The Fourth International Symposium on Megalithic Monuments and Cult Practices was held in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, from October 10 to 14, 2024. The symposium is organized every four years by the Research Center for Ancient Cultures of Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean at the Southwest University Neofit Rilski under the direction of Professor Vasil Markov. The number of presentations has increased significantly over the years, and this year about 70 experts from all over the world participated. The conference was held in a hybrid format.
Eberhard Zangger, President of the Luwian Studies Foundation Council, gave a lecture on “Creation Myths and Cosmological Concepts in the Ancient Near East.” In this lecture, he correlated current cosmological interpretations of the Hittite rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, the spring sanctuary of Eflatunpınar, and the ivory tablet of Megiddo. These connections form a geographical and chronological bridge between the cultures of the Near East in the 3rd millennium BCE and Anatolia in the 2nd millennium BCE. The previously largely mysterious iconographic representations of these objects are increasingly interpreted as cosmogonic symbols. These new insights help to fill in gaps in creation myths from Sumerian sources to the biblical Genesis and Plato’s cosmology in classical Greece.