Chapter I (12)

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.

However this may be, the theory not only of the twofold design or use of the Nuraghe, but of either of them, is confessedly quite conjectural: it rests upon a narrow basis of facts. Though a great number of the Nuraghe have been carefully ransacked, in very few instances only have human bones been discovered, but neither urns, arms, nor ornaments usually inhumed with the dead; nor are many of them so constructed as to permit the supposition that they were designed for sepulchral purposes. Occasionally, also, some of the miniature idols, such as are preserved in the museum at Cagliari, have been found buried in Nuraghe, or their precincts. But this is not general; and there are neither altars nor any other indications in the structure of the buildings to indicate their appropriation to religious uses, except their pyramidal or conical form, which they share in common with most buildings of the earliest age. So far as these were designed for idolatrous uses—as many of them doubtless were—the argument from analogy may apply to the Nuraghe, but it can be carried no further.

Whatever were the purposes of the Nuraghe, almost all writers on Sardinia consider these ancient structures of Eastern origin. Father Bresciani attributes them to Canaanitish or Phœnician colonies, which migrated to the west in early times; and he takes great pains, but, I consider, without much success, to establish their identity, or, at least, their analogy, with the religious or sepulchral erections,—the altars, and “high places,” and tombs,—of which notices are found in the Old Testament. No doubt exists that extensive migrations, favoured by the enterprise of the earliest maritime people of whom we have any record, took place, perhaps both before and after the age of Moses, from the shores of Syria to the islands and shores of the West of Europe. There is reason to think that the island of Sardinia, if not the first seat, was, from its peculiar situation, the very centre, of a colonisation, embracing in its ramifications the coasts of Africa and Spain, with Malta, Sicily, and the Balearic islands. It appears singular that Corsica, the sister island to Sardinia, should not have shared in this movement of settlers from the East; perhaps from its lying out of the direct current, while, in its onward course, the wave flowing through the Straits of Hercules bore forward on the ocean the “merchants of many isles,” for commerce if not for settlement, as far as the Cassiterides, our own Scilly Isles.

Though there is little historical evidence of the Phœnician colonisation of Sardinia, and even that of the early Greek settlements in the island is obscure and conflicting, we have abundant traces of the former, more imperishable than written records, still lingering in the manners and customs of the modern Sardes, and in the great number of those extraordinary antiquities known as the Sarde idols. The greater part of these, as Mr. Tyndale undertakes to show, were symbols of Canaanitish worship, the miniature representations of the gods adored by the Syrian nations, especially of Moloch, Baal, Astarte or Astaroth, Adonis or Tammuz, the very objects of that idolatry so frequently and emphatically denounced in the Old Testament, to which we have already referred. Mr. Tyndale, however, justly observes, that “so distinct and peculiar is the character of these relics, that their counterparts are no more to be met with out of Sardinia than the Nuraghe themselves.” From this circumstance, in conjunction with the fact of the images being often found in and near those buildings, he infers that they may have been, directly or indirectly, connected with each other, in either a religious, sepulchral, or united character.

The inquiry would be incomplete unless it were extended to other Sarde remains, of equal or greater antiquity, for the purpose of discovering whether they have any affinity with, or can throw any light on, the mysterious origin of the Nuraghe. We propose devoting another chapter to this investigation.

CHAP. XXXV.

_Sardinian Monoliths.—The Sepolture, or “Tombs of the
Giants.”—Traditions regarding Giant Races.—The Anakim, &c., of
Canaan.—Their supposed Migration to Sardinia.—Remarks on
Aboriginal Races.—Antiquity of the Nuraghe and Sepolture.—Their
Founders unknown._

We can hardly be mistaken in supposing that, among the relics of antiquity still existing in Sardinia, the monoliths, of somewhat similar character with the Celtic remains at Carnac, Avebury, and Stonehenge, and common also in other countries, belong to the earliest age. These Sarde monoliths are found in several parts of the island, being, as the name expresses, single stones, or obelisks, set upright in the ground. In Sardinia they are called _Pietra-_ or _Perda-fitta_, and _Perda-Lunga_. We generally find them rounded by the hammer, but irregularly, in a conical form tapering to the top, but with a gradual swell in the middle; and their height varies from six to eighteen feet. They differ from the Celtic monuments, in being generally thus worked and shaped; in not being often congregated on one spot beyond three in number—a _Perda-Lunga_ with two lesser stones; and in there not being any appearance of their ever having had, like the Trilithons of Stonehenge, any impost horizontal stone.

