Which are the deepest roots of that mix of cultures that we use to call ‘Mediterranean Civilization’? Which are comminglings and exchanges which produced its most complete fruit, i.e. the city, a place for landscape-modelling communities? And which elements did contribute to build up that baulk of customs, ideas, and innovations which compelled to confrontation and hybridizations different peoples for millennia? What did it made, from pottery to metallurgy, from gastronomy to architecture, from art to religion, of a sea a cradle of civilization? Archaeology may help in disentangling such questions, seeking unexpected answers , by tinkering what ancient Mediterranean peoples left buried in the ground. A privileged point of view of our course is the ancient Phoenician city of Motya, located exactly at the centre of the “sea in the middle”. Throughout the live experience of excavation, with images taken on the field, this course will let you touch the many tesserae of the great mosaic of the Mediterranean Civilization. The field diary of the archaeologist, and the handpick will be the two tools, which will lead us across the sea to discover what such early cities actually were, and how their contribute is still a major part of our shared memory.
8.1: The City-walls
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Del curso dictado por Sapienza University of Rome
At the Origins of the Mediterranean Civilization: Archaeology of the City from the Levant to the West - 3rd-1st millennium BC
104 calificaciones
Sapienza University of Rome
104 calificaciones
De la lección
Portrait of an harbour city
Conoce a los instructores
Lorenzo NigroProf.
Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia
Walking towards the city gate of Motya give us a great opportunity
of understanding how this city was formed, how it was created.
And, of course, this is a great opportunity because the excavation of a city gate,
and such a large city gate, can provide us many information on the concept of the city.
The gate, in fact, was not only one of the most important bulwarks of the defense,
but was, and in respect of also it's the territory that the city pretended to control.
But also was a place which had a social role and economic role.
In fact, as we now move in the city, inside the city,
inside the city gate between these two bastions,
we will see that there is a huge yard, a huge chamber
and there are many functions that are accomplished by this space.
This space, in fact, was devoted to controlling the people entering the city.
And, of course, was used as a market but it also had some official roles.
For example, for the administration of justice in face of the people.
So, the gate was not only a passage,
but it was a place in which many public functions were performed in the city.
And this space, as you see, this yard encircled by monumental buildings,
and the fences and towers, was also to represent what was going on there.
The gate itself was very, very monumental with two streets running through to arch.
And so, there was a double passage with a pillar in the middle,
and upon this pillar there was a monument.
So, this was also the way of the city to show itself to people entering in it.
And you see how huge it is this pillar because on top of it there was a sculpture
, a great sculpture, representing two lions, two lionesses attacking a bull.
So, this was like a palimpsest of the city power for people entering in it.
The impressive city walls of the cities of central Mediterranean
were actually the successors of the imposing defensive systems
of the ancient cities of the Levant and the Near East.
Actually, the basic function of these structures
was to protect the city and they were added
and added of new structures so that they could become something like this.
That is a five point two meters wide city wall.
It had a height of around 12 meters with a basement of four meters built
of big limestone blocks and superstructures made of mud bricks.
These mud bricks were very huge ones.
They were 60 centimeters by 40, by 15, and their weight was more than 30 kilos.
So, you can imagine that this clay object actually was like a big stone
and it was very difficult to set them,
to lay them in the city wall to build up the fortification up to a height of 12 meters.
Then there was the coronation made of slabs, of sandstone slabs,
carefully worked with drains for letting drain water to sweep up down.
So, the city was in some cases uncapturable, what is impossible to capture such cities.
They were so heavy fortified
that the people attacking them needed machines to approach the city
and to open the gate, to force their defense.
And for this reason the people in Motya invented this feature.
That is a staircase, a flight of steps leading to a gate
which was not at the level, the floor level all around the city, but at a higher level,
at the level of the basement, of the battlements.
This made it impossible to use battering rams for opening the gate,
and it made it necessary to invent new machines
that we will see in a moment on the other side of the tower.
The city walls of Motya give us a very important opportunity to understand
why they were built and what was their purpose in an ancient city.
Especially the earliest defensive line,
the one that we are now walking on which these rectangular towers.
They were the first defense built on the island around the mid of the 6th century
or somewhat earlier, and they had the manifold purpose
because they not only served to protect the city of course
but also to symbolize its power.
And it had also an economic function
because many people was engaged in the construction of the city wall.
So, it was a mean for the power, for the ruling power to have,
to give labor, to involve many people into the activities of the city.
And we have to imagine that in the countryside of Motya, in the hinterland of Sicily,
there were a local population which could provide the labor who could provide workers.
And this was a way of the city to be in touch,
to be in some ways linked to local population.
So, the city wall became a public work which had a social function
and also political function to let people of the Marsala going to be involved.
In the meantime, the city wall also had a very important symbolic meaning
because this was so high with a very nice correlation,
were a way to show the strength,
the power of the city to all people living in its territory.
So, this architecture had also a symbolic meaning,
a symbolic function to represent the power that was building up it.
And the walls were in fact made of a huge limestone blocks on the bottom.
And with these high walls of five up to eight meters of mud bricks.
So, the structure was punctuated by more than 20 towers,
rectangular towers like the one that we are looking at.
And these towers had two rooms, you see it, double rooms, square rooms inside.
And, of course, they allowed to the soldiers to watch the walls from the top
and to be safe in the meantime.
So, these military works actually had another defensive function
which as a counterpart in the representation of power.
Inside the tower there was not a fixed staircase.
They were made of wood and they were removable and this was a matter of security.
So, if the attackers could enter the tower, they could not easily enter the city.
And this was another mean to defend the city.
Of course, there are many other ways to protect the city.
The second is to build at the bottom of the wall some force,
and the third is to have archers on top protected by these crenelations,
or other means of defending the city.
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