Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Hüyük) is a baked-clay, nude female form, seated between feline-headed arm-rests. It is generally thought to depict a corpulent and fertile Mother Goddess in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two hand rests in the form of feline (leopard or panther) heads. The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is associated to other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures, of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf. The similarity to later iconography of the Anatolian Mother Goddess Cybele in the first millennium BC is striking.

It is a neolithic sculpture shaped by an unknown artist, and was completed sometime about 6000 BC. It was unearthed by archaeologist James Mellaart in 1961 at Çatalhöyük, Turkey. When it was found, its head and hand rest of the right side were missing. The current head and the hand rest are modern replacements. The sculpture is at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey.

References

Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük Wikipedia