2024-07-07 12:09:04
(ANSA) – ROME, JULY 6 – Lights and shadows chase each other in a large dark room, the tongues of fire from a brazier that illuminate the smooth, dark stone of a colossal monolith day and night. Discovered by an Italian mission, the Erimi Archaeological Project of the University of Siena, a 4,000-year-old temple resurfaces in Cyprus, set up inside a large laboratory for the production and dyeing of fabrics. “The oldest sacred space ever found on the island,” archaeologist Luca Bombardieri, who has been leading these excavations for the past fifteen years, carried out in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, told ANSA. In fact, a sort of temple before the temple, a place for the sacred set up inside the work environment, which sheds new light on the already extraordinarily complex and “modern” life of this community of artisans who lived four millennia before us, just a few centuries before the first cities were born on the island in the heart of the Mediterranean. But not only that. Because among the surprises of the latest excavations, there is a cold case pregnant with disturbing mystery: that of a young woman ferociously killed and then walled up in her home, perhaps so that her ghost would not return to disturb the living. A femicide “that could be linked to other cases, at least 15, documented in the past in other places in Cyprus”, underlines the archaeologist. The victims are always young women. Killed and separated from the community, kept away even from the dead, “perhaps for issues related to maternity”, the scholar hypothesizes today. We are in the Middle Bronze Age, between 2000 and 1600 BC. With over 1000 square meters of laboratories, warehouses and large dyeing tanks, the Erimi atelier occupied the top of a hill on the southern coast of Cyprus. An ideal position, a stone’s throw from the water of a river, with land where plants grew spontaneously that were used to dye the fabrics in the beautiful red that made them unique. The temple was in the internal part of the atelier, which was entered by passing through the work areas. Here the atmosphere must have been suggestive, with the monolith, more than 2 meters high, looming in the center of the room. In front of the stone there was only the brazier and an amphora perhaps full of water used for performances related to the cult. (ANSA).
2024-07-07 12:09:04