Father Bresciani finds the prototype of all these rude pillars scattered throughout the world, in the Beth-El of Jacob and other Bethylia, sepulchral or commemorative, mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. By Mr. Tyndale, the Sarde _Perda-Lunga_ is considered a relic of the religion common to all the idolatrous Syro-Arabian nations, which, deifying the powers and laws of nature, considers the male sex to be the type of its active, generative, and destructive powers, while that passive power of nature, whose function is to conceive and bring forth, is embodied under the female form. And this worship, he conceives, was introduced into Sardinia, with the symbols just described, by the Phœnician or Canaanitish immigrants.

The _Sepolture de is Gigantes_, the tombs of the giants, as they are called, form another class of Sarde antiquities of the earliest age. The structures to which the popular traditions ascribe this name, may be described as a series of large stones placed together without any cement, inclosing a foss or hollow from fifteen to thirty-six feet long, from three to six wide, and the same in depth, with immense flat stones resting on them as a covering. Though the latter are not always found, it is evident, by a comparison with the more perfect Sepolture, that they have once existed, and have been destroyed or removed.[79]

The foss runs invariably from north-west to south-east; and at the latter point there is a large upright headstone, averaging from ten to fifteen feet high, varying in its form, from the square, elliptical, and conical, to that of three-fourths of an egg; and having in many instances an aperture about eighteen inches square at its base.

On each side of this stele, or headstone, commences a series of separate stones, irregular in size and shape, but forming an arc, the chord of which varies from twenty to twenty-six feet; so that the whole figure somewhat resembles the bow and shank of a spur.

“The shape of the foss and headstone,” observes Mr. Tyndale, “of these remains, fairly admits of the probability that they were graves, as some of the earliest forms of sepulchres on record are the upright stones with superincumbent slabs, such as the Druidical cistvaens and some tombs in Greece. Still, like the ‘Sarde Idols’ and the Nuraghe, the _Sepolture_ are peculiar to the island, being entirely different in point of size and character from any other sepulchral remains. Judging from the many remains of those partially destroyed, their numbers must have been considerable. The Sardes believe them to be veritable tombs of giants; and that there may be legends of their existence in the island is undeniable, as a similar belief is found in almost all countries.” Mr. Tyndale, in speaking of the supposed connexion between the _Nuraghe_ and the _Sepolture_, observes that, “if a Canaanitish race migrated here, nothing is more probable than that the tradition and worship of the giants would be also imported; and that it is even possible that some of the actual gigantic races of the Rephaim, Anakim, and others mentioned in Scripture, might have actually arrived in Sardinia.” Father Bresciani goes further: he fixes the era of this migration, points out the event which caused it[80], and traces its route by the Isthmus of Suez, through Egypt, and along the coast of Africa, which they are also said to have colonised; and whence he considers they could easily navigate to Sardinia and other islands in that part of the Mediterranean.

This immigration, however, of the Canaanitish giants rests upon very slender evidence; and it may be questioned whether the oldest Sardinian monuments do not belong to an age far anterior to that of any Phœnician or Canaanitish colonisation of the island whatever. That such there was, undoubted proofs have already been gathered; but the statuettes of Phœnician idols, forming part of those proofs, with the arts and skill required for the maritime enterprise it required, betray the civilisation of a period more advanced than that to which we should be disposed to attribute such rude structures as the Nuraghe and the Sepolture. In this uncertainty, it may be worth an inquiry, whether these ancient monuments did not exist before the colonists landed on the shores of Sardinia,—in short, whether they were not the works of an aboriginal race. The question is raised by M. Tyndale: “We may reduce the inquiry,” he says, “to the simple question, Were the Nuraghe built by the autochthones of the island, of whom we have no knowledge, or by the earliest colonists, of whom we have but little information?” On the former alternative the author is silent; nor is the question even raised by any other writer on Sardinian antiquities within our knowledge.

