embedded

Recycling in the architecture of Antiquity (or the Middle Ages) was neither an ecological sensitivity nor an aesthetic trend. Rather, it was pure and simple economic survival. If you had good quality square stone, go ahead and build. It mattered little whether that stone had been part of a temple dedicated to Jupiter, whether it was the statue of a disgraced emperor or, as in this case, a mythological creature. It has a name: architectural cannibalism is known in the art world as spolia. And thanks (or because) of it, Spanish archeology has just solved a mystery that had been gathering dust in a warehouse for decades. In the archaeological site of El Monastil, located in the town of Elda (Alicante), researchers have “decrypted” a piece who had been camouflaged under a false identity for too long. The rain acting as an archaeologist. It all started in the year 2000, during the arduous excavation work of a late Roman wall located in El Monastil. Workers unearthed a three-step ladder that looked like a typical routine structural find. The following year, the Levantine climate worked its magic: torrential rains swept the area and caused the ashlars to collapse, exposing new features. Upon inspecting the damage, the team led by archaeologist Antonio M. Poveda discovered that one of the blocks was not conventionally quarried stone. The deliberate marks betrayed a previous history. Which? That someone, during the Visigoth or Byzantine occupation in the 5th or 6th centuries, mutilated a monumental sculpture, cutting it down with a sledgehammer to turn it into a simple step. Twenty years of confusion. Carved from local beige limestone, it was barely 31 centimeters high and 55 centimeters wide; what remains is a tiny fraction of its original volume. This sphinx was missing its head, wings and legs, with a surface so eroded by blows that its identification became a headache: an Iberian female figure or a random goddess? It wasn’t until last year, when the Archaeological Museum of Elda A thorough cleaning was undertaken when, in collaboration with Professor Ferrán Arasa i Gil, one of the greatest experts in Roman sculpture in Spain, remains were compared. And the shape matched too well with other sphinxes found in limes Germanic, from Romania and northern Italy. The verdict was unanimous: a Roman funerary sphinx from the 1st century AD The sophisticated security system for the afterlife. This creature of Egyptian origin and Greek traces is no ornament. And here is the key: it is a psychopomp, the guide in charge of collecting the soul of the deceased and transporting it. Its presence in the tomb fulfills an apotropaic function: the fierce gaze and hybrid posture, with the body of a lion and the torso of a woman, exist to scare away looters and protect the eternal sleep of those who rested beneath it. Have you seen ‘The Neverending Story’? His famous fulminating sphinxes are inspired by the same. Apparently, the owner of this piece was part of the rural elite of Ilici Augusta (current Elche). They were landowners who, in a time of great prosperity under Augustus and the Julio-Claudians, competed to display social status through monumental mausoleums. Built next to the Via Augusta. So the figure was another banner of power and prestige in full Romanization. He plunders well without looking at who. For the Visigoths, the sphinx was no longer a sacred symbol. The case of Elda, with this disdain for the artistic past in favor of pragmatism, rhymes quite well with other recycling imposed in Baetulo (Badalona), Segóbriga (Cuenca), Obulco (Jaén) or Carissa Aurelia (Cádiz). The most canonical example is found in the mosque of Córdoba: Abd al-Rahman I reused Roman and Visigoth columns and capitals, from the temple of Janus, from previous Christian villas and basilicas, to raise the forest of columns in the prayer room. In Toledo, the Christ of Light is the ancient Bab al-Mardum mosque. San Pedro de la Nave, in Zamora, was a 7th century Visigoth church dismantled and reassembled like a collage. And the same with the Basilica of Santa Eulalia, in Mérida, built on a Roman temple dedicated to Mars. Even the Almohad minaret of the Giralda in Seville was converted into a Christian bell tower by the braves. What makes special Monastil is that it is an inexhaustible “matryoshka” of civilizations. This Alicante site is a time capsule where the Bronze Age, the Punic presence, the Roman military base from the time of Pompey, the Byzantine monastery and the later Visigoth church overlap. In this immense network of strata it is easy to find history cut up and relocated, outside the contexts for which it was created. Many now lie in the warehouse of the Elda museum, treasures waiting to be reclassified and archaeological history rewritten. Images | FoxR for Wikipedia, Flickr (Santiago López-Pastor) In Xataka | If the question is how the Egyptian pyramids were made, science has an idea: hydraulic systems In Xataka | In a display of technical superiority, France has just invented traditional white towns. We, however, have forgotten about them