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

ANCIENT MAP PRESERVED IN A MURAL OF VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS AT CATALHOYUK:

Catalhoyuk map and volcano wall

mural, from the Internet.

As readers of RockArtBlog know, I sometimes expand the subject of my writings to ancient wall murals and/or carvings. While perhaps not strictly rock art per se, as an art historian these subjects are so closely related to the field as to render them eligible of inclusion. I cannot see enough difference between a painting on a natural rock wall (a cliff) and a painting on a constructed rock wall to not include them all. Having written recently about a possible record of a volcanic eruption in Chauvet/Pont d'Ard cave in France (Feb. 27, 2016), and also about the question of possible maps found in rock art (March 12, 2016), I now have the great pleasure of writing about a map that apparently records a volcanic eruption preserved in a wall mural at Çatalhöyük, in western Anatolia, Turkey. 

An artist's rendering of

Catalhoyuk, Wikipedia.

"Çatalhöyük (Turkish pronunciation: [tʃaˈtaɫhøjyc]; also Çatal Höyük and Çatal Hüyük; from Turkish çatal "fork" + höyük "mound") was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC, and flourished around 7000 BC. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date. In July 2012, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site." (Wikipedia)

"Çatalhöyük is located overlooking the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya (ancient Iconium) in Turkey, approximately 140 km (87 mi) from the twin-coned volcano of Mount Hasan. The eastern settlement forms a mound which would have risen about 20 m (66 ft) above the plain at the time of the latest Neolithic occupation. There is also a smaller settlement mound to the west and a Byzantine settlement a few hundred meters to the east. The prehistoric mound settlements were abandoned before the Bronze Age. A channel of the Çarşamba river once flowed between the two mounds, and the settlement was built on alluvial clay which may have been favorable for early agriculture." (Wikipedia)

Mount Hasan, Anatolia, 

Turkey. Wikipedia.

So 9,500 years ago this agricultural settlement was situated on a plain with the two cones of the volcano visible on the horizon.

"Mount Hasan (Turkish: Hasan Dağı) is an inactive stratovolcano in Aksaray province,
Turkey. With an elevation of 3,268 m (10,722 ft), it ranks as the second highest mountain of central Anatolia. A caldera 4-5 kilometres wide formed near the current summit around 7500 BC, in an eruption recorded in Neolithic paintings." (Wikipedia)

Catalhoyuk wall mural as discovered.

From Sci-News.com.

The Çatalhöyük Mural as preserved

in the Museum of Anatolian

Civilizations. From the Internet.

"The eruption is portrayed in a mural painted on the wall of one of the rooms excavated at Catalhoyuk. “The lower register of the mural contains about 80 square-shaped patterns tightly arranged like cells in a honeycomb, and its upper register depicts an object that its discoverers initially identified either as a rendering of a mountain with two peaks with the cell-like patterns representing a plan view of a village with a general layout of the houses similar to that of Çatalhöyük and other nearby Neolithic settlements, or a leopard skin with its extremities cut off,” a team of scientists led by Dr Axel Schmitt from the University of California Los Angeles wrote in the PLoS ONE paper." (Sci-News.com 2014)

An artist's rendering of the

Catalhoyuk mural, Wikipedia.

“In the ‘map’ interpretation, the volcano and its violent eruption are posited to have been significant for the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük because they procured obsidian in the vicinity of Mount Hasan.”" (Sci-News.com 2014) As far as I am concerned they did not even need the obsidian to be concerned. Having a major volcanic eruption within view of your village would be a hugely impressive event that might be subject to recording pictorially on a wall. Proponents of the leopard skin interpretation need to explain the apparent spray coming from the top peak, as well as what the leopard skin is lying on. What is that surface made up of black squares? While this is another one that will never be known for sure, it is certainly fascinating, and I am going with the volcano interpretation for now.

REFERENCES:

Editors,

2014    Catalhoyuk 'Map' Mural May Depict Volcanic Eruption 8,900 Years Ago, Sci-News.com, Jan. 13, 2014.

Schmitt, Alex, et al.

2014    Identifying the Volcanic Eruption Depicted in a Neolithic Painting at Catalhoyuk, Central Anatolia, Turkey, PLOS, January 8, 2014, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084711.

Wikipedia