Lovecraftian Archaeology - "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928)

To kick off Spookyseason, I have illustrated "Call of Cthulhu" with archaeological images that hint at the eldritch horror and dread secrets known only to ancient stones. Read no further Imgurian, if you value your sanity, for the minds of men were not meant to fathom the abyss. (ALL PHOTOS ARE MY OWN)

“It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”

- all text by H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928)
[photo: Tynemouth Priory in Fog, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England]

“Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival . . . a survival of a hugely remote period when . . . consciousness was manifested, perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide of advancing humanity . . . forms of which poetry and legend alone have caught a flying memory and called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds. . . .”

[Shrine in Batu Caves, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia]

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

[Brougham Castle, Cumbria, England]

"He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me see with terrible vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone—whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong—and hear with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from underground: 'Cthulhu fhtagn', 'Cthulhu fhtagn'."

[Propylaeum of the Sanctuary of Artemis, Jerash, Jordan]

"There are vocal qualities peculiar to men, and vocal qualities peculiar to beasts; and it is terrible to hear the one when the source should yield the other. Animal fury and orgiastic licence here whipped themselves to daemoniac heights by howls and squawking ecstasies that tore and reverberated through those nighted woods like pestilential tempests from the gulfs of hell. Now and then the less organised ululation would cease, and from what seemed a well-drilled chorus of hoarse voices would rise in sing-song chant that hideous phrase or ritual:
'Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.'"

[Boat House Shelter following the Vesuvius Eruption, Herculaneum, Italy]

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

[Nabataean Tombs on the Street of Facades, Petra, Jordan]

"They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea..."

[Bryn Celli Ddu, Isle of Anglesey, Wales]

"When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them."

[Prambanan Temple, Yogyakarta, Indonesia]

"Johansen and his men landed at a sloping mud-bank on this monstrous Acropolis, and clambered slipperily up over titan oozy blocks which could have been no mortal staircase. The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity."

[Dunstanburgh Castle, Northumberland, England]

"...everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this phantasy of prismatic distortion it moved anomalously in a diagonal way, so that all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset.
The aperture was black with a darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive quality; for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed, and actually burst forth like smoke from its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membraneous wings. The odour arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quick-eared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there."

[Theater Entrance Tunnel, Petra, Jordan]

"Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men."

[Beng Mealea Temple, Siem Reap, Cambodia]

"With it shall go this record of mine—this test of my own sanity, wherein is pieced together that which I hope may never be pieced together again. I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long...I know too much, and the cult still lives."

- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
[Nabataean Tomb, Mada'in Saleh, Saudi Arabia]

If you'd like to see more of my (non-horrifying) archaeology/heritage/history themed photography I've linked a small selection below:

Lost Tombs of Nabat (Arabia) https://imgur.com/gallery/utOchfy
Hadrian's Wall (Roman Britain) https://imgur.com/gallery/g8cRhlp
7 Ancient Wonders https://imgur.com/gallery/Lvw5FTH

or on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/internationalmanofhistory/