Two-Headed Statues

 

One of three 8000-year two-headed figures found at 'Ain Ghazal.

Two-headed busts have been found in Africa, Anatolia, Cyprus, Jericho, 'Ain Ghazal, Tell Brak (Syria), and Çatal Hüyük (Turkey). These may represent deities, honored ancestors, or deified rulers or chiefs. The oldest are classified as Pre-Pottery Neolithic statuary.

Among the Yoruba, the head is regarded as the seat of an individual’s essential energy and being.

Two-headed Nkisi from the Democratic Republic of Congo (19th century).

The two-headed busts have parallels in the iconography of twin gods or goddesses from Neolithic times. Small statues and large reliefs showing two heads are found at Neolithic Çatal Hüyük and Tell Brak, and in Anatolia and Cyprus.

This practice of doubling is to images what reduplication is in language: it makes the message emphatic. It grabs the attention, and implies that the subject has extraordinary powers of seeing and hearing, suggesting omniscience.

 

Deities with two, three, and four faces are common in the iconography of many ancient populations. The Assyrian goddess Ishtar sometimes appears with two heads: “Istar of Nineveh is Tiamat … she has [4 eyes] and 4 ears...”

There are textual references in Enuma Elish concerning the two heads of the Babylonian hero Marduk. The following verses emphasize the divine nature of the subject.

Anu his father’s begetter beheld him,
And rejoiced, beamed; his heart was filled with joy.
He made him so perfect that his godhead was doubled.
… Four were his eyes, four were his ears…

In another translation:

“When Ea who begot him saw him, he exulted ... for he saw that he was perfect, and he multiplied his godhead … with four eyes for limitless sight and four ears hearing all ….”

The following verses of Enuma Elish convey the idea of the deity's omniscience, emphasized

by four eyes and four ears:

They (his features) were impossible to understand (and) difficult to behold.
Four were his eyes, four were his ears.
When he moved his lips, fire blazed forth.
Each of his four ears grew large
And (his) eyes likewise, to see everything.

Bicephalic anthropomorphic statuary is found in many parts of the world. This limestone sculpture from Papua New Guinea represents an ancestor.

This 3000-year two-headed figurine was found in Tlatilco.

This two-headed Buddha dates to c.1227.

This two-headed grave marker is in the Caldragh Cemetary on Boa Island in Ireland. It is estimated to be at least 2000 years old.

The biblical version of this concept is found in the multiocular celestial being of Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 1:18; 10:12). In certain manuscripts in the Old Church Slavonic this phrase is found with an rare glyph "серафими многоꙮчитїи" (serafimi mnogoočitii - "many-eyed seraphim"). Many-eyed creatures are also part of John's vision in Revelation 4:2-8.

The universality of the custom of two-headed figures attests to its great antiquity. 

Related reading: More about 'Ain Ghazal; Boa Island and the Caldragh Cemetary Janus Head

Nilotes in the Sinai

Image found at Kuntillet Ajrud with a distincitve Nilotic style

Around 3000 years ago Kuntillet Ajrud was a typical high place. The biblical term "high place" refers to a shrine city at an elevated site, near a permanent water source. Other high places include Jerusalem, Jericho, Gobekli Tepe, and Catal Hoyuk.

Kuntillet was built on a hill with wells at the foot of the hill. Discoveries made at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northern Sinai point to a Nilotic point of origin for the Hebrew religion and worldview.

Another image found at Kuntillet Ajrud shows a seated female figure playing a harp in the background. In the forefront is a male figure wearing a leopard-skin tunic (shown below).

The men of the oldest known priest caste wore leopard skins. Similar images have been found at Catal Hoyuk in southern Anatolia dating to 7500 BC (See below). 

The Turkish word "catal" means fork and "hoyuk" means mound. This settlement was built on two mounds (east-west axis) and a channel of the Çarşamba River once flowed between them. The houses excavated in Catal Hoyuk date between 6800-5700 B.C. Recent excavations have identified a shrine or small temple on the eastern side.

The Nubians wore leopard skin tunics. Petrie's study of ancient images suggested to him that Egypt was the product of different racial types. He found images of red and black Nubians. This confirmed what had been discovered by the 1828 Franco-Italian expedition to Egypt led by Jean-Francois Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini. Below is a detail from one of Rosellini's drawings showing both black and red Nubian captives taken by the Egyptians under Rameses II (BC 1279-1213).

