Ancient Buildings Deemed Religious
The association between settled societies and buildings deemed religious is readily apparent in the archaeological record. Figure 10 compares the dataset of georeferenced ancient settlements from the last chapter with a substantial sample set of ancient “temple sites” listed in a variety of general reference volumes.1 Whether deemed so by scholars digging at each site, or later interpreters of the date, “temples” at these sites are specifically identified in these sources; because this chapter concerns the presence (or absence) of this particular building block in the early development of specific religions, sites dated to the Achaemenid Persian Period and later have been excluded.2 At the regional scale there seems to be a clear relationship between the distribution of settlements and “temple” building activities. Taves’ linguistic orientation makes the reason for this connection obvious: it is perfectly logical to assume that, generally, buildings deemed religious could be found in places where there are other buildings or building-cultures. This relationship serves as background to the interpretation of archaeological findings at Göbekli Tepe and it is in light of this connection that the site is considered an outlier to a well-established trend. If there is, at some future point, evidence discovered to show settlement at, or close to, Göbekli Tepe, it would be reasonable to assume that scholars would, generally, not be surprised.
The relationship between settled building cultures and buildings deemed religious offers credence to both Herodotus’ comments regarding Persian religious practices and the curiosity with which they are delivered. Mention of Scythia (among others) in The Histories reveals that, at least in an intellectual sense, Herodotus is familiar with mobile pastoralist societies. However, his perspective, rooted in a settled agriculturalist social context, is limited to observable (to his sources, one imagines) differences between his culture and the cultures of others. That he finds the absence of Persian “temples” remarkable is important; that he is supported by the lack of archaeological evidence is interesting. Figure 11 further highlights the relationship revealed in Figure 10: by presenting the ancient settlements dataset as a heatmap and the “temple” sites as points, the connection is particularly clear.
Absent from Figure 10 and 11 is data regarding the religious affiliation of the “temple” site dataset. Table 4 shows the “religion” associated with each site as interpreted from the attesting source. At first glance, the category to which nearly all of these sites belong is revealed by the name of the “religion:” religions deemed polytheistic. The distinction made between religious and “ethnic” identities, in the communities of worship centered around YHWH and Ahura Mazda and other religions deemed monotheistic, suggests that the usage of religious identity in Table 4 is perhaps anachronistic. The differences between “Mazda-worshipper” and “Aryan” identities cannot so easily be imposed on ancient Egyptian religion, society, and culture.
Furthermore, the continuity implied by terms used for religious identification within religions deemed monotheistic artificially harmonizes all aspects of religious culture (and perhaps non-religious as well) across time in a certain space. Despite these issues, it is important for purposes of this dissertation to differentiate between the religious systems to which the “temple” sites in this dataset belong.3 A visualization of the data in Table 4 is presented with the distribution of sites by date (century BCE) in Figure 12. The dates attested in the sources suggest consistent “temple-building” activity across the established histories of the numerically-heavy Egyptian and Mesopotamian sites. The dominance of Egyptian sites in the data presented is striking and far from surprising, considering the history of archaeological interest in the region and conditions for environmentally well-preserved remains. Equally striking (although not surprising, given the literature) is the relative absence of “Israelite” and “Aryan” buildings deemed religious from the dataset. The two sites listed as questionable “Israelite” are controversial and their inclusion requires discussion: Arad and Jerusalem.
1 Data drawn from: Juliette van. Krieken-Pieters, ed., Art and Archaeology of Afghanistan: Its Fall and Survival : A Multi-Disciplinary Approach, vol. 14, Handbuch Der Orientalistik, Section 8, Central Asia, 0169-8524 (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Evi Melas, ed., Temples and Sanctuaries of Ancient Greece: A Companion Guide (London,: Thames and Hudson, 1973); UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “UNESCO World Heritage Centre - World Heritage List,” UNESCO World Heritage Centre, accessed November 28, 2018, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list; UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “UNESCO World Heritage Centre - Tentative Lists,” UNESCO World Heritage Centre, accessed November 28, 2018, https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/; “Encyclopædia Iranica | Home,” accessed November 28, 2018, http://www.iranicaonline.org/; Seton. Lloyd, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest, The World of Archaeology; World of Archaeology. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978); William E. Mierse, Temples and Sanctuaries from the Early Iron Age Levant Recovery after Collapse, History, Archaeology, and Culture of the Levant (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2012); Anton Moortgat, The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia; the Classical Art of the Near East. (London,: Phaidon, 1969); John Griffiths Pedley, Greek Art and Archaeology (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1993); Michael Shenkar, “Temple Architecture in the Iranian World before the Macedonian Conquest,” Iran & the Caucasus 11, no. 2 (2007): 169–94; Sharon R. Steadman and John Gregory McMahon, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia, 10,000-323 B.C.E., Oxford Handbooks Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); David Stronach, “Urartian and Achaemenian Tower Temples,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 26, no. 4 (1967): 278–88, https://doi.org/10.1086/371920; James. Whitley, The Archaeology of Ancient Greece, Cambridge World Archaeology (Cambridge, U.K. ; Cambridge University Press, 2001); Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt; G. R. H. Wright, Ancient Building in Cyprus, Handbuch Der Orientalistik. Siebente Abteilung, Kunst Und Archäologie (Leiden ; E.J. Brill, 1992); G. R. H. Wright, Ancient Building in South Syria and Palestine, Handbuch Der Orientalistik. Siebente Abteilung, Kunst Und Archäologie (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985); Lloyd, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia. Each of the maps used in this chapter has been created using a base layer world map from ESRI: “Dark Gray Canvas (WGS84)”, Credits: Esri, HERE, Garmin, FAO, NOAA, USGS, © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community.
2 It is reasonably clear that, with the conquests of Cyrus in the mid-sixth century BCE, the societies in the greater Near East lost autonomous local political (and perhaps religious) power.
3 Please note that some of the polities included in this dataset, like “BMAC” (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex) or “Phoenician,” do not necessarily represent the self-identification of these societies but are used here according to the name designated by the authors of the attesting sources. Also, note that lacking any conclusive association in the above-cited sources, the following sites are marked “Unclear” in the dataset: Arslantepe, Buyukkale, Ebla, Harran, Kultepe, Ras Shamra (two sites attested), Sarissa, Tell Atchana, Tepe Sialk, Tilman Hoyuk