Yet surely, independently of its bearing on the origin of the Nuraghe and the early population of Sardinia, the subject of indigenous races is interesting in a general point of view. And it is worthy of notice, that the accounts handed down to us of the earliest colonists of the ancient world, speak of an aboriginal population existing in the countries to which they migrated, just as the European adventurers and circumnavigators of the last three centuries found indigenous races on the continents and islands they discovered, except on some few islands of the Pacific Ocean, recently emerged from the state of coral reefs. The parallel may be carried further. The ancient, as well as the modern, colonists carried the arts of a superior civilisation in their train; but the indigenous races of the New World were destined to gradual decay and extinction, leaving some ancient monuments as the records of their existence, just as the primitive children of the soil in the West of Europe, whose relics we endeavour to decipher, disappeared and were lost; so uniform is the order of events in the designs of Providence.

Poetical legends, generally founded on, and blended with, traditionary facts, help us to form some idea of the character and habits of the aboriginal races; but history, and even tradition, seldom carry us further back in the review of past ages than the arrival of colonists, generally of Eastern origin, to form settlements on the shores and the islands washed by the Mediterranean. Did they find these shores and islands uninhabited? To say nothing of countries more remote and less accessible, many considerations would induce us to imagine that these fair regions were not all deserts; that, even at this early period, they were already peopled.

In Sardinia, where, as already observed, the manners, the superstitions, and the traditions of the earliest ages, are more faithfully preserved than in any other European country, we find, among the most ancient existing structures, some which, to this day, are pointed out by the natives as “the Tombs of the Giants.” And who were the “giants,” of whom we read much, both in sacred and profane history? The very term is significant. It is formed from two Greek words—γῆ and γένω, and signifies earth-born, sons of the earth.[81] The word αὐτόχθνονες (autochthones) has a cognate meaning; Liddell and Scott render it, “of the land itself; Latin, _terrigenæ, aborigines, indigenæ_, of the original race, _not settlers_.” The mythical account of the origin of the “giants” concurs with this etymology. It paints them as the sons of Cœlus and Terra—Heaven and Earth. In the poetry of Hesiod, they spring from the earth imbued with the blood of the gods. Traces and traditions of this aboriginal race are found in all parts of the world, and in sacred as well as profane history. We are told that there were giants in the days before the flood[82]; and Josephus considers them the offspring of the union, mysteriously described by the sacred writer, of “the sons of God with the daughters of men;” for, as might be supposed, there were females also of the race of the earth-born. So the poets sang. Such was Cybele, daughter of Heaven and Earth, pictured as crowned with a diadem of towers, as the patroness of builders. We read of the giants, in the Old Testament, under the names of Rephaim, Emim, Zamzummim, and Anakim. In the time of Abraham, these tribes dwelt in the country beyond Jordan, in about Astaroth-Karnaim[83], and it is now the received opinion of biblical archæologists, that they were the most ancient, or aboriginal, inhabitants of Palestine; prior to the Canaanites, by whom they were gradually dispossessed of the region west of the Jordan, and driven beyond that river. Some of the race, however, remained in Palestine Proper so late as the invasion of the land by the Hebrews, and are repeatedly mentioned as “the sons of Anak,” and “the remnant of the Rephaim;”[84] and a few families existed as late as the time of David.[85]

In the most ancient legends we find the giant race located in all parts of the then known world. In Thessaly, under the name of Titans, poetic fiction records their deeds of prowess in piling mountain on mountain, and hurling immense rocks in their battles with the gods. Writers of credit have transmitted to us accounts of the discovery of their remains on the coast of Africa, from Bona to Tangier, in Sicily, and in Crete. The earliest navigators who touched on the shores and islands of the Mediterranean, brought back romantic tales, receiving their colouring from the terrors of the narrators, of the barbarity and the stature of the races they found on those then inhospitable shores. They were robbers, and even cannibals; enemies of the gods and men. Such tales are not without their parallels in the annals of modern maritime discovery.

