Depiction of a "mythical composite animal" on a plaster plaque from the 10,000BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic A layers of the archaeological site Körtik Tepe, located in the Diyarbakır district of Turkey. One of the first ever found...
Many such plaques were found in Körtik Tepe graves, so they obviously had some ritual meaning for the people who made them...The question is what meaning could that be?
Well, in order to answer this question, we first need to identify the animals from which this "mythical composite animal" is made...So have a look at my earlier post "Goat and snake from Kortik Tepe" about Ibex goat and snake symbolism in Körtik Tepe art.
In it explain that Ibex is an animal calendar marker for Oct/Nov, the start of the mating season of Ibex Goats. And that snake is an animal calendar marker for Apr/May, the start of the mating season of vipers...
Now if we look at the climate in the area of Körtik Tepe, will see that head, Ibex, wild goat, which marks Oct/Nov, also marks the beginning of the cool, wet season in the Körtik Tepe area, and tail, snake, which marks Apr/May, also marks the end of the cool, wet season in the Körtik Tepe area...
Together, they mark the season of rebirth (of nature), brought by rain...water...
This reminds me of the (ancient?) belief, preserved by Slavs, about the thirsty ancestors...Is this why we find all these "empty" vessels in Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age graves? Were they placed in the graves full of water, for the thirsty dead? I talked about in my post "White feast"...
Körtik Tepe graves also contained "empty" vessels...
Why? Did they contain water too when they were originally placed into the graves, together with the "mythical composite animal", half goat half snake, a composite animal calendar marker for rain, wet, water season...
But is this a head of an ibex goat...🙂
Top: Ibex, wild goat
Bottom: Mouflon, wild sheep
Hmmm...The horns of the composite being look more like a Mouflon...Oh no!!! 🙂
But don't fret...Nothing changes...Mouflon sheep also mate starting from Oct/Nov...So as animal calendar markers, Ibex and Mouflon are interchangeable...
So whether the Körtik Tepe "mythical composite animal" has a head of an Ibex wild goat, or a Mouflon wild sheep, the meaning of this composite animal calendar marker is still "Oct/Nov-Apr/May, the rain season"...
The season of rebirth (of nature)...
So did people from Körtik Tepe believe in rebirth?
To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, which are at the root of all our mythologies, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...
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