known as Gobekli Tepe (Turkish: “Potbelly Hill”) was discovered in the 1960s by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists, but was dismissed as nothing more than an abandoned, medieval cemetery.[i] The German archeologist Klaus Schmidt reexamined the site in 1994 and realized that it was a temple complex. It has since been estimated to be more than 11,500 years old, making it the oldest temple structure ever found.
The areas that have been excavated so far have concentric-ring-shaped areas ranging from thirty-two to one hundred feet in diameter with T-shaped or ax-like limestone pillars that weigh ten to sixty metric tons and are evenly set within thick, interior walls of unworked stone. There are two taller pillars at the center of each circle, and many feature pictograms of animals and other unknown symbols. Some of the pillars have human arms, along with loincloths, carved on their lower halves.[ii]The pillars were transported from bedrock quarries located 330 feet from the hilltop that still has a remaining unfinished pillar estimated to weigh fifty tons. So far, only a tiny portion of the complex—around 5 percent—has been excavated.[iii] As of 2013, four of the circular structures have been excavated, and geophysical surveys show sixteen more, with each containing up to eight pillars—amounting to nearly two hundred pillars in all.[iv]
According to modern-day archeologists, humans living even twelve thousand years ago lacked metal tools and pottery, and they had not yet domesticated animals or invented the wheel. Consistent with this belief, researchers have wondered how the complex was constructed, since the rock would have had to been quarried and shaped using stone tools.
One of the most amazing discoveries made at the site was that it had been deliberately buried after its completion approximately one thousand years later. After more than twelve thousand years of erosion, the area wouldn’t have been distinguishable today if this hadn’t occurred. Archeologists have no clear ideas about why it might have been backfilled, but they conjecture that it might have been because of some religious dictate.
The people who built Gobekli Tepe might have sought to preserve the complex from destruction. The area today has extensively eroded, as if a great amount of water inundated the area. Although it is now a desert wasteland, the types of animals and plant life depicted on the pillars show that the area was much different when it was built. Foreknowledge of a coming, great flood would have been a possible reason to bury the complex in order to preserve it.
The plateau where the site is located lies 337 miles southwest of Mt. Ararat, where legend says that Noah’s Ark rested, and which mimics the shape of a bull lying on its side, facing west. The temple area, viewed from above, is situated in a space with raised areas appearing to be ancient walls outlining the shape of a bull’s head and horns. The circular, maze-like structures are laid out in a pattern corresponding to where the Hyades star cluster resides in the head of the constellation Taurus.
The belief that the builders of the temple lacked the technology to use wheels and relied on stone tools is not consistent with its sophisticated design, its construction, or the enormity of the site. It is amusing to see representations of the how the area might have looked eleven thousand years ago in illustrations in which artists stubbornly depict the builders as cave dwellers dressed in the height of animal-skin fashion.
Gobekli Tepe is approximately twenty-five miles north of the area known as Haran (Hebrew: charan, from charar, “to be scorched or burned, angry”). Abraham lived in the area for several years during his family’s migration from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan (Genesis 11:31), and it is the land from which Isaac and Jacob both obtained their wives.
The rounded temple structures of Gobleki Tepe are similar to the very stylized, classical Labyrinth drawings found in caves of the Minoan cults. To find a path to the center of the circular structures at the Gobekli Tepe complex, a person entering from the outside to the first “hallway” would have a choice of other possible doors or dead ends to get to the next circular path.
Gobekli Tepe is in the historical region of Cappadocia, where at least thirty-six underground cities have been found. The Cappadocian civilization is thought to have occupied the area from Mt. Taurus to the Black Sea.[vi]
Derinkuyu, the deepest known city, at approximately two hundred feet, was large enough to shelter around twenty thousand people together with their livestock and food stores. It is the largest excavated, underground city in Turkey, and is thought to have been built by the Phrygians in around 800 BC.
