water melon. Even better, just as Christine has promised, there was plenty of icy cold Turkish beer-and some decent red wine from Cappadocia. Within a couple of hours Rob was feeling very relaxed, convivial and happy, content to listen to the archaeologists argue about Gobekli.
For his benefit, Rob guessed, they conducted the argument mainly in English, though three of the four men were German, and the other was Russian. And Christine kind-of French.
As he nibbled his third slice of baklava, chasing it with his Efes beer, Rob tried to follow the debate. One of the archaeologists, Hans, was questioning Franz about the lack of skeletal remains. ‘If it’s a funerary complex then where are the bones?’
Franz smiled. ‘We will find them! I told you.’
‘But you said that last season.’
‘And the season before,’ said a second man, standing nearby with a plate of green olives and white sheep’s cheese.
‘I know.’ Franz shrugged, happily. ‘I know!’
The director of the dig was sitting on the biggest leather chair in his sitting room. Behind him, the antique windows were open to the Sanliurfa streets. Rob could hear the evening town life beyond. A man was shouting at his kids in the house across the way. A television blared in the café down the road: probably showing Turkish football, judging by the cheers and jeers of the customers. Maybe Galatasaray versus the local team, Dyarbakir. Turks versus Kurds. Like the rivalry of Real Madrid and Barcelona, but way more venomous.
Derya provided them with more baklava straight from the patisserie’s silver cardboard box. Rob wondered if he might expire through over-eating. Franz was gesticulating at his juniors. ‘But if it isn’t a funerary shrine or complex then. what is it? Ja? There is no settlement, no signs of domestication, nothing. It has to be a temple, we all agree on that. But a temple to what, if not ancestors? Surely it honours the dead huntsmen? No?’
The other two experts shrugged.
Franz added, ‘And what are the niches, if not for bones?’
‘I agree with Franz,’ said Christine, coming over. ’I think the corpses of the hunters were brought there and excarnated…’
Rob burped very politely. ‘Sorry. Excarnated?’
Franz explained, ‘It means picked clean. The Zoroastrians still do it. And some think Zoroastrianism came from here.’
‘Practically all religions came from around here,’ said Christine. ‘Excarnation is a funeral process whereby you take the body to a special place then leave it to be eaten by wild animals, or vultures and raptors. As Franz says, you can still see this in Zoroastrian faiths, in India. They call them sky burials-the corpses are left to the sky gods. In fact, a lot of the early Mesopotamian religions worshipped gods, shaped like these buzzards and eagles. Like the Assyrian demon we saw in the museum.’
‘It’s very hygienic. As a form of burial. Excarnation.’ The interruption came from Ivan, the youngest expert, the paleobotanist.
Franz nodded, briskly, and said: ‘Anyway-who knows-maybe the bones were moved, afterwards. Or maybe they got shifted when Gobekli was buried itself. That could explain the lack of skeletons on site.’
Rob was confused. ‘What do you mean? “Gobekli was buried itself”?’
Franz put his empty plate down on the polished parquet floor. When he looked up he wore the satisfied smile of someone about to reveal a delicious piece of gossip. ‘This, my friend, is the biggest mystery of all! And they did not mention it in the article you read!’
Christine laughed. ‘You got your exclusive, Rob!’
‘In or around 8000 BC…’ Franz paused for effect, ‘the whole of Gobekli Tepe was buried. Entombed. Completely covered in earth.’
‘But…how do you know?’
‘The hillocks are artificial. The soil is not a random accretion. The whole temple complex was deliberately concealed with tons of earth and mud in around 8000 BC. It was hidden.’
‘Wow. That’s wild.’
‘What makes it even more amazing is how much labour this must have taken. And therefore how pointless it was.’
‘Because…?’
‘Think of the effort to put it all up in the first place! Erecting the stone circles of Gobekli, and covering them with carvings, friezes and sculptures, must have been a process that took decades, maybe even centuries. And this at a time when life expectancy was twenty years.’ Franz wiped his mouth with a napkin. ‘We imagine the hunter-gatherers must have lived in the area in tents, leather tents, as they constructed the site. Living off the local game for sustenance. Generation after generation. And all of it without pottery or agriculture, or any tools but flints…’
Christine stepped a little nearer. ‘I