ABSTRACT
In November 1959 James Mellaart had published, in the Illustrated London News, details of a fabulous Bronze Age treasure supposedly found near the village of Dorak in northern Turkey. The department's attitude toward Mellaart did not change when, in early 1965, the case against him was dismissed on a technicality. The court looking into the Dorak affair ruled that under the terms of a general amnesty declared in 1960, Mellaart could not be prosecuted for any crimes he might have committed before that time. Mellaart also saw the Mother Goddess in wall reliefs of human like figures with outstretched arms and legs. Every year goddess worshippers from around the world make the pilgrimage to atalhyk, the mother of all matriarchies. Mellaart was inspired in the imaginative reconstruction of Neolithic religion by the parallels he saw with the later gods and goddesses of Crete, Greece, and Rome.