The Greek historian Herodotus (484–425 BC) said that the name “Cappadocian” was applied by the Persians, while the people were termed “Syrians” (Leucosyri, “white Syrians”) by the Greeks.[vii] The Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37–100) relates the Cappadocians to the biblical figure Meshech, son of Japheth who was the progenitor of peoples to the north of Israel.[viii]
[EDITORS NOTE: Due to time-limits for the online series based on Mark Flynn's upcoming book, we leap forward at this point]
Progenitors Of The People Of The Knowledge: The Pineal, “Pinecone-Shaped” Third Eye
The life-giving seed cone of the undying pine has become associated with the goddess whose eyes were opened. The goddess of the Knossos’ sacred symbol, the pinecone as a fountain with a column of water spreading out like the firmament of heaven as it falls back to the earth, accentuates the idea of where the Knossos was centered. Not only did the water from the Pigna fountain create a pillar and a firmament, but, like Artemis, it leaked from her many “scales” or breasts.
The Pope Symmachus, whose papacy endured from AD 498–514, had a “cantharus” built at his “place of paradise” at St Peter’s. A cantharus is a large, wide-bellied, drinking vessel with handles used by the follower of the god Bacchus. It is also a name for the black spot under the tongue of the Egyptian Apis bull.[ix]
Symmachus’ cantharus was a large version of the vessel converted to a fountain. A portion from Le Miracole De Roma (Rome’s Wonders), written sometime in the thirteenth century by an unknown author, describes Symmachus’ Place of Paradise:
In St. Peter’s paradise is the Cantharus, built by pope Symmachus. And it was adorned with columns of porphyry (Greek “purple”). And it was faced with marble all around. And above were four golden griffons. And the ceiling was made of copper, and adorned with golden flowers and four copper dolphins above spouted water from their mouths. And in the middle of the Cantharus was a golden pine-cone, which once covered Santa Maria Rotonda’s church. Above the pine-cone was the statue of goddess Cybele, mother of all gods. The pine-cone, through a lead pipe, poured water for all who wanted it. And by means of a duct that water reached the spire, by the baths of emperor Nero.[x]
The symbolism further identifying the Cybele at the court of the Pinecone at the Vatican are the two Egyptian lions from the fourth century BC at the base of the terrace supporting the pinecone. Cybele is especially associated with lions, and is usually depicted with two reclining at her feet. The Babylonian goddess Ishtar also was depicted in the same fashion.
| Queen of the Night Ishtar relief from the British museum. She holds two Egyptian ankh-like symbols that signify her control over eternal life. This image combines all the Nachash-endowed symbolism of angelic wings and feet along with the owls associated with Athena and the lions at her feet like that of Anatolian goddess, Cybele.[xi] |
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The common practice of throwing coins into fountains for good luck is not a just a quaint tradition. Since the coin is the symbol of human life (explained in chapter 10), it is the gesture sacrifice of a piece of that life to the goddess whose fountain forms a sacred pillar reaching out to heaven from earth, spreading out above as the firmament of heaven.
As the exploration into the specific qualities and traits of the ancient goddesses continues in the upcoming bookForbidden Secrets of the Labyrinth, we shall see thatevery goddess can be linked to the others worshipped throughout history, from Egyptian to Babylonian to Anatolian to Greek and Roman.
Elagabalus
A male aspect of the Cybele was known as Elagabalus, who was worshipped in Syria during the time of the Roman Empire. Like Cybele, he was said to have been born from rock. The name comes from the Syrian Ilāh hag-Gabal, which means “god” (Ilāh) and “of the mountain” (hag-Gabal).[xiii]
Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (AD 203–222) brought the cult of Elagabalus to Rome from Emesa, Syria. Antonius served as hereditary high priest to the god Elagabalus during his youth in Emesa, where his mother and family lived. After his death, Antoninus himself was referred to as Elagabalus or Heliogabalus (helios, “sun”), since the god was associated with the Invincible Sun, Sol Invictus—the same that was worshipped in the cult of Mithras.
The emperor built a new temple on the eastern side of Palatine Hill known as the Elagabalium and put in it the image of his god—a black, conical, meteorite “heaven stone” that he had removed from the temple in Syria at the start of his reign in AD 218.
