Anatolian Trip Notes #5- Urfa- Gobekli Tepe-Karahan Tepe

Urfa is mystical at night. Especially the call to prayer at Halil-ul Rahman Mosque is mesmerizing. We literally couldn't move for minutes as if we were hypnotized during the evening  prayer. I wished time would stop and we would stay there and listen to the prayer forverer. It’s believed Abraham was born here in a cave and thrown into fire here by Nimrod. The fire turned to a lake and the wood into fishes. The lake (Balikli Gol) and the fishes are considered sacred to this day.

Klaus Schmidt Memorial House/Ani Evi

Dogan Bey drove us from Diyarbakir to Urfa which is a 2 hour drive. If you have time in Urfa, I’d recommend to visit Klaus Schmidt Memorial House/Ani Evi. Klaus Schmidt is the German archeologist who discovered Gobeklitepe and led the excavations for 20 years until his untimely death in 2014. His widow and a fellow archeologist, Cigdem Koksal Schmidt still lives in Urfa and rents one bedroom of their house on AirBnb. This gorgeous traditional Urfa home is also a museum to commemorate Herr Schmidt. It was lovely to stay there and pay our tribute to Herr Schmidt.

The next day, we joined a tour ,Viamaris, for the last part of our trip. There are many tours for Gobeklitepe but VIaMaris covers most area in the shortest time. We covered Urfa, Gobeklitepe, Karahantepe, Nemrut, Harran, Sogmatar in just 2 days . It’s a very compact tour, so don’t expect to spend too much time in each area but have a taste of it all. What I also liked about ViaMaris, you can get both the official view and the alternate, and it includes shamanic drumming and meditations in each landmark.

We started out the tour at Urfa museum, a must see in Urfa. You can easily spend a half day there. Urfa museum hosts sculptures from the Neolithic age, mainly from Gobeklitepe, Karahantepe, Nevaliçöri and other settlements in the area. They also have replica of Gobeklitepe built in doors. I wonder what art will survive from us 10,000 years from today, in 12,022?

Gobeklitepe

Discovery of Gobeklitepe, a 12,000-year-old archeological site in Southeast Turkey, has changed our understanding of evolution of civilization forever. 

The common thought up until discovery of Gobeklitepe was that agriculture came first then the faith. However Gobeklitepe proves this theory wrong. It’s a sanctuary built 12,000 years ago, before the discovery of the wheel, the pottery and the agriculture

If you want to learn more, here is the link to one of my talks on Gobeklitepe.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dCza-gL4NSJwi_0psTeJFTcwVYFDevL6/view?usp=share_link

Karahantepe

"11 giant penises carved from the bedrock and watched over by a bearded head with a serpent’s body that emerges from the wall." That's only one of the ritual areas excavated at Karahantepe.

I feel so lucky to see Karahantepe up close. I'm sure they'll soon build walk-ways, like Gobeklitepe and will protect the area from public (which they really should), but until then go visit Karahantepe for an up close encounter. Archaeologists now suspect that Karahantepe, is even older than Gobeklitepe. The head archeologist Necmi Karul  calls Karahantepe “one of the most monumental and earliest examples of phallic symbolism”:  Karul thinks the space, which includes a separate entrance and exit and a channel for water, was used for a male rite of passage.

Stone Mounds (Tas Tepeler) is home to at least 12 similar sites that may have all been built by the same Neolithic civilization, all within 120 miles radius. Karahantepe is 25 miles to Gobeklitepe and only 30 miles to SanliUrfa. 

Here is a presentation from the Head archeologists of Stone Mounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAUcFBCdjo&ab_channel=arkeolojihaber

Next: Nemrut-Harran-Sogmatar