ENTRANCE TO A NURAGHE.
INTERIOR OF A NURAGHE.
In this instance, the interior formed a single dome or cone about twenty-five feet high, well-proportioned, and diminishing till a single massive stone formed the apex. The chamber was fifteen feet in diameter, and had four recesses or cells worked in the solid masonry, about five feet high, three deep, and nearly the same in breadth.
The small platform on the summit of the cone, to which we ascended by the ramp in the interior of the wall and some rugged steps, commanded a rich view of the plain of Sassari, appearing from the top one dense thicket of olive and fruit trees spreading for miles round the city. Out of these groves rise the towers and domes of Sassari, the enceinte of its grey battlemented walls, and the lofty masses of its white houses. The view over the plain to the west is bounded by the Mediterranean, intersected by the bold outlines of the island of Asmara. After feasting our eyes on perhaps the most charming tableau the island affords, decked with nature's choicest gifts, and exhibiting an industry unusual among the modern Sardes, we sat down at the foot of the hillock, while my friend was completing his sketches of the Nuraghe, and our thoughts were naturally drawn to these relics of a primitive age. “What was their origin—their history—what were the purposes for which they were designed?”
It needed only that we should lift our eyes to the rude but shapely cone before us,—massive in its materials and fabric, and yet constructed with some degree of mechanical skill,—to come to the conclusion that the Nuraghe are works of a very early period, just when rude labour had begun to be directed by some rules of geometrical art. But, in examining the details, we find little or nothing to assist us in forming any clear idea of the period at which they were erected, or the purpose for which they were designed. There are not the slightest vestiges of ornament, any rude sculpture, any inscriptions. Of an antiquity probably anterior to all written records, history not only throws no certain light on their origin, but, till modern times, was silent as to their existence. Successive races, and powers, and dynasties have flourished in the island, and passed away, scarcely any of them without leaving some relics, some medals of history, some impress on the manners and character of the people still to be traced. The mouldering cones which arrest the traveller's attention, scattered, as we have observed, in great numbers throughout the island, enduring in their simple and massive structure, have thrown their shade over Phœnicians and Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians, Saracens, Pisans, Genoese, and Spaniards, and still survive the wreck of time and so many other early buildings,—the remains of a people of whose existence they are the only record, and, except monoliths, the oldest of, at least, European monuments.
In the absence of any positive evidence regarding the origin and design of the Sardinian Nuraghe[76], there has been abundance of conjecture and speculation on the subject. On the present occasion, I had the advantage of discussing it with our intelligent Sassarese student, I have also heard the remarks of one of the most distinguished Sarde antiquarians, and having since consulted the works of La Marmora and other writers, whose extensive researches and personal investigations entitle their opinions to much respect, I shall endeavour to lay the result, unsatisfactory as it proves, before the reader, in the shortest compass to which so wide an inquiry can be reduced.
The world has been searched for styles of building corresponding with that of the Sarde Nuraghe; without success. Neither in Etruscan, Pelasgic, or any other European architecture are any such models to be found, nor do Indian, Assyrian, or Egyptian remains exhibit any identity with them. They have been supposed, among other theories, to have some affinity with the Round Towers of Ireland; but after a careful examination of some of those almost equally mysterious structures, and considerable research among the authorities for their antiquity and uses, I have failed to discover anything in common between them and the Nuraghe. If my memory be correct, Mr. Petrie, the highest authority on the subject of the Round Towers, though he had not seen the Nuraghe, incidentally expresses the same opinion. The only existing buildings exhibiting a cognate character with those of Sardinia, are certain conical towers found in the Balearic islands, which were also colonised by the Phœnicians. They are called talayots, a diminutive, it is said, of atalaya, meaning the “Giants' Burrow;” and if the plate annexed to Father Bresciani's work be a correct representation, they would appear to be identical with the Nuraghe in the exterior, except that the ramp leading to the summit is worked in the outward face of the wall. We find, also, from La Marmora's description of the talayots examined by him, that the character of the cells is different, the style of masonry more cyclopean, and that many of them are surrounded with circles of stones and supposed altars, scarcely ever met with in Sardinia. The resemblance, however, is striking, as connected with the facts of the contiguity of Minorca, and the colonisation of both the islands by the Phœnicians.
Opinions as to the purposes for which the Nuraghe were erected are as various as those regarding their origin. From their great number, scattered over the country, they are supposed by some to have been the habitations of the most ancient shepherds; and the words of Micah—“the tower of the flocks,”[77] and other similar passages, are referred to as supporting this view. But it is hardly necessary to point out that the inconveniences of the structure, from its low entrance and dark interior, to say nothing of the waste of labour in heaping up such vast structures for shepherds' huts, will not admit of the idea being entertained. With somewhat more reason, but still with little probability, they have been represented as watch-towers, strongholds, and places of refuge; a theory to which their position, their numbers, and their structure are all opposed. Another hypothesis treats the Nuraghe as monuments commemorating heroes or great national events, whether in peace or war; forgetting, as Father Bresciani suggests, the centuries that must have elapsed while the mountains, and hills, and plains of Sardinia were being successively crowned with monuments of this description.
Discarding such conjectural theories, the best-informed travellers and writers are agreed in considering the Nuraghe as being designed either for religious edifices or tombs for the dead. La Marmora confesses his inability to pronounce decidedly between the two opinions, but inclines to the opinion that they may have been intended for both purposes. Father Bresciani, the latest writer on Sardinian antiquities, after a personal examination of the Nuraghe and much general research, though he does not venture a decided opinion, is disposed to agree with La Marmora. In confirmation of the idea that the most ancient monuments were at once tombs and altars, he quotes a Spanish writer[78] on the antiquities of Mexico, referring also to Lord Kingsborough's splendid work. So general an assumption is hardly warranted either by historical testimony or existing relics of antiquity. If such were the primitive custom, it did not prevail among the Greeks and Romans, and it is in the rites and practices of the Christian Church that we find its revival.