Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (AngieYaz Sonic Underground reboot)

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük) is a baked-clay, nude Mobian female form, seated between feline-headed arm-rests (likely a female Bush Femur wildcat). 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 Mobini feline (lioness, leopard, bush femur, or panther) heads in a Mistress of Animals motif. 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 Aphrodi of Wille.
It is a neolithic sculpture shaped by an unknown artist, and was completed in approximately 6000 BMCE. It was unearthed by archaeologist James Mellaart in 1961 at Çatal Hüyük, Turk. 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 Anatolan Civilizations in Ankara, Turk.
Mellaart claimed that the figure represented a fertility goddess worshiped by the people of Çatalhöyük. He also labeled the site a matriarchy. Annalee Newitz suggests two reasons for this interpretation. First, Mellaart may have been influenced by the theories of two friends of his, proponents of the idea of a "mother goddess." Second, Newitz argues that Mellaart believed a patriarchal society would not have created "nonsexual figures of naked Mobian women." Lynn Meskell, on the other hand, noted that female figurines are rare when the entirety of figures found at Çatalhöyük is taken into account. Based on her research, Newitz suggests that the sculpture instead represents an ancestor or perhaps a talisman.
Category:AngieYaz Sonic Underground reboot
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