The Mystery of Pillar 43

Death, the Stars, and the Possibility of Rebirth at Göbekli Tepe

Few archaeological objects have generated as many competing interpretations as Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe. Sometimes called the “Vulture Stone,” the pillar contains a strange collection of images: a large bird or vulture, a scorpion, snakes, other animals, a headless human figure, and several mysterious rounded or “bag-like” objects near the top. The imagery is so unusual — and the monument is so ancient — that researchers, archaeoastronomers, and alternative historians have proposed radically different explanations for what the pillar was intended to communicate. Was it a representation of death? A map of the heavens? A record of a catastrophic event? A shamanic depiction of the soul’s journey? A calendar? A collection of clan symbols? Or perhaps something more fundamental: an image of the eternal cycle of life, death, transformation, and rebirth? The truth is that we don’t know. And that uncertainty is precisely what makes Pillar 43 so fascinating.

Göbekli Tepe, in southeastern Turkey, was constructed during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, beginning more than 11,000 years ago. Its monumental T-shaped pillars are covered with depictions of animals and other symbols, but Pillar 43 in Enclosure D is particularly remarkable because its imagery appears to form a deliberately…