The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük) is a baked-clay, nude female form, seated between feline-headed arm-rests. It is generally thought to depict a corpulent and fertile Mother goddess in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two hand rests in the form of feline (lioness, leopard, or panther) heads in a Mistress of Animals motif. The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is associated to other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures, of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf. It is a

neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

sculpture shaped by an unknown artist, and was completed in approximately 6000 BC. It was unearthed by

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

James Mellaart James Mellaart FBA (14 November 1925 – 29 July 2012) was an English archaeologist and author who is noted for his discovery of the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. He was expelled from Turkey when he was suspected of involvem ...

in 1961 at

Çatalhöyük Çatalhöyük (; also ''Çatal Höyük'' and ''Çatal Hüyük''; from Turkish ''çatal'' "fork" + ''höyük'' "tumulus") is a tell of a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from app ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

. When it was found, its head and hand rest of the right side were missing. The current head and the hand rest are modern replacements. The sculpture is at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in

Ankara Ankara ( , ; ), historically known as Ancyra and Angora, is the capital of Turkey. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5.1 million in its urban center and over 5.7 million in Ankara Province, maki ...

, Turkey. Mellaart claimed that the figure represented a fertility goddess worshipped by the people of Çatalhöyük. He also labeled the site a matriarchy.

Annalee Newitz Annalee Newitz (born May 7, 1969) is an American journalist, editor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction, who has written for the periodicals '' Popular Science'' and ''Wired''. From 1999 to 2008 Newitz wrote a syndicated weekly column ca ...

suggests two reasons for this interpretation. First, Mellaart may have been influenced by the theories of James George Frazer and

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celt ...

, proponents of the idea of a "mother goddess." Second, Newitz argues that Mellaart believed a patriarchal society would not have created "nonsexual figures of naked women." Lynn Meskell, on the other hand, noted that female figurines are rare when the entirety of figures found at Çatalhöyük is taken into account. Based on her research, Newitz suggests that the sculpture instead represents an ancestor or perhaps a talisman.

Notes

References

*Mellaart, James : ''Çatal Hüyük, A Neolithic Town in Anatolia'', London, 1967 *Guide book of "The Anatolian Civilizations Museum" *Lecture of Dr. R. Tringham, The Neolithic World of Çatalhöyük, at the University of Leuven

External links

When the Goddesses Ruled - Çatal Hüyük

The Goddess Uncovered
Prehistoric sculpture Mother goddesses Ceramic sculptures Neolithic Konya Province Archaeological discoveries in Turkey Prehistoric art in Turkey Ancient Near East art and architecture 1961 archaeological discoveries {{Turkey-archaeology-stub

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