Looking into the past, part III
... When Giants ruled the world?
Halloween, or All Saint’s Weekend has come and gone. My father and I drove north to Växjö to visit the grave of my mother. We met up with my aunts and uncles and started with a lunch, including catching up on news on family, friends and happenings. We had a lovely time and it is always nice to meet. Unfortunately, it is not very often. After lunch we visited the cemetery to put flowers and candles on the graves of my grandparents and mother. My mother rests in a memorial grove which is beautifully decorated with a fountain, stones and flowers. There were so many people who had taken the opportunity to visit their loved ones, decorating the graves with flowers and candles.
That leads me to one more thing I would like to share with you from our historical discoveries in Sardinia. A place where giants guarded the dead. Or, did they?
The Giants of Mont’e Prama
Sometimes you see great things just by pure chance. While visiting Tharros, the man in the cashier persuaded us to also buy a ticket for the nearby Cabra’s museum. We must see the giants they found at Mont’e Prama, he said. We had already seen a few of them at the Cagliari museum and were not too eager. However, we did purchase the tickets and did not regret that decision, since it was quite an experience to see the remnants of these giants.
They were discovered in 1974 by farmers ploughing their fields (same old story, yes, I know). Numerous fragments of statues were found, and we are talking of thousands of pieces of heads, busts, arms, legs and shields. The fragments have been meticulously restored into twenty-five huge stone statues, measuring between 2 and 2,5 meters. According to the finds, experts think there was a total of forty-four statues originally. After having been closed into a museum storage for many years, they have now seen the light again. But, who were they?
Were they a proud warrior aristocracy of mysterious origin? Were they guarding the necropolis discovered in the vicinity? Probably not the latter according to the experts. Not only the origin is a mystery, but also how they were destroyed. Something of an iconoclastic fury struck the statues, decapitating the bodies and erasing their eyes. The stone figures have been dated to somewhere between the 8th and 11 centuries BC. That is an indication that the statues would be preceding kouroi arts from ancient Greece, but not the Egyptian sculptures. Does it mean that the Nuragic people were one of the first people to master the art of sculpturing in this part of the world? Interesting ideas indeed.
The statues give us a glimpse into the world of the Nuragic people, and symbols of a great civilisation. Experts are still studying the statues, and there are other areas in the vicinity, not yet excavated. Finds show that the statues might have been decorated with various colours, maybe from animal pigment.
Archeologists hope for new excavations and possible new finds which can give them a hint of why the statues were found here, and what their purpose was. Sometimes ideas even border on extra-terrestrial hypotheses. Just looking at the eyes, my first thought went to C-3PO in Star Wars. Had the designer of C-3PO seen or heard of these warriors? Probably not, but they are so alike. However, concentric circles and spirals seem to be engraved in Nuragic monuments, so one should maybe not read too much into it. Hopefully, further excavations will give an answer to these mysterious, warriors, guarding a necropolis, or something else.
The photos do not make them justice. They were displayed in a beautiful, light room with big windows, and classical music was played discreetly in the background.
On my blog
November is a busy time for readers and bloggers. So many reading challenges are on this month. I limit myself to three, which is still a lot ot read and review. I follow these challenges: Nonfiction November - Novellas in November - German Literary Month.
It's nice to catch up with you, Lisbeth. I'm way behind. I often stop or at least pass by my parents' graves, as they are very close to where my friend lives. It comforts me to know that. We tend to do our flowers in the spring, although sometimes at the holidays I will lay pine branches down. That cemetery looks lovely.
Great pictures. And a lovely story.
We also visited our parents' grave. It's that time of the year. We can't do anything for them anymore but remember them.