JAMES MELLAART AND THE CATALHOYUK MURALS - FAKES?:

Reproduction of the supposed

map mural of Catalhoyuk.

On April 30, 2016, I posted a column titled "Ancient Map Preserved In A Mural Of Volcanic Eruptions At Catalhoyuk". (Faris 2016) This was about a wall mural at Catalhoyuk which appears to record not only a map of the town, but, in the distance, a possible volcanic eruption.

Remains of the map mural of

Catalhoyuk still on the wall,

SciNews.com, Public Domain.

Now there are allegations that James Mellaart forged many of the murals and artifacts supposedly recovered from Catalhoyuk. Writing for LiveScience, Owen Jarus (March 12, 2018) stated "A famed archaeologist well-known for discovering the sprawling 9,000-year-old settlement in Turkey called Catalhoyuk seems to have faked several of his ancient findings and may have run a "forger's workshop" of sorts, one researcher says.

James Mellaart, who died in 2012, created some of the "ancient" murals at Catalhoyuk that he supposedly discovered; he also forged documents recording inscriptions that were found at Beykoy, a village in Turkey, said geoarchaeologist Eberhard Zangger, president of the Luwian Studies Foundation. Zangger examined Mellaart's apartment in London between Feb. 24 and 27, finding "prototypes," as Zangger calls them, of murals and inscriptions that Mellaart had claimed were real." (Jarus 2018)

Different reports on this are somewhat confusing as they conflate his supposed counterfeit murals at Catalhoyuk with other subject areas. For instance the documents supposedly recording Luwian inscriptions are scrambled into the Catalhoyuk  murals. These are actually two discrete subjects from two different time frames. Catalhoyuk, "was a very large Neolithic Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC, and flourished around 7000 BC." (Wikipedia) The Luwians were Indo-European immigrants who migrated into Anatolia with the first evidence of their presence dating to circa. 2000 BC. (Wikipedia) Since there seem to be questions and charges being made agains Mellaart on both subjects the issues have become intertwined.

I will pass on the Luwian questions, I am not an epigrapher and have no intention or interest of getting involved in the thorny thickets of translating unknown languages. I am, however, an art historian and questions of the possible counterfeiting of the murals at Catalhoyuk interest me greatly. As I said above I have previously cited this in RockArtBlog concerning one mural that has been interpreted as a map of Catalhoyuk with a volcano erupting in the distance.

Further complicating the question is the fact that Eberhard Zangger is somewhat controversial on his own for theories he has espoused, and also that his charges have not been published in peer-reviewed journals, but in the press. All-in-all this is a subject that will need to be watched closely. Undeniably James Mellaart did make discoveries that rocked archaeology. However, he was also involved in more than one controversy during his life, and now these charges have cast doubt on a new area of his accomplishments.

NOTE: Images in this posting were obtained from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the originals at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter

2016 Ancient Map Preserved In A Mural Of Volcanic Eruptions At Catalhoyuk, April 30, 2016, http://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Catalhoyuk

Jarus, Owen,

2018 Famed Archaeologist 'Discovered' His Own Fakes at 9,000-Year-Old Settlement, March 12, 2018, https://www.livescience.com/61989-famed-archaeologist-created-fakes.html

SciNews.com

Wikipedia