by Freddy Silva
H and U symbols on the pillar’s girdle.
The naming of places, people and objects in the ancient world was a serious affair, particularly in regard to places of sanctity. A given name enshrined the purpose for which the site was intended, or reflected a truth about its history. Thus by understanding the original name of Göbekli Tepe we find the single greatest clue as to why people of a forgotten era created a monument that is both out of place and out of time. The latest ground-penetrating radar reveals a collection of between sixteen to fifty large oval stone circles consisting of elaborately carved pillars up to nineteen feet tall, deliberately interred and made to resemble a natural hill. This staggering project was built during an epoch when humans were supposed to have been nothing more than primitive hunter-gatherers.
Its ancient Armenian, and probably oldest name is Portasar, and it breaks down into two syllables: port (navel or umbilical cord) identifies the site as a Navel of the Earth, a seeding place where the knowledge of the gods was first deposited — where kingship was lowered from heaven, to coin the Mesopotamian phrase. Wherever such epicenters were created, wisdom spread across the land like ripples, touching the uncivilized and the brute and elevating the potential of humankind. This alone confers onto Portasar enormous significance.
But there’s more. The second syllable asar is revelatory, for it is none other than the original name of Osiris, primary Egyptian deity and lord of the Otherworld (Osiris is a later Greek transliteration). It can be said, then, that Göbekli Tepe is the Umbilical Cord of Osiris, who, as it turns out, was a bearded god.
Göbekli Tepe.
The site was rediscovered in the 1960s by a team of surveyors from Istanbul and Chicago, yet no great importance was given because, to the naked eye, the few artifacts scattered upon the parched surface were deemed to belong to a recent civilization. It was not old enough to be of value, and so its true antiqueness and uniqueness were left unrecognized for over three decades until a German archaeological team led by the late Klaus Schmidt realized the enormity of what might be concealed below the surface, based on his earlier excavations of a nearby site, Nevali Cori, shown by radiocarbon dating to have been inhabited by 10,000 BC.
Dating sites of extreme antiquity poses enormous challenges. For decades, radiocarbon dating has been deemed a reliable method for providing objective age estimates for carbon-based materials originating from living organisms. The method works by comparing the decay rate of three different carbon isotopes. Over time, one of the isotopes, Carbon-14, decays to nitrogen. Most C-14 is produced in the upper atmosphere where neutrons produced by cosmic rays react with atoms. It then oxidises to create carbon dioxide, which is dispersed through the atmosphere. This CO2 is used in photosynthesis by plants, and from there is passed through the food chain.
There are two issues when using C-14 to date temples. First, few if any organic material is ever taken from beneath megaliths, which would at least identify the date when the stones were placed The main problem is that the vast majority of temples were predominantly erected on virgin bedrock. Instead, samples are generally taken from the lowest habitation level where soil has accumulated and trapped organic material.
Bear in mind that any sacred space, much like one's own home, would have been maintained in a state of cleanliness rather than allowed to fill with dirt and debris, or food scraps and broken pottery. Therefore what C-14 dating will indicate is a period long after the site has fallen into disuse; the site itself could be hundreds, even thousands of years older. Second, mainstream science has assumed the radioactive decay rate remains constant under all conditions. It doesn't. In August 2008 physicists Jere Jenkins and Ephraim Fischback published a paper claiming that decay rates are not constant, they fluctuate in correlation to solar flares as well as the changing distance between the Earth and Sun.24 Naturally this threatened to overturn scientific conventions. Sixty years of established science was proven flawed, calling into question the time frame of prehistory, including the age when megalithic structures were erected. Not surprisingly the Purdue University's physicists have been given the academic cold shoulder.25
With this in mind let us examine Göbekli Tepe. The lower habitation layer in the three primary stone circles, or enclosures, yielded the following dates: Enclosure D, 9990-9600 BC, Enclosure C, c.9700 BC, and the youngest, Enclosure A, 9559-8880 BC. Beyond this point the site was no longer used.26
The date range is impressively old. However, virtually all testing came from the fill material dumped into the enclosures after each was carefully packed with debris. Since the enclosures and their pillars were built upon virgin bedrock, all the C-14 dates tell us is when the enclosures began to be decommissioned.27
