Word: mellaart
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...agree with Berve's thesis that Homer's poems are far from literal truth. But few are quite so willing to reject Homer entirely. Simply because Troy seems to have been much smaller than Homer's description of it in the Iliad, says British Archaeologist James Mellaart, does not preclude the possibility that Homer may have patterned his story on an actual event. Because Homer wrote 400 years after the war, adds U.S. Archaeologist Rhys Carpenter, he probably could be forgiven lapses on particulars. Berve does not think that Homer should be treated so charitably...
...look at the bulging buttocks of the squat female figurine and British Archaeologist James Mellaart recognized a Stone Age fertility symbol; the dig he was starting on a plain in southern Turkey promised to open a door onto the most ancient reaches of human civilization. Mellaart treated every crum bling bit of dirt as a hard-to-read book, and after three years of diligent scratching through the 32-acre mound called Qatal Hiiyiik, he is now piecing together the story of a city that flourished at least 3,000 years before the first Pharaoh ruled in Egypt...
...with strange and intricate paintings almost too faint to be seen. Painted gods and goddesses emerged from lumps of clay, and scraps of charcoal-like material turned out to be the remnants of food that the ancient people ate, pieces from clothes they wore. By putting the pieces together, Mellaart reports in the latest journal of the British Institute of Archaeology, at Ankara, what he has learned about how people worked and played and worshiped at Çatal Hiiytik 80 centuries...
...Mother with Navel. Life in Çatal Hiiyiik centered around religious ceremonials. The largest rooms in the city were windowless shrines furnished with a wide assortment of idols and symbols. The center of attraction was usually a chunky goddess modeled of clay in a spread-legged attitude that Dr. Mellaart calls the "giving birth" position. She is, he thinks, an early representative of the Great Mother cult that dominated the Mediterranean world for many thousand years...
Other goddesses are slimmer, and some have prominent navels. One is spraddled against the wall with her navel painted in concentric circles like a target-a treatment that Dr. Mellaart thinks shows concern with the continuity of life. Male gods are not common in the Çatal Hiiyuk pantheon, and those that have survived are generally shown riding on a small creature that Dr. Mellaart says is a bull...