DAY 6 Tuesday June 12 2001 by Bonnie S. Arthur KONYA

 

At Konya, we visited the Roman Catholic Church of St. Paul where we saw a "Black Madonna" painting. I've done a bit of reading about Black Madonnas and favor the theory that they were brought to Europe by Gypsies, who originally came from India, and that the statues really represent the Goddess Kali. This theory holds that the Gypsies gave the statues to churches honoring the Virgin because they felt Mary was a representation of the Great Mother, who was Kali to them.
Two nuns reside in the rectory of St. Paul's and minister to the small Christian community in Konya. A priest visits every three months to say mass. The nuns sang hymns for us, as one played guitar.

Then we bussed to Catal Hoyuk, an archeological site dating from the early Neolithic period, about 9,000 years ago, discovered around 1960. James Mellaart, the first archeologist on the site, saw indications in artifacts of ancient goddess worship. The archeologist Maria Gimbutas popularized Mellaart's findings and built a theory that Catal Hoyuk was one of many ancient matriarchies, peaceful, artistic and technologically advanced societies that were later tragically destroyed by patriarchy.

This sparked a major controversy, which continues. Some of the many archaeologists now working on the site seem disturbed by the fact that it has become a holy place for many feminists. To them the right approach is to spend years excavating the entire site and studying everything with minute care and even then to be extremely cautious about drawing conclusions from artifacts about social behavior and beliefs. There is actually a Catal Hoyuk Web site maintained by Ian Hodder where the feminists and the hard-nosed scientists debate all this. It was fascinating to meet a Turkish graduate student in social anthropology who was doing research at the site for his dissertation on the anthropology of archaeology!

Several members of our tour had looked forward to doing a ritual at Catal Hoyuk, but guards, acting on Turkish Government orders, would not permit it. So we stopped by the road in the nearby mountains and found a beautiful place for the ritual. We spread Turkish rugs on the ground in a wooded area dotted with large granite rocks and honored the memory of ancient women who helped build one of the world's earliest towns and may have invented pottery and weaving.