Italians discover 4,000-year-old temple on Cyprus

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 6 - (by Silvia Lambertucci).
    Lights and shade alternating in a large dark room, the tongues of fire of a brazier lighting up, day and night, the smooth, dark stone of a colossal monolith.
    While in the other parts of the great workshop, dozens of people are at work spindling, weaving and dyeing textiles to be traded with all the then known world.
    Discovered by an Italian mission, the Erimi Archaeological Project of the University of Siena, a temple from 4,000 years ago is re-emerging on Cyprus.
    "It's the oldest sacred space ever found on the island," archaeologist Luca Bombardieri tells ANSA in a sneak preview. He has been leading the digs for15 years, carried out in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus and the ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation.
    It is, in fact, a sort of 'temple before a temple', a place for the holy set out inside the working environment, which sheds fresh light on the extraordinarily well-articulated 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 that's not all. Among the novelties of the latest fortunate excavation campaign, there is also a cold case pregnant with disquieting mystery: the remains of a young woman killed and walled up at home, perhaps so that her ghost would not come back and disturb the living.
    The femicide "may be linked to other cases recorded in the past in other parts of Cyprus," says the archaeologist.
    The victims were always young women. Killed and separated from their communities, held far from even the dead, the expert thinks, "perhaps for issues linked to maternity".
    The girl of Erimi was not more than 20 years old. Her killers smashed in her skull, with a lance or a rock. Then they laid her body on the ground, placing a heavy stone on her breast "as if to keep her still", says Bombardieri. There are no accompanying grave goods next to her, nothing that makes one think of a normal burial. The door of the small dwelling, on the other hand, was sealed with care, just like that of a tomb. We are in the Bronze Age, between 2000 and 1600 BCE.
    With its over 1,000 square metres of workshops, warehouses and large dyeing vats, the Erimi atelier occupied the entire summit of a hill on the southern coast of Cyprus, not far from the modern city of Limassol. An ideal position for the activity that animated it, always well ventilated and a stone's throw from the fresh water of a river, with earth where plants grew spontaneously that served to dye the textiles that beautiful red colour that made them unique and precious.
    A little farther down, huddled one against the other, there were the homes. Still farther down, at a due distance, the dead were buried, the richest in large chamber tombs filled with grave goods, and the poor in plain ditches.
    The temple was in the innermost part of the atelier and in order to get to it you had to go through the working sections. But here, with respect to the rooms in which people were busy with spindles and looms, the atmosphere must have been very different, with the monolith, over two metres tall, which stood proud in the centre of the room. In front of the stone there were just the brazier and a large amphora, full of water perhaps, which, Bombardieri reckons, must have been used for the rituals linked to the cult. It is not clear if there was a full-blown priest, he explains, and it is likely that the ones guaranteeing the link with the divinity was the same person or group of people who led the productive activities and the whole community. A clan whose importance has been found in one of the richest tombs of the necropolis, immediately outside the tall ring of stone and wooden walls which, at least in the final phase of its history, protected the village from enemy attacks and at the same time exalted its importance, making it visible from land and sea.
    Thanks to those wine-coloured textiles, Erimi had grown in fame and power. And perhaps, who knows, together with the new wealth, enemies also came, internal and external. The fact remains that its history suddenly ends, the village is abandoned and the atelier sealed off with all its precious trove of objects, including the temple with its monolith. A fire, perhaps set off by the fleeing villagers, brings its roof crashing down. And paradoxically, it is the very act of abandonment that hands down the adventurous story of these skilled weavers.
    "The collapse of the structure, sealing off those remains, has enabled us archaeologists to rediscover them after four thousand years," says Bombardieri.
    And to tell the story of an exceptional community and a village that had almost become a city.
    And who knows if the next digs won't help us understand more about the mystery of the murdered maiden and the others, at least 15, who more or less in the same time, in various parts of the island, seem to have shared her fate. (ANSA).