[MUSIC] This map of the island of Motya give us a good advice concerning the location of the earliest necropolis. The Necropolis was a very critical point of the settlement because the funerary custom was something very important for such a colonial community. How they treated the dead and where they buried them is a very important point. As the members of this community, very few number of people, and the way they were treated was very important. So let's say that they had, they established their link with the past. In green, you see the area which was occupied by the prehistoric settlement in Motya, and you see that there was already an acropolis on the northern shore of the island. As you see, on the northern seashore, this was the prehistoric burial place. In the prehistory, they used it to bury people in small caves cut into the natural bedrock. And in some cases, they were natural caves, very small, in which people could be deposited in flexible position. This was completely changed at the time in which the Phoenicians arrived. As the Phoenicians, they preferred incineration. That means that their people were burned. And then when they were burned into urns which were put into these, let's say, small caves or pits, or cysts, as we will see in a moment. As you see from the two colors in the map, the two areas of the prehistoric burial places and the Phoenician necropolis, overlapped. This was a way to establish some kind of continuity with the earliest community which lived in Motya in the centuries before the Phoenician settlement. As the Phoenicians arrived, they were compared to group their burials. And they used a variety of burial methods or practices. As you see, there was a simple pit, and there was simple pits or cysts. That means a pit which is lined with slabs, vertical slabs, which contain the burnt remains of the body. Or single blocks carved inside, which were used as cysts, up to sarcophagy. That means a huge block which has been cut in the shape of a human body. But in many cases, they were even used for incinerations. The most common burial of this incineration period, which is from the eighth century to the sixth century, more or less, Is the pit burial. This is just a pit in which the main funerary urn is placed. These urns were basically made of reused transport amphora. This is the ovoid shape that is thir oldest one, the one which is connected to the Canaanite tradition of the second millenium. And this was preferred for seamen. Let's say, for man and for female, for male dead and seamen. And of course, they were using the most common tool of their life. That is the transport amphora. Then another kind was the torpedo jar which have more or less the same function as urn. So also these were reused. To signify this funerary utilization, they used to break the handles. This means that this is no more a jar, this is no more a transport jar. It has become an urn. And for this reason, I take away the handles. So you see for example, on the right, this trumpet back jar with one handle which has been cut just to signify that it was an urn. There were also some rare cases, a small urn like this neck ridge jug, double handled jug, is used preferably for women or for a child. And this is showing what is a complete funerary set because together with the urn, which is the one on the left, they used to bury some vessels containing offerings which had a funerary meaning. So we have the so-called mushroom leap juglet, which was to contain olive oil which was used for parfumes. Which were used for the treatment of the body or for the treatment of the clothes which where enveloped all around the urn. Or this small pot, which is a simple pot which possibly hide their function during this life of the dead. Here we have another set of this kind of shapes of vessels. That was a central experience in the life of the ancient people of the East. In their culture, it was not an accident at the end of our lives, but it was a central event. So everything in their ideology and religion was focused on this problem of death, to give it a significance which was mirrored in the lives of the ancient Phoenicians. And the way they treated dead people was a symbol of their identity, their cultural identity. Phoenicians, they didn't have a country, didn't have a special country. They belonged to each single harbor city of the Levant. And for this reason, they needed something stating we all belong to a community. A wide community, the community of the Phoenicians. Theor way of stating, their way of representing this community, was the funerary custom. The way they treat their dead. And this is here exemplified by the acropolis of Motya, which has another value, an extra value, because this community was a community in a foreign country, in a foreign land. In the land that they conquered by mean of their trips. So when they arrived, they needed to treat people in their own way, in their own custom, exactly to state, we are Phoenicians. And which had the features telling their funerary customs. They used to bury the bodies of dead people on a fire, on a big fire which was performed in a temple just aside the necropolis. Then the remains were put into urns, amidst special vessels. Usually decorated vessels or big jugs. And then they were buried within, The boxes built up with those slabs put in this square manner. Or in cysts. A cyst is exactly a block which has been excavated in the middle. They buried them. And at this place was signaled by means of a or a which was put aside the dead people to let their relatives to be aware of the place to remember, the place where their familiar was buried. Incineration were not the only funeral custom adopted by the Phoenicians in Motya because very quickly, this community started to integrate different people. So there were Elymians, the original population of Sicily. But there were also other people coming from other places of the Mediterranean, from Cyprus, from Sardinia, from Tunisia, which is just aside, on the other side of the sea canal of Sicily. And some of them used a different way for bury people. And this is the reason because we find also this sarcophagy. Actually, sarcophagy had also a very strong tradition in Phoenicia because they were inherited by the Egyptian tradition. So rich people in the Phoenician cities, in the Phoenician social classes, used, in some cases, to be buried within sarcophagy, like this. And these sarcophagy were cut through unique limestone blocks, which were carved inside just for putting the dead body inside. They used to color the skin with red ochre, a pigment which you can find in some places together with iron and other minerals in the area of the land that Phoenicians used to visit. So with this red ochre, they buried people in sarcophagy with a completely different funerary custom, irrespective of the other people which were burnt into urns. What is interesting is the capability of the community of integrating the two cults. In this case, you see that this sarcophagus has been overlaid by the wall of a tower of the city walls. When Motya was given it a city wall, they cut through the necropolis. There is also this big trench. There is also this big trench. [LAUGH] >> [FOREIGN] >> There is also this big trench which was cut for building up the city wall through the necropolis without having any respect of buried people. This is because the town needed to be defended, and there was no more space on the island. And for this reason, they even extended the necropolis on the other side of the Marsala Lagoon, in the side which is called the which is just a side Motya, where nowadays a huge airport was built. So what happened? They have a second necropolis on the Sicilian land just in front of the town.
