Phoenicians in Sardinia

View from the promontory of Nora

The Phoenicians, merchants and fishermen who originated in Lebanon, came to southern Sardinia at what is now Nora about 800BC. Like the other Phoenician city Tharros in the west, Nora forms a promontory, with sparkling harbors on either side. The Phoenicians found abundant fish in the lapis waters, and could transfer their fishing boats from one harbor to the other, protecting them from high winds. Travelers of the "known world," they brought with them abundant artifacts that have been found in the Nuraghic sites (including Mycenean, Egyptian and Semitic), and a written language. There is no trace of writing among the Nuraghic peoples (1500-800 BC) though one of our tour guides is positive that they must have had one, and that it is lost with the decomposition of writing surfaces. Perhaps the word "Nora" comes from the ancient word "Nuraghe." Or, according to classical tradition, Norax was a son of Hermes who founded Nora. A Phoenician tablet has been found at Nora, so far untranslatable because it seems to use the Phoenician alphabet to write in another language--perhaps the Nuraghic one. On it is the first known use of the word for Sardinia, Sardara.

Phoenician tablet mentioning Sardinia

Nora

Nora was therefore an important port of call for the Phoenicians, so close to the north of Africa, which would bring it under the Carthaginians in 5th-3rd c. BC , until the Roman conquest began. The Carthaginians are called "Punic" by the Sards, referring to their status as a Phoenician colony, but distinguishing them as the more warlike invaders. In 283 BC Nora became the seat of the Roman governor during the late Republican era, and "caput viae", i.e. the place from which measurements were taken. Nora was a rich and prosperous Roman city at least until the Vandals occupied Sardinia, between 456 and 466 AD. The city was probably abandoned because of Arab raids, 7th c AD, that forced the coastal population to retreat inland.

The heart is a Carthaginian signature, in a Roman mosaic

We would visit Tharros--the most important Phoenician city--later in the trip, at twilight after the ticket office closed, accompanied only by a sweet-faced dog who, content with our presence, lay down to sleep on the windy point. But first we saw Nora in the full heat of the day, rewarded by the knowledge of one of those intense, quiet and scholarly guides. Round-faced, in shorts and a baseball cap, he switched softly between English and Italian to explain the ruins as we wandered through their thousand or so years of being Phoenician, Carthaginian and Roman. There was a Roman theatre--not amphitheatre, but an artistic forum--near temples of the Phoenician fertility goddess Tanit, near workshops built in Carthaginian architecture, and even a sign of Carthaginian workmanship on the Roman mosaics. A clay statue of a boy with a serpent has been found, which is believed to be the oracle which spoke from one of the temples.  In the final years Nora became a Roman resort with three thermes, as the center of power moved to Cagliari.

Oracular boy of Nora

Another major Phoenician settlement is on Mount Sirai, which was from the 7th c. BC an extensive necropolis, though only 270 bodies have so far been excavated. Carthaginian burial chambers succeeded the Phoenicians. We could descend into these stone vaults by stairways, and enter various rooms, sometimes with columns. There, as near Nora and later at St. Antiochus, we would see the remains of tophets.

Tophets have long been considered burial sites where infants, sacrificed to Ba'al by being burned alive, are buried. This would have been a Carthaginian practice, not Phoenician. The practice is mentioned in the works of Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Tertullian and others, but not in the writings of Livy or Polybius. It is mentioned in the Old Testament, and by rabinnical commentators. But in Sardinia, the information on tophets is different, of:

"a sacred place where stillborn children who died before integration into the community were buried. The divine protectors are Baal Hammon and his female partner, Tinnit. It was an open space around an altar built on a rock outcrop, which would later become a temple, with the remains of children in cinerary urns, and steles for various deities."

At first I considered that the Sardinians couldn't stomach the idea of child sacrifice, particularly those who would have aided in the excavations. But in the Cagliari museum tophets are clarified as follows.

"Till a few years ago, the tophet was supposed to be the place where the children of the most important families in the city were sacrificed to give welfare to the city. Now, new studies of the ashes, of the inscription on the stele and of the ancient written sources, bring us to consider the tophet a cemetery where are buried the children born dead or dead shortly after birth."

Apparently, there is wide disagreement among scholars, but, according to Wikipedia, there is general agreement that there were some Carthaginian places where child sacrifice was practiced.

Temple to Ashtarte, Mt. Sirai

Egyptian fertility god, Bes

Mt. Sirai also has a temple to the Phoenician goddess Ashtarte, that was an open-air altar from the 8th c. BC, over a pre-existing nuragic tower and a water tank. In the 3rd c. BC an actual temple was built, with an 8th c. BC statue of Ashtarte. Later Demeter replaced the Phoenician goddess, while the male deity was Bes, the Egyptian fertility god.

The Phoenician temple and houses were constructed using rhyolite, or the local red marble, which I found moving--it is a semi-precious stone I often wear.