Before the fall of Troy, Sicily was peopled by a giant or aboriginal people, called Cyclopes; that insular race being said to be descended from Neptune and Amphitrite, just as the giant Antæus, the founder of Tangier on the African coast, was called the son of Neptune and Terra. If we take Polyphemus, the chief of a tribe of the Cyclops, for a type of this cognate race, what do we find in his story, divested of the fiction with which it was clothed by tradition, transmuted into the poetry of the Odyssey and the Æneid? The Grecian and Trojan heroes, successively land on the eastern coast of Sicily, near the base of Mount Ætna, whose throes and thunders lend horror to the scene. There dwelt this Cyclop chief, in a cavern of the rocks. The race were Troglodytes, as were the aboriginal Sardes, Baleares, Maltese, Libyans, &c. In Sardinia, their caverns are still to be seen in an island of the territory of Sulcis. Caves were probably the first habitations of primitive man, before emerging from a condition hardly superior to that of the savage beasts, his competitors for such rude shelter. Irrespective of climate, in these we find his home, whether among the Celts of the frozen regions of the North, or the Arabs of the stony wastes bordering on the Erythrean Sea, in the Libyan deserts, or in the sandstone rocks of Southern Africa. There one still sees the pygmy Bushmen, perhaps the last existing Troglodyte race, the very reverse of the Cyclops in stature, but, like them, their hand against every man's, unchanged by ages in the midst of African tribes of considerable civilisation, neither sowing nor pasturing, but living on roots, berries, and grubs, like other aboriginal races, which sprang into existence with the forests through which they roam, and the various brutes which shared with them the possession of the soil:

“Cum prorepserunt primis animalia terris,
Mutum et turpe pecus.” HOR. _Sat._ i. 3.

But the traditions of Polypheme and his Cyclops represent them as advanced beyond this first rude stage of society, though they still adhered to their ancestral caves. They were robbers, no doubt; at least, they plundered and made captive unfortunate mariners thrown on their shores. Perhaps they feasted on their captives, as American Indians and South-Sea islanders are reported to have done. This may be doubted; but at least the cannibal feasts of the Sicilian aborigines were but _bonnes bouches_ occasionally thrown in their way. They had better means of subsistence. Polypheme was a shepherd, and so were all his clan. Picture him, as described by Virgil[86], descending from the mountains, probably at eventide, leaning on his staff, with his shepherd's pipe hanging on his bosom, surrounded by his flocks, and leading them to the shelter of some cavern on the shore; and we have a pleasant scene of pastoral life. Such were all his tribe, a pretty numerous one, comprising one hundred males, with their families, each having a flock as large as their chiefs. They led a nomad life, “_errantes_” between the mountain pastures and the plains on the coast[87].

Now, if we may be allowed to separate these facts, which seem genuine, from the fictions with which they are blended, we find the aborigines of Sicily, though barbarous, in a somewhat advanced stage of social life beyond that when we are told they roamed in the woods and fed on acorns. Such we may justly presume, divested of poetical fiction, was the condition of the aborigines of the neighbouring island of Sardinia, the largest in the Mediterranean except Sicily, when the first foreign colonists landed on its coast. And such, after the lapse of more than thirty centuries, are the Sarde shepherds of the present day, generally lawless, sometimes robbers, making the caves of the rocks their shelter, and their flocks and herds providing them with food and clothing. Tenacious, above all other European races, of the traditions and customs of their forefathers, when they point to structures of the highest antiquity scattered on their native soil, and call them “_Sepolture de is Gigantes_”—as we now have some idea what these giants were,—may we not find reason to accept their tradition, and consider these monuments as the tombs of the chiefs and first founders of their aboriginal race.

Still, it may be objected that the ancient legends relating to giants are too fabulous to admit of any sound theories being built on them; and some have even gone so far as to reject all the received accounts of families or tribes of men of gigantic stature, as worthy only of the belief of credulous ages. It may indeed be difficult to imagine whole districts and countries peopled with gigantic races so formidable that we can hardly conceive any other people subsisting in contact with them. But that individuals, and even families, of extraordinary stature and strength existed in the earliest ages cannot be denied, except by those who regard the narrative of Scripture as equally fabulous with the fictions of the poets; although the statements are literal and exact, occur in a variety of incidental notices, and are confirmed by discoveries related by authors of good repute.[88]

A solution of the difficulty may, perhaps, be found in the consideration, that, as even now we find families and races exceeding in stature and strength the average of mankind, there is still more reason to believe in the existence of such phenomena in the youth of the generations of man, when a simple mode of life, abundance of nutritious food, and a salubrious atmosphere, gave to all organic beings huge and sinewy forms. Such might be the special privilege of the Rephaim, and other tribes of which we read. But while the rank and file, as we may call them, of the nation, though tall and robust, might not much exceed the average height of the human species, the chiefs and heroes who took their posts in the van of battle may have attained the extraordinary dimensions recorded of them; and, their numbers being magnified by terror and tradition, the attributes of the class were extended to the whole tribe. Thus the poets gave the name of Cyclops to all the aboriginal inhabitants of Sicily, though the Cyclops, properly so called, are represented by them as a single family, sons, as before mentioned, of Neptune and Amphitrite.

