Presumed Social Identity of the Occupants of Late Third Millennium BC Alacahöyük
and Horoztepe “Royal Tombs”

Jak Yakar

In this paper, professor Jak Yakar of Tel Aviv University discusses the presence of metal spindles and bronze mirrors found in the late third millennium “royal tombs” of Horoztepe and Alacahöyük in north-central Anatolia. At both sites, spindles and mirrors were found in the proximity of large quantities of cult objects, which raises the possibility that they too were implements used in divination and rituals. In Near Eastern art and literature, and particularly in Anatolia, the spindle, distaff and mirror occasionally occur as attributes of certain goddesses and their deified companions. It is possible, Yakar suggests, that priestesses in the service of such deities carried out cult rituals using such objects, perhaps preferably made of metal, such as those found in the tombs of Horoztepe and Alacahöyük.

Spinning and weaving were regarded as crafts capable of acquiring their own secret mythical forces, especially at the hands of the divine and the initiated. In fact, local myths relating to divine spinners and weavers in most cultures of the Ancient Near East, in Old Europe and beyond, leave no doubt that this would have also been the case in EBA Anatolia.