The Goddess and the Bear: Hybrid Imagery and Symbolism at Çatalhöyük

Joan Marler (USA) and Harald Haarmann (Finland)

Abstract

During the initial excavation of Çatalhöyük during the 1960s, James Mellaart discovered at least ten plaster bas reliefs on the walls of ‘shrines’ in levels VII and VI in a stylized anthropomorphic shape with raised arms and open legs which he interpreted as images of the Mother Goddess. The discovery in 2005 at Çatalhöyük of a well preserved stamp seal of a bear—in the same shape as the plaster reliefs—has inspired Ian Hodder and his team to reinterpret the plaster reliefs—or “splayed figures” as they call them—not as goddesses but as bears. This article questions the exclusive interpretation of goddess or bear in favor of the more inclusive possibility that the images are theriomorphic, combining both goddess and bear.

The authors discuss Çatalhöyük within the context of Anatolian prehistory and as part of a larger continuity of Paleolithic and Neolithic symbolic traditions within an ancient zone of cultural convergence, the “Mythological Crescent.” The article emphasizes the longevity of hybrid imagery functioning as visual metaphor, ancient traditions of the spirits of the natural world rendered in female forms, and the bear as an ancestral being in connection with the Mistress of Nature. The article concludes by pointing out an ancient and widespread image of woman that is a cryptic aspect of the newly discovered bear seal that may well indicate that the bear is a goddess after all.