That the _Sepolture de is Gigantes_ may be considered the tombs of the chiefs or heroes of the aboriginal inhabitants of Sardinia seems to be generally allowed; and the opinion receives some confirmation from a passage in Aristotle's “Physics,” where, treating of the immutability of time, notwithstanding our perception or unconsciousness of what occurs, he incidentally illustrates his argument by the expression:—“So with those who are fabulously said to sleep with the heroes in Sardinia, when they shall rise up.”[89]

The best authorities being thus led to the conclusion that the Sarde aborigines were a giant race, the question remains whether the Nuraghe had the same origin as the Sepolture; and, passing by some trivial objections to this hypothesis, we are disposed to adopt Mr. Tyndale's conclusion, that—“the coincidence of two such peculiar monuments in the same island, their non-existence elsewhere, and their being both indicative of some abstract principle of grandeur and power, practically carried out in their construction, are strong reasons for the presumption that they may have had some mutual reference to each other,—as burying places, temples, and altars, and consequently were works of the same times and the same people.”

Perhaps it may be objected, with some show of reason, that a people so rude and so primitive as the aborigines, could not have possessed the skill required for the construction of such buildings as the Nuraghe; so that they must be assigned to a later age. But we are informed in Genesis that, among some families of mankind, not only useful, but ornamental, arts were taught before Noah's flood![90] and, without instituting an inquiry how soon the inventive and mechanical faculties of mankind were more or less developed in various countries, we may venture to assume that, before the historical period, before navigation had conveyed the higher arts of civilisation to distant shores, the aboriginal races, generally, were not incapable of erecting the massive structures attributed to them by universal tradition, and which, defying the ravages of time, still remain the sole monuments of lost races, on which the puzzled antiquary can hope to decipher the records of their existence and condition.

To rear the lofty perpendicular monolith, to set up the tall stele as the headstone of a grave, to lift and poise the ponderous rocking-stone, to raise and fix the massive impost of the trilithon, or the slab covering a sepoltura, a cromlech, or a cistvaen; (for the remark applies to Celtic as well as Mediterranean antiquities), to heap up, not Pelion on Ossa, but untold loads of earth and stone to form the conical tumulus over the chambers of the dead, to build “Cyclopean” walls, and construct the cone of rude but solid masonry, with its cavernous recesses,—all these are the works we should just expect from races of mankind when emerging from primitive barbarism, in the youth of the species, and possessed of enormous strength of limb.[91] Those who reared these works are supposed to have been in possession of some knowledge of the pulley, the lever, and the incline; but, after all, giant strength must have been the main fulcrum for such operations. Had there been ornament, sculpture, or inscriptions on these primeval monuments, our thoughts might have been carried forward to a later age, when colonisation from the East brought in its train the arts which there first undoubtedly flourished.

That the Sardinian antiquities of the earliest age are unique, that this is the case in other parts of the world, every primitive people having, with certain resemblances, a peculiar style in its ancient monuments, that none such as these are found in the countries from whence the first colonists migrated, nor are described in their records, are facts strengthening the argument for their being of indigenous origin. That the forms of these structures scattered over the world are generally pyramidal, often rounded, and sometimes spiral, tells nothing to the contrary. The cone, as Father Bresciani observes, was more graceful to the eye, more easy of construction, more durable, and, perhaps, connected with some mysterious ideas of Eternity, or the circling course of the heavenly bodies. Such was the form of the first great building on record, the Tower of Babel, as we have it represented; the type in many respects of the Sarde Nuraghe. Nor is it an unreasonable conjecture that the alien people, mysteriously alluded to in Genesis, as mixing with the children of God, having seduced the most froward of the chosen race, were the instigators and planners of the profane enterprise. “Go to ——,” said a man to his neighbour, as the marginal translation renders the passage,—“let us make bricks, let us build a tower whose top may reach to heaven.”[92]

“There were giants in those days,”—men not only of gigantic forms, but imbued with grand ideas. The structures included among the number of their monuments are, as just observed, “indicative of some abstract principle of grandeur and power, practically carried out in their construction.” In the strength of their might, the Titanic race bade defiance to the deities of Olympus, with whom they are poetically represented as combating; but that does not preclude our supposing that, in common with all the generations of man, however barbarous, the giant races had their religious instincts, their altars, their rites. Reverence, also, for the memories of their departed heroes, of their progenitors, was a common feeling, most powerful in the earliest times. In these two principles we trace the ideas to which the mysterious monuments of the ancient Sardes owe their origin, and thence we arrive at a reasonable conclusion respecting their object and uses.

