Temple of Antas
The Temple of Antas ( Italian Tempio di Antas ) is an originally Punic , later Roman sanctuary in Sardinia , which was dedicated to Sardus Pater .
location
The temple is located on the slopes of Mount Conca 'e s'Omu in the valley of the Antas River , about 1.6 kilometers northeast of the hamlet of Sant Angelo and 9 kilometers northwest of the town of Iglesias . Its location is in the municipality of Fluminimaggiore in the Sardinian province of Sud Sardegna .
description
Claudius Ptolemy from Alexandria described a sanctuary in the second century AD that was dedicated to Sardus Pater. According to him, it is said to have been at the sources of the sacer fluvius , the sacred river, which could only be today's Rio Antas .
When the Punians at the end of the 5th century BC Their temple in the Antas valley on the site of an older rectangular sanctuary from the 6th century BC. The place was already marked as sacred by one of the Sardinian cultures. In 1984 archaeologists found several nuragic tombs near the cult site . About 250 meters to the southwest are the foundations of a former nuragic village, consisting of seven round buildings that were built in the 13th century BC. And were used again in the late Roman era. At the Punic temple in the 4th century BC. Changes were made, mainly affecting the outer decorations.
Around 38 BC The temple was demolished and rebuilt by the Romans under Emperor Augustus . The sanctuary built by the Puners for the god Sid (a son of Melkart ) has now been dedicated to the Sardus Pater. The corresponding part of the inscription, which was attached during the restoration of the now badly dilapidated temple during the reign of Emperor Caracalla (211-217), reads in Latin TEMPL (UM) DI (SA) RDI PATRIS BAB (I) . Only relics of the foundation walls in front of the entrance to the Roman temple can be seen of the Punic temple. Little has been preserved of the Roman sanctuary, consisting of pronaos , cella and adyton . There are six pillars and the twenty meter long foundation platform. Usually the Romans oriented their temples to the east. Like its Punic precursor, this Roman temple faces north-west.
At the southeast entrance of the Roman temple there are four eight-meter-high columns made of local limestone. They have Attic bases , smooth column shafts and Ionic capitals . The pronaos behind the pillars is seven meters deep. Its soil was completely destroyed by robbery graves and only marginally reconstructed. The adjoining cella still has parts of the black and white floor mosaic that covered the entire area. In the rear area, two door openings lead into the two-part Adyton. In front of them, two basins for ritual washing are embedded in the floor of the cella, sealed with lime plaster and each leading down to three steps. It is believed that there were two bronze statues about three meters high in the Adyton, one of Sardus Pater, of whom the finger of one hand was found, the other possibly representing his father, the Libyan-Sardinian Makeris ( Melkart-Erakle ), on the one found Indicate votive offerings.
With Christianization, the temple of Antas was closed around the 4th century AD.
Metalla
The place of the sanctuary with the surrounding ancient limestone quarries and the mining sites for lead and iron ore was identified with the town of Metalla on the road from Tibula on the northern tip of Sardinia to Sulcis in the south .
literature
- Raimondo Zucca: Il Tempio di Antas . Delfino, Sassari 1989, ISBN 88-7138-181-5 , ( Sardegna archeologica. Guide e itinerari 11).
- Danila Manconi: Antas (“Metalla”) Sardinia, Italy . In: Richard Stillwell et al. a. (Ed.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-03542-3 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Tempio Romano. Start-Uno, accessed on September 26, 2017 (Italian).
- ^ Itinerarium Antonini 85
- ^ Claudius Ptolemy : Geographike Hyphegesis 3.3.2
Web links
- Metalla in the Pleiades database
- Antas Italian
- Tempio di Antas (German)
Coordinates: 39 ° 23 ′ 38.4 " N , 8 ° 30 ′ 1.1" E