World’s First Known Written Word at Göbekli Tepe on T-Shaped Pillar 18 Means God

Abstract

Göbekli Tepe is a prehistoric, man-made megalithic hill site in today’s southeast Turkey which is riddled with walled circular and rectangular enclosures lined by and surrounding T-shaped monolithic pillars proposed to represent supernatural humanoid beings. We examined if H-shaped carvings in relief on some of these pillars might have a symbolic meaning rather than merely depicting an object of practical use. On Pillar 18 in Enclosure D, for example, one such “H” is bracketed by two semi-circles. An almost identical symbol appears as a logogram in the now extinct hieroglyphic language of the Bronze Age Luwians of Anatolia and there it meant the word for “god”. Further supporting a linguistic connection between Luwian hieroglyphs and images at Göbekli Tepe are to date untranslated Luwian symbols resembling the T-shape iconography of Göbekli Tepe and an H-like symbol which was the Luwian word for “gate”. We conclude that the T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe were in fact built and symbolically marked to represent a god, possibly a bull-associated being, which guarded the entry to the human and animal afterlife. We propose that this theme may have been inspired by real celestial images of the then prevailing night sky, ritually reenacted and celebrated for centuries by hunter-gatherer pilgrims to this hill and then spread by their descendants across Anatolia still influencing language in the region spoken and written thousands of years later.