Researches the most extended and the most profound, have failed to penetrate the obscurity in which the mists of ages have enveloped the origin of the primeval monuments of all nations, and of the people who founded them. Something may have been contributed towards the solution of the difficulties surrounding the subject, if we have been able to connect existing monuments with a rude race of extraordinary strength, the supposed giant-builders of those ancient structures. Such buildings we discover in various parts of the world, varying in their details, but similar as respects their simple but massive and durable forms. Gigantic stature and strength of limb we consider to have been the essential requisites, in the infancy of art, for transporting and raising the ponderous materials; and these properties were characteristics of the races of which, and of their Herculean labours, we find everywhere corresponding traditions.

In the absence of a satisfactory reply to the inquiry, whence, when, or how the giant race reached Sardinia, we are willing to accept the alternative, as regards the founders of the Nuraghe and its other ancient monuments, that these structures were the work of the autocthonoi, the aboriginal inhabitants. But we embrace the theory in a different sense from that in which it is proposed; suggesting that the so-called giants themselves may have been the autocthonoi, and not immigrants; and the remark is generally applicable. The etymology of the words used by the Greeks and Romans, to designate the aboriginal races, supports the conjecture of their identity; for, as already shown[93], the term “giant” (γίγας) is not descriptive of extraordinary strength, but, equally with the phrases _autocthonoi_, _terrigenæ_, and _aborigines_, signifies “the earth-born,” the natives of the soil.

Further than this we cannot here pursue the inquiry. In a work of this description, it would be idle to speculate on the means by which aboriginal races, as well as a peculiar fauna and flora, were planted in distant lands, whether islands or remote continents, on which they have been found established by colonists and navigators, from the earliest to the latest times. Ethnologists have laboured to solve the difficulties surrounding the subject; with what success, those who have studied their works must decide for themselves.

The Sardinian Nuraghe are probably among the oldest structures in the world, and may therefore be reasonably considered the works of an aboriginal race; but their origin, and that of the founders, are equally involved in impenetrable mystery. Their rude, but massive and shapely, cones have survived the ruin of the sumptuous edifices of Babylon and Nineveh, of Ecbatana and Susa, of Tyre and the Egyptian Thebes. Like the pyramids of Egypt, they have witnessed, from their hoary tops, the current of untold centuries rolling onwards, wave after wave, in its turbid course. They have marked the rise and the fall of empires, the vicissitudes of fortune, the illusory hopes, the vain fears, and the insatiable desires of successive generations of men, whose brief span of existence has been that of a moment compared with the centuries that have looked down from their summits. But unlike the Pyramids, whose mysteries are partially unveiled, they give no note by which their age or their history may be discovered. Mute on their solitary mounds, they give no answer to the inquiries of the traveller or the learned, when questioned,—what people of Herculean strength and undaunted will reared their massive walls, wrought the dark cells under the cover of their domes, and raised the ponderous slab which crowns the cone? No image of man, no form of beast, neither symbol nor inscription, are sculptured or graven on the solid blocks, within or without, to tell their tale. Well, then, may the thoughtful traveller, contemplating with silent wonder these mysterious cones, soliloquise in some such sort as this:—“Surely these structures must have been raised before men had learned the arts of writing and engraving, for how many thousands of the Nuraghe were built, in successive periods, without their founders having acquired the faculty of inscribing on them the name of a god or a hero, for a memorial to future generations.”

CHAP. XXXVI.

