Demir Çağında Trakya Anadolu İlişkileri Bağlamında Önemli Bir Kültür Mirası: Sinanköy Açık Hava Sunağı
An Important Cultural Heritage in the Context of Thracian Anatolian Relations in the Iron Age: Sinanköy Open Air Altar

Summary/Abstract: Most of what is known about the religious identity of the societies of the Thracian region in antiquity is based on the writings of the Aegean world and the archaeological data found in the region. It is clear from all these data that the Mother Goddess, representing life and the underworld of the dead, was the most important element in the beliefs of the cultures of the Thracian region. Orpheus, who passed into Aegean mythology from Thracian cultures, is considered a shamanic character in the cult of the Mother Goddess in Thrace. With the migrations from Thrace to Anatolia at the beginning of the Iron Age, the belief in the Mother Goddess was also carried and merged with the similar religious tradition in Anatolia. It is believed that the shamanic figure who was the helper of the Mother Goddess in Thrace was transferred to Phrygia as Attis and then to the Aegean world as Orpheus. An open-air rock cult site on the western slopes of the medieval castle in Sinanköy in the Lalapaşa district of the Edirne in Turkish Thrace has a pavement arrangement highly suitable for a cult ritual involving the Mother Goddess and her shamanic helper, known in the Aegean as Orpheus. This open-air temple, which has elements that symbolise both the underworld with a rock cavity with two entrances, and the Mother Goddess' dominance over the earth with a throne-shaped altar and an arrangement of liquid offering floors, presents a very unique identity with its general appearance. The aim of this study is to discuss the place of Sinanköy open-air temple within the circle of religious culture that influenced Anatolian and Aegean cultures from Thrace. The identification and analogical comparison of this temple will not only contribute to the identification of the Thracian Iron Age religious culture, about which little is known, but also reveal the contribution of Turkish Thrace to the Thracian cultural influence reaching Anatolia in the early Iron Age. The identification and analogical comparison of the Sinanköy open-air temple will show that the traceable cultural transmission between Thrace and Anatolia in the Iron Age also manifested itself in the shaping of cult structures.

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