The archaeological team decided that a more reliable method was to date the mortar used in the rough stone walls erected around each enclosure prior to their interment. Using Enclosure D as an example, the average age returned was 9984 BC — that’s before the great flood. Again impressive, except the stone walls and the mortar were not integral to the original site. The masonry is crude compared to the elegance of the pillars, and the fact that the walls cover important reliefs on the surface of the pillars proves they were added much later, at the end of the site's useful life. With these parameters in mind the scientists preliminarily concluded that Enclosure D may be the oldest, with a construction date c.10,500 BC, placing part of Göbekli Tepe firmly within the Younger Dryas.28
Why should these enclosures, with their dignified T-shape pillars, have been deliberately buried? Two possibilities come to mind. One, in temple tradition, the sites are designed to mirror specific heavenly bodies, what is referred to as sky-ground dualism. The Waitaha narrative elegantly describes this purpose, with understatement: "Only when star and stone are held together in one hand is the mind truly at one with the beginning and the end of the Tai Atea [Cosmos]. Only then do we know the oneness of the Universe and walk the deep trails of wisdom where everything is possible. For the Mind Song is without end; it joins with the ancestors to know the completeness of the circle of the dream.”29 After the passage of two to four thousand years, however, the Earth's axial rotation — its precession — has changed the planet's position relative to the background stars to which the temple was originally aligned. When this sky-ground relationship is broken, the temple ceases to mirror the sky and becomes nothing more than a beautiful enterprise, even if its sanctity remains forever. With its life span complete, the temple is either sealed, or adjusted and expanded to allow for a fresh astronomical alignment. The temple of Luxor in Egypt, with its two distinct axes, is a perfect example.
A second possibility is that the site was buried to prevent its destruction. Dating Enclosure D to the mid 10th millennium suggests people were present at Göbekli Tepe three hundred years after the first encounter with a fragmented meteorite that triggered the Younger Dryas. By the same token, the C-14 dating of mortar and the lower layer of debris to 9990-9600 BC places the activity one hundred years either side of the second strike that generated the great flood and brought about the end of the Younger Dryas. It would appear people came to this hill in Anatolia to construct what appears to be a library in stone, then carefully packed up the site and left prior to the calamity about to unfold. For this to happen they must have had foreknowledge of the event, and if they were expert astronomers — the site is astronomically significant — they certainly would have been aware of the cycles that affect and afflict the Earth, and acted prudently to preserve the knowledge therein.
A look at the astro-archaeology of Enclosure D, the best preserved so far, ought to shed more light. It features thirteen T-shaped pillars, each erected on 8-inch tall plinths carved in relief on the bedrock, an astonishing engineering achievement in itself considering how an area of 600 square feet would first need to be leveled, then much of it shaved away to leave the raised plinths and the slots into which the pillars are inserted. Each pillar features a plethora of animals and symbols carved in relief, many bearing a
stronomical connotations.
It has been suggested that the pillars of Enclosure D were aligned to reference the setting of the constellation Cygnus.30 It is an elegant theory except it omits one glaring obstacle: the stone circle is not on the summit of the hill but sits approximately thirty feet below the horizon line, making it very difficult to observe and mark descending or ascending objects with any accuracy in the northern sky. Additionally, ancient people typically commemorated the rising of astral objects or their mid-heaven position, not their setting. However, there is still some merit. A viewer standing on the south perimeter of the circle would have used Pillar 43 to mark Cygnus' brief appearance and descent after sunset, and just before sunrise used Pillar 30 to mark its brief rise before the light of the rising Sun erased the effect.
Perhaps a re-examination is in order. After the winter solstice sunset in the epoch c.10,400 BC, a person standing between the two massive central T-pillars and looking north would have observed Vega, the star then closest to the celestial pole, glistening like a jewel at 352º, the same angle as central T-pillars 31 and 18; Vega's position is actually marked by Pillar 43 along the northern perimeter, while its 20º elliptical rotation around the celestial pole from sunset to sunrise is framed within the field of vision of the central T-pillars. Most importantly, Vega's altitude made it wholly visible above the summit during the course of the night..