_Oristano.—Orange-groves of Milis.—Cagliari.—Description of.—The
Cathedral and Churches.—Religious Laxity.—Ecclesiastical
Statistics.—Vegetable and Fruit Market.—Royal
Museum.—Antiquities.—Coins found in Sardinia.—Phœnician
Remains.—The Sarde Idols._

The high road between Sassari and Cagliari, called the _Strada Reale_, runs through the great level of the Campidano for a distance of 140 miles, and as there is a daily communication between the two cities by the well-appointed _diligences_ already mentioned, the journey, unlike others in Sardinia, is performed with comfort and rapidity. But, whatever he may gain by the exchange, the traveller will hardly bid adieu to the mountains and forest-paths of the Gallura and Barbagia without regret.

About half way, stands Oristano, an old city, of some 6000 inhabitants, with some of the Spanish character of Alghero. Though fallen from its former importance, the place is still wealthy, and, in some degree, commercial. It is, however, deserted in the summer and autumn, when the atmosphere becomes so pestilential from the inhalations of the neighbouring stagna and lagunes as to justify the proverb:—

A Oristano che ghe vù,
In Oristano ghe resta!

The most striking object in the place is the belfry of the cathedral, a detached octangular tower, roofed with a pear-shaped dome, of coloured tiles, and commanding from the summit a fine view of the plains from the sea to the distant mountains. The orange groves of Milis, a village lying a little out of the high road to Oristano, are worth a visit. The trees are considered the finest in Europe. I have never seen orange trees that will bear comparison with them in any part of the world, except on some of the Dutch farms in the Cape colony, where they are still more magnificent; vying in size with the European oaks, planted, probably at the same time, by the German settlers from the Black Forest, the disbanded soldiers of the States of Holland, to whom many of the African Boers owe their origin. Such orange groves, when loaded with blossoms and fruit, glowing in the shade of their dense masses of glossy deep-green foliage, are perhaps the most charming of vegetable productions. No idea of their richness and beauty can be formed from the dwarf, round-topped trees, one sees in most orange districts. Here, as in South Africa, they owe their luxuriance to abundant irrigation. Some of the trees at Milis are from thirty-five to forty feet high, and there are said to be 300,000 of them of full growth. The annual produce is estimated at from fifty to sixty millions of fruit, and, being in great repute for their quality, they are conveyed to Sassari and Cagliari, and all parts of the island, the price varying from 1-1/2_d._ to 4-3/4_d._ per dozen, according to circumstances.

Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, a city containing upwards of 35,000 inhabitants, is seen to most advantage when approached from the sea, the campagna in the vicinity being neither fertile nor picturesque. Standing at the head of a noble bay or gulf, twenty-four miles in depth and twelve across, with good anchorage everywhere, its advantageous position pointed out Cagliari as a seat of commerce from the earliest times. The Phœnicians, the Greeks, and Carthaginians were attracted by the fine harbour, and the inducements offered by the neighbouring heights for the construction of a fortified town. The Romans made it the chief seat of their rule in the island. The port, called the Darsena, is capable of containing more than all the shipping at present frequenting it, with such a depth of water that, while I was at Cagliari, one of the largest steamships in the royal Sardinian navy lay alongside the quay.

In the view from the gulf, the eye first rests on the upper town, surrounded with walls and towers, and crowning the summit of a hill upwards of 400 feet above the level of the sea. At the base of the heights lie the suburbs of the Marina, Stampace, and Villanova, the former occupying the space between the Castello, or Casteddu, as the whole circuit of the fortified town is called, and the port; and, with the two other suburbs, on the east and west of the Marina, forming one long continuous line of irregular buildings. In our _tableau_, the Casteddu towers proudly over the lower town, which has grown up beneath it since the Middle Ages. It still retains its original importance, containing all the principal public buildings, and being the residence of the government officials, and, in short, the aristocratic quarter. The best houses in the Marina are occupied by the foreign consuls and persons engaged in commerce, so that there is a marked distinction between the upper and lower parts of the city.

Besides a strong citadel, there are, in the circuit of the fortifications three massive towers, called the Elephant, the Lion, and the Eagle, built by the Pisans; and the Castello is entered by four arched and embattled gateways. One of these was in the act of being demolished during my recent visit to Cagliari, in order to afford freer communication between the upper town and the Marina. Its removal seemed emblematic of an improving state of society, tending to level the barriers of caste, and engage the rising generation of the privileged orders in pursuits calculated as much for their own benefit as the development of the resources with which Sardinia abounds.

