The novel is about two women who go missing in Anatolia approximately a hundred years apart while searching for the origins of the mother goddess cult, one of the oldest, strangest, and least understood religions of all time. It's a story within a story, and a book about a book, but thankfully that's about as meta or postmodern as it gets. Mostly it's about seekers and travelers; about the still powerful lure of the ancient past; and about how words, names, faiths, myths, and landscape shape reality and our place in it. But it also represents my own humble attempt to read the palimpsest that is modern day Turkey--a land with so many cultures and paths written across on its face that its very soil becomes a kind of protean hieroglyph; the Borgesian Aleph or space-time nexus where all other points converge.
Because so much of the book takes place in exotic, often remote places, it was imperative that I see as many as possible with my own eyes. Some of these places I've been lucky enough to visit before, but with time winding down on our year abroad, I needed to knock out a few key stragglers so Lizzie and I somehow managed to convince our daughters (read: gave them no other choice but) to spend their spring break zigzagging across West-Central Turkey, covering well over 1000 km in the car and who knows how many on foot. Along the way, I got to thinking about just how much of this country they've seen, on this and their three previous visits. A staggering amount, actually. Certainly more than most Turks (who, like most Americans, rarely take the time to cross their own country by car). My daughters definitely don't love long car rides, but if they grow up anything like me, all those moments and experiences will pay huge dividends in ways they will only begin to understand as adults.
Pessinus |
One of many historical backdrops to my book is provided by a very curious episode in Roman history. It's fairly well known and extensively documented, but unless I'm mistaken (and correcting me would probably break my heart), I don't think it has been dealt with in any substantive way by any previous work of fiction. Just mentioning it here makes me nervous someone will beat me to the punch. I have a history of happening upon ideas or information, as if by osmosis or telepathy, at the exact moment someone else is busy broadcasting them (remind me to tell you the story about that Atari game some guy plagiarized from me when I was ten or eleven), but this one is mine, I tell you. All mine! If you're out there, you idea-pilfering doppelganger, and you're planning to steal my thunder this time, know that I'm coming for you and this time it's war.
Speaking of war... in the early third century BC, Rome was in a panic. Hannibal had crossed the alps on his war elephants, royally kicked their butts in a few key battles, and ravaged the Italian mainland. The Romans were terrified he would march all the way to Rome and pillage their fair city. To make matters worse, they were also in the midst of a plague, a drought, and a meteor shower (sources are vague on the timing of these things). So they did what all the ancients did in times of anxiety and uncertainty: they consulted an oracle. In this case, they asked the Sibylline Books, a venerable collection of trippy writings by famous female prophets, allegedly acquired by Lucius Tarquinus Superbus, the last king of Rome. The question: What should be done to protect Rome against the foreign invader? The answer that came back was as straightforward as it was strange: go to Pessinus and bring back the Great Mother.
How exactly does one kidnap a goddess? Well, fortunately for them there was a ready solution. Within the temple to Kybele was kept what's known in fancy circles as an aniconic image, called The Black Rock of Pessinus. That is to say, an object that represented the goddess without actually looking like one. If you had to guess, what do you think it was that made this particular black rock so special? Yep, it was a meteorite. Pretty weird, right? Actually, not so much. If the sources are to be believed, the ancient world was chock-o-block with holy meteors. One of them is still glued into one corner of the Kaaba, the black cube in the Great Mosque at Mecca that all Muslims pray to five times a day.
Exactly why the meteoric icon of a foreign goddess was necessary to thwart Hannibal, or why the Kybelean priests at Pessinus (known as the Galli) would just hand it over, are very open questions, discussed and debated quite a bit in the literature. The most straightforward explanation is that Kybele was seen as a protectress of cities, among other things (hence her crenelated headdress in later depictions), and her favor (earned or imagined) was often used to confer and legitimize kingship. Whatever the case an official delegation was sent, the king of Pergamon brokered the deal, and the Black Rock of Pessinus was brought to Rome with great fanfare. Shortly after that, the plague ended, the rains came to end the drought, and the Romans beat Hannibal all the way back to Africa. Kybele received her own temple on the Palatine Hill and enjoyed a place of honor for the next four centuries while the Empire spread her worship everywhere they held territory. Kybele altars and statues turn up from London to Cairo. So the million dollar question is, what happened to the Black Rock of Pessinus? More bad news/good news: you'll just have to read the book to find out.
Needless to say, the Black Rock was long gone by the time we pulled through the ramshackle village of Ballıhisar and set eyes on the screaming anticlimax that is modern day Pessinus. Unfortunately, the entire site, such as it is, is now fenced and evidently off limits off season, a fact which (sshh) did not keep me out but did keep my scramble-happy daughters from even wanting to get out of the car. The really curious thing about Pessinus, given its constant association with Phrygia and her chief goddess in the Classical period, is that very little of it is turning out to be Phrygian at all. Almost nothing there dates to before the famous Black Rock episode. Rather than screwing anything up, this actually plays nicely into my devious little hands (imagine me as Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, riffling my fingers and crowing "Excellent.")
They Zey |
A nervous half-hour later we pulled into the village of Zey proper but it was almost entirely abandoned because everyone was at the market. No brown Ministry of Culture signs. Not even a herd of goats heading out of town to show the way. Thankfully, there was one kind Omega Man to point us in the general direction of a tractor path above a river valley. The road soon bogged down and became impassable so we parked and set out on foot.
My girls |
After that, we drove to Eskişehir just in time for Lizzie to squeeze in her requisite dose of museum time (she turns into a gorgon if she doesn't get it), and then on to Kütahya, where we stayed in a smelly room near a noisy elevator at a lousy hotel with crap food. We woke the next day thinking at least we'd gotten our one bad night out of the way and man, were we wrong.
(To be continued.)
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