Vega’s light is of such magnitude that it features prominently in the lore of ancient cultures, and not surprisingly it was used as a navigational beacon, particularly throughout the Pacific Ocean. Its name derives from the Arabic waqi (falling, swooping), referring to a time when the rotation of its host constellation Lyra was seen as a swooping vulture,31 the motion being especially obvious during the epoch c.10,400 BC. This might explain why the heavily decorated Pillar 43 features a prominent relief of a vulture with outstretched wings, one of which touches a circle; two smaller vultures stand either side. Seen together the birds appear to mimic the circling of Vega around the celestial pole, each bird representing the star's diminishing brightness as it completes its nightly circumpolar journey around an imaginary circle in the sky.
Vega and the passage of the sky on the winter solstice c.10,400 BC. Cygnus is obscured by the hill and rises briefly to the right before dawn. (angle of Enclosure D shown for illustration only)
The siting of Enclosure D below the summit suggests the northern sky was perhaps not the primary aim of the monument. Turning to face south while Vega is prominent in the north, the belt of Orion can be seen rising briefly above the horizon, the narrow arc framed by pillars 19 and 33, with Pillar 32 marking its highest ascension in that era.
By comparison, the epoch of 9600 BC — the late C-14 date for Enclosure D — sees Vega rising 10 degrees further to the west and well outside the alignment of the central pillars, certainly out of alignment with Pillar 43, while Orion has shifted a few degrees to the southeast but remains acceptably within the pillars' frame of reference.
Enclosure D looking south to Orion’s Belt.
Enclosure D alignments, with Vega the vulture on Pillar 43 circling the celestial pole.
So, what are we to make of this combined reference to the pole star and the ascent of Orion’s Belt c.10,400 BC? For one thing it marks a significant period when Orion reaches its lowest meridian transit during the Earth’s 25,920-year precession cycle.32 Taking the hill's original name Portasar — the Umbilical Cord of Asar — Osiris is himself associated with Orion, his primary dwelling place being Giza, the limestone plateau identified in Egyptian texts as Rostau, a gateway to the Otherworld. The researchers Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert have convincingly argued that the three main Giza pyramids form the pattern of Orion’s Belt as it appeared relative to the celestial pole on the spring equinox in the epoch c,10,400 BC as though some cosmic architect wished to memorialize this date in time. According to Bauval and Gilbert, “what now emerges from the visual picture of the southern sky at the epoch c.10,400 BC is this: The pattern of Orion’s Belt seen on the ‘west’ of the Milky Way matches, with uncanny precision, the pattern and alignments of the three Giza pyramids!”33
Could Göbekli Tepe be an Armenian Giza Plateau, an extension of the house of Osiris? Certainly there exists a geodetic relationship between the two locations. Stretching a cord through the corner of the pyramids of Menkaure and Khufu and continuing 700 miles along the surface of the Earth, one arrives at Göbekli Tepe. The margin of error is 1.5º, a miniscule discrepancy given ten thousand years of plate tectonics. With each site referencing Orion's Belt on the spring equinox and winter solstice respectively, together they mark the opening and closing of an established nine-month ritual cycle.
Giza pyramids ley to Göbekli Tepe.
But Göbekli Tepe's siting below the summit and deliberate southeastern exposure isn't just referencing the sky. On a clear day, if one finesses the eye through pillars 32 and 19, it is possible to see in the distance the ancient observation tower of Harran, far taller back in the day, unmistakably as a lone landmark.
