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GOBEKLI TEPE THE WORLD'S OLDEST TEMPLE GOBEKLI TEPE WORLD'S OLDEST TEMPLE THE A 12,000-year-old temple that is being excavated in Turkey is rewriting the historical record and seems to belong to a larger, hitherto unknown civilisation that is slowly being uncovered. ive millennia separate us from the birth of ancient Egypt in c. 3100 BC. Add another five millennia and we are in 8100 BC, coincidentally the start of the Age of Cancer. Add another millennium and a half, and we have the date when Gdbekli Tepe, in the highlands of Turkey near the Iraqi and Syrian borders, was constructed. Archaeologically categorised as a site of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period (c. 9600-7300 BC), the world's oldest temple sits in the early part of that era and so far has been carbon-dated to 9500 BC. It is the time-frame when Plato's Atlantis civilisation is said to have disappeared. And it was built an incredible 5,000 years before the rise of what many consider to be the "oldest civilisation", Sumer, not too far south of Gébekli Tepe as one goes down the River Euphrates and leaves the highlands of the Taurus Mountains in Turkey. Gébekli Tepe is an incredible site. David Lewis-Williams, Professor of Archaeology at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, says that "Gébekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world"! It is a small hill on the horizon, 15 kilometres northwest of the town of Sanliurfa, more com- monly known as Urfa—which has been linked with the biblical Abraham (some claim that Urfa was the town of Ur mentioned in the Bible) and which once osted the Holy Mandylion, linked with Christ's Passion. Once also known as Edessa, Urfa is on the edge of the rainy area of the Taurus Mountains, source of the river that runs through the town and joins the Euphrates. Urfa was (and still is) an oasis, which could explain why Gdbekli Tepe was built nearby. A ife-sized statue of limestone that was found in Urfa, at the pond known as Balikli Gél, has been carbon-dated to 10,000-9000 BC, making it the earliest- nown stone sculpture ever found. Its eyes are made of obsidian. An old Kurdish shepherd, Savak Yildiz, discovered the true nature of Gébekli Tepe in October 1994 when, spotting something, he brushed away the dust to expose a large oblong-shaped stone. A survey of the site had been carried out by American archaeologist Peter Benedict in 1963, but he identified the area as a Byzantine cemetery. When German archaeologist Harald Hauptmann and Adnan Misir and Eytip Bucak of the Museum of Urfa began excavations in 995, they soon learned that the site was so much more. Gébekli Tepe is a series of mainly circular and oval-shaped structures set in he slopes of a hill, known as Gébekli Tepe Ziyaret. "Ziyaret" means "visit", but his is often left out of the name. And though some translate "Gdbekli Tepe" as "Navel of the World" and "Gobek" does mean "navel" or "belly" and "Tepe" means “hill", the most correct translation of the site's name should be “bulged-out hill”. The more sensationalist media have made attempts to link Gébekli Tepe with the biblical Garden of Eden. Gébekli Tepe is indeed old, but it is not unique; nor was it a garden. However, over the past 50 years the time-frame for the beginning of civilisation has been gently pushed back from the rise of the Sumerian civilisation to the construction of Gébekli Tepe. by Philip Coppens © 2009 PO Box 13722 North Berwick EH39 4WB United Kingdom Email: info@philipcoppens.com Website: http://www. philipcoppens.com PO Box 13722 North Berwick EH39 4WB United Kingdom Email: info@philipcoppens.com Website: JUNE — JULY 2009 NEXUS ¢ 35 by Philip Coppens © 2009 http://www. philipcoppens.com www.nexusmagazine.com