When the Nurhags are of more than one storey in height, they are generally surrounded by others which are attached to them by platforms, often of considerable extent. That at Santa Barbara has, or had, four small Nurhags encased in the four corners of the platform, to which access was obtained by a doorway in the central tower; but frequently there are also separate ramps when the platforms are extensive. The masonry of these monuments is generally neat, though sometimes the stones are unhewn, but nowhere does there appear any attempt at megalithic magnificence.
They are, at the same time, absolutely without any architectural ornament which could give us any hint of their affinities; and no inscriptions, no images, no sculptures of any kind, have been found in them. They are in this respect as uncommunicative as our own rude-stone monuments.
187. Nurhag of Santa Barbara. From De la Marmora.
Written history is almost equally silent. Only one passage has been disinterred which seems to refer to them. It is a Greek work, generally known as 'De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus,'[498] and ascribed doubtfully to Aristotle. It is to the following effect:—"It is said that in the island of Sardinia there exist, among other beautiful and numerous edifices, built after the manner of the ancient Greeks, certain domes (Θόλοι) of exquisite proportions. It is further said that they were built by Iolas, son of Iphicles, who, having taken with him the Thespiadæ, went to colonise this island." This certainly looks as if the Nurhags existed when this book was written, though the description is by a person who evidently never saw them. Diodorus so far confirms this that he says: "Iolaus, having founded the colony, fetched Dedalus from Sicily, and built numerous and grand edifices, which subsist to the present day, and are called Dedalean, from the name of their builder;"[499] and in another paragraph he recurs to the veneration "in which the name of Iolaus is held." This, too, is unsatisfactory, as written by a person who never visited the island, and had not seen the monuments of which he was speaking.
It is little to be wondered at if buildings so mysterious and so unlike any known to exist elsewhere should have given rise to speculations almost as wild as those that hang around our own rude-stone monuments. The various theories which have been advanced are enumerated and described by De la Marmora[500] so fully that it will not be necessary to recapitulate them here, nor to notice any but three, which seem really to have some plausible foundation.
The first of these assumes the Nurhags to have been watch-towers or fortifications.