Harran lies in what used to be northwestern Mesopotamia. Archaeological artifacts date human activity in the region to c.8000 BC. Its earliest name was Harranu, the nearest translation being Path of the Anu. It was once a major center for astronomy and home to the Sabeans, a group of sages who were among the ancient world’s keenest observers of the stars,34 whose name derives from the Egyptian Sba (star).35 Their temple city, featuring the aforementioned astronomical tower, was dedicated to the lunar god Su-En (contracted to Sin). The Sabeans were described as "people of the book" of Twt — the antediluvian magician god whom the Greeks call Thoth — and were still consulting it in the 11th century, by which time the Greeks had translated it and titled it Hermetica. The book was concealed for an unspecified period before being discovered by Leonardo de Pistoia, an agent of Cosimo de Medici, while journeying through the Near East in the 14th century.36
Harranu is said to have been named in honor of the son of Noah, the Hebrew flood hero.37 Later, Noah's great-grandson Cainan discovered antediluvian inscriptions carved on standing stones preserving the science of astrology and the secrets of the stars, an art taught by antediluvian gods who went by the names Anu and Watchers, who omce lived in this region.38 The Sefer ha-Yashar, a Hebrew midrash, also records this story.
Could Cainan’s carved standing stones be the same pillars so carefully buried at Göbekli Tepe? Because the site appears to have been the focal point of an astronomical cult already in existence prior to the flood, whose practitioners may have returned to the region to continue the tradition. The Sabeans themselves were known to be following an older tradition, and were still undertaking regular pilgrimage to Giza as late as the fourteenth century BC. 39
Many of the two hundred limestone pillars so far uncovered at the site are shaped smooth and feature reliefs of birds, bears, snakes, salamanders and other creatures. The central T-pillars are the tallest: 18 feet high, 4 feet wide and a slender 8 inches thick.40 One of them — again in Enclosure D — hums when brushed with the palm of the hand.41 They are anthropomorphic, carved on either side with long arms that reach around the corners to hands with slender fingers pointing directly at a navel. Where have we seen this motif? The statues of Tiwanaku and Easter Island, in fact the hands and fingers on a similar pillar uncovered by Klaus Schmidt at Göbekli Tepe's sister site, Nevali Cori, are near identical in style to those of the moai.
The same is true of the relief animal carvings on Göbekli Tepe's pillars, who find their twins in Tiwanaku and the nearby sites of Silustani and Cutimbo.
This still leaves the question of our earlier observation, the belt with distinct H and U motifs worn by Göbekli Tepe's anthropomorphic figures. While sitting outside the dusty old train station at Tiwanaku I caught up with notes and observations from my journeys. Since so many antediluvian gods around the world are associated with Orion, could the H be a stylized representation of this constellation, like a graphic logo, a symbol of office
?
And the U, could it refer to the antediluvian god of Mesopotamia, a figure depicted with fish scales and a beard, just like Viracocha — a god-man by the name U-annu who is regularly depicted holding a strange container?
CONTAINERS OF KNOWLEDGE
A derivative of Portasar is Gandzasar (Mountain of Treasure), however, in early times treasure did not refer to jewels or loot but to knowledge. The oldest known iteration of the word is the Greek thesauros (a storehouse, treasure), the root of thesaurus, in essence a treasure of wisdom contained in words. The Waitaha refer to such treasure in spiritual terms as taonga.
At Göbekli Tepe we find not words but symbols, a storehouse of them, all carved in relief on enigmatic T-shape pillars. The builders could have saved themselves a colossal amount of time by simply fashioning raw stone into straight shapes, so the extra effort that went into the T-shape implies purpose, perhaps a symbolic meaning. And nothing in temple design is superfluous or by accident.
The T is a culturally shared symbol known in Yucatan and Guatemalan temple culture as the Breath of God,43 just as in the most ancient Japanese and Chinese spiritual traditions it is called Shu-gen-do and Tayi respectively, the supreme knowledge of the gods.44 The Hopi, Zuni and Anasazi applied this symbol and the teaching it represents in their sacred dwellings, one example being the large T-shape window in the great kiva of Chaco Canyon.
T symbol at Göbekli Tepe, Chichen Itzá ball court, and windows at Palenque.
The supreme knowledge of the Cosmos consists of the balance between light and dark forces. Thus the T represents one aspect, and a second T its mirrored opposite. Joining the two and turning the composite image sideways reveals H, the symbol on the belts of the anthropomorphic pillars of Göbekli Tepe. It follows that the individuals represented by these totems — much like the moai — must have been people who personified the knowledge, perhaps the gods who brought the civilizing arts to humanity following the devastation by the flood.
