We actually made it to Gobekli Tepe!!!!

Hi!

We DID it! We got to Gobekli Tepe, the oldest monolithic structure yet identified in the world! It’s AMAZING! As one of our books says, there may have been huts uncovered that are older, but never something on this scale – and the unanswered questions absolutely abound! Who – why – how? (This is twice as old as Stonehenge!) Imagine!

So, to commence. We had dinner last night here in the hotel, and it was excellent. I had something called vegetarian egg roll with soy sauce, and Robert had a salad to start. I definitely won this round! The egg roll came out warm, and was basically an assortment of vegetables which had been deep-fried in some sort of dough. It was delicious! (May have it again tonight!) For mains, we both had the Tavuk Sis, which is the chicken shishkabob served with grilled vegetables, rice AND French fries! It was also delicious! I last had the chicken shish at the Yacht Classic Hotel, and to be honest, it was the only disappointing thing about our entire stay! But this was great! We got to the dining room a bit after opening time at 7, and were lucky to get a table! There was a big Turkish tour group in, as well as a big dinner after a conference at the hotel. Up to bed after dinner.

We woke to a lovely clear blue sky, and the promise of good weather! We got down to breakfast about 7, and had the usual/traditional breakfast buffet. This one also had a waffle iron, but neither one of us ventured that way; maybe tomorrow! We were out of the hotel about 7:30 and heading out to find Gobekli Tepe!

We had multiple maps that I had gotten off the web, and some written instructions as well, but as it turns out, it is signposted all the way! After having to really work to find Catal Hoyuk, I didn’t want to take any chances here. Wound our way around the center of town and out the far eastern side; these drivers are the worst we’ve encountered here in Turkey so far! I’m thinking that possibly the affluence is fairly new here, based on the construction of a new dam in the area, and that many people are new to the automobile. At any rate…no problem at all finding the place!! It’s about 8 km out of town, along first a nice paved road, and finally, the last several kilometers, along a fairly decent dirt road.

We got to a gate, and it was OPEN, with a sign next to it identifying it as Gobekli Tepe!! We drove on and finally came to the end of the road, with a small parking area and one other parked car. The signage there identified the site, said it was free, and open “dawn to dusk!” There was one man sitting near the parking lot, with a Gobekli Tepe vest on. It turns out he is the guard, and even though he spoke no English at all, which about matches our Turkish – he showed us around the dig.

It took a few minutes for us to be able to recognize the shapes that the guard was pointing out to us. Obviously, he knows the various stone animals by heart, but once we started seeing things, he would point out photographs in the Turkish Airlines magazine article on the site, which really did help us make out some of the lesser incised animals. It is not yet “dig” time – probably the beginning of June – so some of the more fragile carvings have been covered up against the elements, and we weren’t able to see them. But the carvings that we were able to see are amazing. How did these hunter gatherers manage first of all, to move these stone pillars without wheels or domesticated animals of any kind? How did they get them to stand up? The lines carved on the pillars are very sharply delineated – what kind of tools did they have and how did they do this, when there was no metal yet? And lastly, it appears that at some point in the deep dark past, the entire area was covered over and literally buried! Why?

We walked all around the hill and saw some of the other places where archeologists are starting to dig; just an amazing site!

I’m suggesting that you may want to hit one of the pictures, which will enlarge it for you on your computer screen. In that way, you will be able to better make out some of the amazing details of the carvings. There are foxes, pigs, lions, snakes and birds, and sometimes two or three symbols on one side of a pillar.

Additionally, there are two images of a headless man. You can see his stylized “arms” on the sides of the pillar, meeting with his fingers somewhere above his belt. You can see his belt stretching around the pillar, and hanging from his belt is the pelt of an animal. Unreal!

We did walk around the main circle twice, just trying to soak it all in. After first reading about this several years ago in Smithsonian magazine, and then again last year in the New Yorker, it just seemed like a magical place that we would never be able to find! But we did, and I think I’m just about out of adjectives to describe how incredible a place this is. Hope you enjoy!

Much love,
m
xxx