From the Nuraghe to the Etruscans: two civilizations compared
This article is an archaeological and historical digression on two civilizations as distant and different as the megalithic Nuraghi and the Etruscans, but common in being both examples of the 'Mediterranean Civilization'.
Architecture of stones, the former, against the backdrop of the plateaus and rocks of a very ancient island, the Tyrrhenian, a fragment of a continent in remote geological eras; exciting architecture and art, the Etruscan, whose refined and varied expressions never cease to amaze!
The sea is their main link, the Tyrrhenian Sea, with its legends and its gods, while, through it, the more evolved oriental civilizations influence both, allowing an autochthonous development of their models, elementary at the Sardinians and responding to their needs for defense, an expression of power for the Etruscans, as a historical and socio-political experience.
A civilization without writing, that of the Shardana - a people of warriors, who landed in Sardinia, from which the name 'Sardi' would derive - but which, as well, expresses, in a clear and 'technical' way its needs. Building solidly for a defense: is the fundamental motif of this civilization, which, for the purpose, elaborates in the construction of the protonuraghi, first, and nuraghi later, constructive devices that unite them, as to function, with the medieval castle, such as the mighty curtain walls, the central tower and the cardinal ones, the small terrace with balustrade, at the top of the tower, to issue orders and coordinate defense, and, finally, the antemural elements with the function of outposts to dampen enemy attack-this function proved very important in the Carthaginian attack of the sixth century.
There is a legend about the origin of the Nuraghi:
the mythical hero Daedalus was flying over the sea, looking for an island that Cretan sailors had told him about, and suddenly he recognized it. He was tired and descended with his wax wings, into the middle of a thicket, where hospitable shepherds welcomed and honored him. There he stayed until the cold autumn wind stripped the oaks of their high pastures and his sorrow faded. The shepherds, his friends, also emigrated to the milder lands of the south, and then, Daedalus, before leaving them, wanted to give them a gift: he built a building of stones, without binding them with lime, so that they could have a home and also a fortress to defend themselves from the enemies who came from the sea: it was the Nuraghe!
The Tholos is the most frequent expression of the nuraghe: single-towered, it culminated at the top with a stone slab. It could be accessed by rudimentary movable stairs or, through an external entrance, placed, however, always at a certain height from the ground. The single-towered nuraghi, in general, were used to house the tribal leaders and had a subordinate military function of sighting and alarm, while, the multiple ones with multiple towers, niches and loopholes had a purely defensive structure, both for local clashes and for invading peoples. Many were the battles against the Carthaginians and, later, against the Romans.
Other megalithic constructions of great interest were those used as temples, built near the water that the Nuragics worshiped, and those to the worship of heroes.
Mythical among them was the God of the Sardis, "Iolaus," Sardus Pater, so called by the Romans who respected him, erecting monuments to him.
Also dedicated to heroes, in the Nuragic civilization, are the funerary monuments called 'Tombs of the Giants,' built with a few elements, the stele or architraved door with friezes, from which, through a narrow corridor, one entered the rectangular tomb. Opposite, a circular exedra where the ancient Sardis, according to a Greek ritual, slept to have divine revelations. An elementary and fantastic way for the Sardinians to know the future, an art, however, for the Etruscans, "Aruspicina." As is evident in the archaeological history of Mediterranean civilizations present in the Megalithic and later periods, with the assimilation of common cultural elements, the Tholos also appears as an Etruscan architectural expression, and, for that matter, common to both civilizations was the Hellenizing influence, due to relations with eastern Mediterranean peoples and trade. From Lydia apparently came the Etruscans. They were already in Italy in the 10th century and, too, were called Tyrrhenians. They lived preferably in hilly, rolling landscapes with cities and necropolis facing the sun in the west, according to the magical customs of ancient peoples. A people different from the ancient Sardinians because they developed, over time, an advanced civilization with writing, laws and religious rites. A warrior people at first, and devoted to trade and navigation and, I would add, not, alone, in the middle of the sea, as were the people of "Ichnusa," the farthest of the Mediterranean islands from the mainland.
To speak of Etruscan power, when illustrating this civilization, has its own precise meaning.
It is a sociopolitical experience that will have an enormous influence in the Roman world and of which art is its complete expression, whether through the archaeological finds of cities and necropolises, or through the admirable sculptures of funerary monuments, the polychromy of painting and the vast production of metal objects.
A richly motivated civilization that allows us to know, also and above all, through the epigraphs and texts in the Etruscan language, the type of society that this people, drawing from the Greeks, elaborated according to the model most congenial to them.
Contact and confrontation with the Romans had a different fate for the two civilizations.
The nuraghi were not sufficient against the onrush of the Roman legions and, no longer serving their defensive purpose, they were, at first, buried and, later, turned into storage places for household and cult objects. The Romans, however, who could not be interested in the wild places in the interior of the island, held in consideration only the coastal part and, tired of fighting a strange war with the inland populations, made up of ambushes and disloyal assaults, abandoned them to their fate, calling them "Sardi Pelliti" or, simply, barbarians, hence the name Barbagia.
For the Etruscans, on the other hand, with the Samnite Wars, there would be their complete submission to Rome.
Both, however, Nuragics and Etruscans, with Rome, will enter, definitively, into History.