The Roman historian Herodian (AD 170–240) wrote concerning the stone of Elagabalus:
This stone is worshipped as though it were sent from heaven; on it there are some small projecting pieces and markings that are pointed out, which the people would like to believe are a rough picture of the sun, because this is how they see them.[xiv]
Antoninus forced the Roman senate to watch as he danced around the altar of his god to loud clashes of cymbals and drums. During the summer solstice, the holy stone was removed from the temple, set on an ornate chariot, and paraded throughout Rome.
Herodian continues:
A six horse chariot carried the divinity, the horses huge and flawlessly white, with expensive gold fittings and rich ornaments. No one held the reins, and no one rode in the chariot; the vehicle was escorted as if the god himself were the charioteer. Elagabalus ran backward in front of the chariot, facing the god and holding the horses [sic] reins. He made the whole journey in this reverse fashion, looking up into the face of his god.
Antoninus removed the most sacred objects from all the various temples on Palatine Hill and placed them in the Elagabalium. Among these was the emblem of the great Cybele, the Palladium, and the shields of the Salii. He required that Jews and Christians worship only in the new temple.[xv] After his death in AD 222, the stone was returned to Emesa and his cult disbanded.[xvi]
| Roman aureus depicting Elagabalus. The reverse reads “Sanct Deo Soli Elagabal” (“To the Holy Sun God Elagabal”), and depicts a four-horse, gold chariot carrying the holy stone of the Emesa temple.[xvii]> |
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Biblical scholars have identified Emesa (now called Homs) with the kingdom of Zobah mentioned in 1 Chronicles.[xviii] Zobah is significant because it was the place of origin of the brass that was used to cast the two great pillars placed at the Temple of Solomon. King David had defeated the entire army of Hadarezer, king of Zobah:
And David smote Hadarezer king of Zobah unto Hamath, as he went to stablish his dominion by the river Euphrates.
And David took from him a thousand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen: David also houghed all the chariot [horses], but reserved of them an hundred chariots.
And when the Syrians of Damascus came to help Hadarezer king of Zobah, David slew of the Syrians two and twenty thousand men.
Then David put [garrisons] in Syriadamascus; and the Syrians became David’s servants, [and] brought gifts. Thus the Lord preserved David whithersoever he went.
And David took the shields of gold that were on the servants of Hadarezer, and brought them to Jerusalem.
Likewise from Tibhath, and from Chun, cities of Hadarezer, brought David very much brass, wherewith Solomon made the brasen sea, and the pillars, and the vessels of brass. (1 Chronicles 18:3–8)
The towns of the defeated king had their brass implements taken and made into the two pillars in the Temple and the bronze sea. Both of these symbolize the state of the earth after the Fall in the garden. Bronze specifically symbolizes judgment. The root word in Hebrew for brass, nĕchosheth, is “Nachash.”
David Flynn, in his book, Cydonia: The Secret Chronicles of Mars, describes the shattering of the planet Rahab that occupied the region known today as the asteroid belt and the escape of its leaping “war god”:
Biblical sources confirm that Rahab was a planet, a kingdom on a planet, which was shattered; the planet Rahab exploded and the glittering remains exist as comets, asteroids and the detritus between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars.[xix]
Concerning the Hindu mythology referencing the event that also mentions the identity of the “leaper,” he continues:
Appropriately, the war god of Mars is also called Skanda, which means “leaper.” Another Hindu legend, found in the Bhagavad Gita and the Skanda Puranas, linked the God of Mars,the war god Karttikeya, to “shards” or “sparks” which fell from the heavenly eye of Shiva.[xx]
At the time of the cataclysmic destruction of Mars and the escape of the bright “leapers,” portions of the planet that were blasted out into space fell to earth in fiery streaks. At the same time the glorious civilization was destroyed, its habitants were sent fleeing, where they, too, fell to earth. Like the phoenix, the angel of light was taken down from his high place. He leapt to earth, where he waits until the time when he can rise to his former position. What role will the [Gobekli Tepe?] 'People of the Knowledge born of the Stone' play at his arrival?
Credit to raiders News Update
