By Paula Tagle
Since 1994 I have been interested in Sardinia. It was the year I met Sara Ferrara, one of my best friends. Until then, I, a Latin American recently arrived in Europe, had never heard of this 24,000 square kilometer island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. From Sara’s language and her food I learned that Sardinia was part of Italy; Little by little, I learned more about their culture, unique, not only because it is an island, but also in each region, because its rugged landscape (more than 80% of the territory is made up of hills) allowed each place to develop its own characteristics and folklore.
When people saw us together, and even today, with a couple of decades on us, they ask us if we are sisters. And it could well be that centuries ago we shared some ancestor, since Phoenician navigators arrived in Sardinia from the year 900 BC. And my maternal great-grandparents came to Ecuador from Lebanon.
But what interested me most about Sara’s descriptions is that the women of the island, being herself an example, have always occupied important places in its history, taking charge of business, science, law, and politics. For example, the first person to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in Italy was a woman from Sardinia, in 1926, Grazia Deleda. And even in the Middle Ages, Eleanora of Arborea, created a code of law that was in effect from 1395 to 1827, which, among other very progressive decrees, gave sons and daughters equal rights to inheritance.
It even seems that, from the times of the enigmatic Nuragic civilization, which inhabited the island between the 1600-1200 centuries BC, there was great respect for femininity in the cult of the mother goddess, a symbol of fertility.
And I can confirm this because I finally visit Sardinia, aboard the Sea Cloud Yacht, in June 2022. I see how many murals and statues dedicated to its heroines abound. One of the Nuragic religious complexes that I visit, known today as the Santa Cristina well, has female forms. This was a place for purification during religious rituals. Circular buildings hosted pilgrims who came with offerings of all kinds, from animals to bronze statuettes. But what is truly impressive are the twenty-five perfectly sculpted basalt steps that lead down to the holy water well.
Everything about this civilization is mysterious. They built castle-like buildings with gigantic rocks and thick walls known as nuraghes (nuraghes) scattered in hundreds across the island (more than 7,000); suddenly, after the 11th century BC, they stopped doing it. Perhaps this civilization merged with the many others from the Mediterranean that arrived in Sardinia, such as the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans. They did not know writing, therefore no known written evidence has remained until now.
The well that I visit has taken the name of Santa Cristina, because a church with that name was built with the rocks of Noraghe in the 12th century. However, the perfect basalt steps remain intact. Inside the well the temperature drops four degrees Celsius. I am finally in Sardinia, in a building that is three thousand years old. So the man and the woman already understood that life comes from water. The water was sacred, and still should be.
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