Related reading: A Strange Drawing Found in the Sinai; The Nubian Moiety, Seligman's Legacy

The Trapezoid in Ancient Architecture and Technology

Alice C. Linsley

Lepenski Vir is an important Mesolithic archaeological site including a series of Mesolithic villages on a high terrace on the Serbian bank of the Iron Gates Gorge of the Danube river, near Donji Milanovac. In this region there were at least six village occupations between 6400 and 4900 BC.

The trapezoid was an important architectural feature among the peoples living in Lepenski Vir. Their trapezoid houses were wooden with sandstone floors. Some of the floors were covered with limestone plaster and burnished with red and white pigments. The homes had a central hearth with a fish-roasting spit in each structure. Several of the houses held altars and sculptures formed of the sandstone rock. Many of the large sculptures combine human and fish features, similar to statues found at ancient Tyre and Sidon in modern Lebanon. Sidon, called Saida today, means "fishing" in Arabic. Fish images were common among river populations that depended on fishing.

Lepenski Vir dates to the same period as Catal Hoyuk. These sites provide a glimpse into Mesolithic daily life and rituals. Lepenski Vir is famous for its stone idols, some of which have a trapezoid shape like the one shown below.

In many houses at Catal Hoyuk the main room was decorated with plastered bull skulls (bucrania) set into the east or west walls. These reflect the religious sun symbolism of these archaic peoples. The bull with the sun resting on its horns represented the overshadowing or presence of the Creator. This image also represented the divine appointment of rulers, as in this image of a ruler found at Mohenjo-daro.

The same solar symbolism is found in Hittite religion. The architecture of the Hittites included trapezoidal doors such as the entrance to the chamber of Suppiluliuma II in Hattusa, modern Turkey (shown below).

The Mesolithic settlements at Lepenski Vir and Catal Hoyuk appear to be related to populations in Y-DNA Haplogroup I2, the most common paternal lineage in Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria and Sardinia, and a major lineage in most Slavic countries. It is found at a frequency of 5 to 10% in Germanic countries.

There is a close correspondence between the populations in Haplogroups 12 and R1b. These haplogroups are of special interest to Biblical Anthropologists.

The trapezoid shape appears to have been an important symbol among the peoples of this region. The pillars at Göbekli Tepe have a trapezoidal shape. Many of the pits at Blagotin (Serbia) have a trapezoid shape. Many ancient barrows and tombs in Gloucestershire and Scotland have a trapezoidal shape. About 330 royal cairns in central Ireland have trapezoidal features.

Throughout ancient Sardinia the doors of fortifications have a trapezoid shape as shown below.

The Nuraghe or "Su Nuraxi" of Barumini

The ancient nyraghe of Sardinia resemble the beehive sheep cotes found throughout the region populated by peoples of the haplogroups mentioned above. These sheep cotes were sacred places.

The shape of these doors resembles the trapezoidal doors of tombs and temples of ancient Egypt and the structures built aboriginal peoples (3500 BC) of the Andes.

The ancient Babylonians tracked the apparent decreasing velocity of Jupiter from the planet's first appearance along the horizon, to 60 days later, and then 120 days later. If drawn on a graph, this relationship is represented in the shape of two conjoined trapezoids. According to science historian Mathieu Ossendrijver, the area of each trapezoid describes Jupiter's total displacement (measured in degrees) along the ecliptic, or the path of the sun. Jupiter was regarded as the king planet and represented the Creator God. The sun was the emblem of the Creator. So the alignment of Jupiter and the Sun was of special interest to the ancient priest-astronomers.

Trapezoidal stone tools were found in Japan on Mount Takaharayama. The tools date to roughly 35,000 years ago and were used to mine raw stones from the mountain. Akira Ono, a professor of archaeology at Tokyo Metropolitan University, reports that these trapezoid tools are like those found in loam layers in the Kanto region that date back 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

The oldest stone tools with a trapezoid shape have four sides, two of which are parallel. These were found in Southern Africa and date to 280,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Related reading: The Religion of Archaic Rulers; Haplogroup 12 Y-DNA; The Nile-Japan Ainu Connection; The Kushite-Kushan Connection; Some Marks of Prehistoric Religion