Easy access to the Casteddu is gained by a circuitous avenue cut on the sloping side of the hill and under the escarped heights. Being planted with trees, it forms a pleasant walk, commanding extensive views of the Campidano, the distant mountains, and the Gulf of Cagliari. The direct ascent from the Marina is steep and toilsome, it being gained by a series of narrow avenues and flights of steps, landing in streets running parallel with that side of the Castello. These also are narrow as well as lofty, like those of most fortified places in the south of Europe. Here we find the best shops; and the thoroughfares have a busy appearance, except in the heat of the day, when most of the inhabitants indulge in the _siesta_.

The cathedral, standing in the heart of the Castello, was built by the Pisans with part of the remains of a basilica founded by Constantine. It is on a grand scale, having three naves, and a presbytery ascended by several ranges of steps. The church is embellished with fine marbles, and the ornaments being rich, with some good pictures and grand monuments, the effect, on the whole, is striking. A crypt hewn out of the solid rock, under the presbytery, is regarded with great reverence by the Sardes, as containing the supposed remains of two hundred martyrs removed there from the church of St. Saturninus, in 1617.

Among the fifty-two churches in the Castello and the suburbs, I will only mention that of St. Augustine, attached to which is the oratory built by himself during a short visit to the island. A story is told of one of the beams for the roof proving too short; upon which the saint, quoting to the workmen the text declaring that to those who have faith all things are possible, ordered them to pull at one end while he took the other, when, scarcely touching it, the beam stretched to the required length. St. Augustine's remains were transported here in 505, from Hippo-Regius, where he died, by the Catholic bishops exiled from Africa by Thrasamond, king of the Vandals.[94] The Chronicles inform us that these bishops, two hundred and twenty in number, were sustained by the benevolence of Pope Symmachus, a native of Sardinia, who sent them every year money and clothes. St. Augustine's relics remained at Cagliari till 722, when Luitprand, king of the Lombards, in consequence of the danger to which they were constantly exposed by the invasions of the Saracens, obtained them from the Cagliarese, and carrying them to Pavia deposited them in the duomo of that city, where they rested, till in 1842, these were restored to Hippo by the French.[95]

The church of the Jesuits, at Cagliari, is described as distinguished among the others for the sumptuousness of its style, and its decorations of coloured marbles and columns. It was closed, with the adjoining college, at the time of my visit. The Jesuits formerly possessed large estates, and had colleges in several of the principal towns of the island. The whole were suppressed long ago; but in 1823, the late king, Carlo Felice, partially restored and re-endowed the order, some of the monks being re-established in the college of Cagliari. Of late years, there seems to have been a considerable reaction in the temper of the Sardes as regards religion, at least, in the towns. No people were more bigoted, more priest-ridden, more credulous of the absurdest superstitions. But in a conversation I recently had on the subject with a very intelligent and well-informed friend in the island, he assured me that the utmost laxity now prevails in the religious sentiments of the people. They have lost all respect for the clergy, calling them _bottégaie_, shopkeepers, as mindful only of the gains of their trade; and the churches _bottége_, shops. There is no vitality in the religion of the people, the services are a mere mummery, and the system is held together principally by the attractions of the popular _festas_, such as those described in a former chapter as scenes of bacchanalian revelry tricked out in the paraphernalia of religion. As for the Jesuits, the most obnoxious of the ecclesiastics, my friend stated, that the populace of Cagliari “burnt them out,” intending, I apprehend, to convey that they were violently expelled.

In earlier visits to the Continent, and reflecting on the subject at home, the question had often occurred whether, with advancing intelligence, and growing aspirations for civil and religious liberty, the people of Catholic countries might not be drawn, in the course of events, to a movement similar to that of our own Reformation of the Church in the 16th century; the ruling powers, as then, taking the lead, and emancipating their States from the papal yoke. Thus, while abuses and gross doctrinal errors were reformed, the exterior frame of the establishment, its hierarchy, ceremonial, privileges and property would remain intact; the whole system being so arranged as to be brought into harmony with the action of government, and to meet the demands of an enlightened age. Why should there not be more reformed national and independent churches?

In this view, when conversing with foreigners of intelligence, I have often pointed out the distinction between the Anglican Church and the “Evangelical” and other Protestant communities abroad. Such a reform would seem to be well suited to answer the wants of the kingdom of Sardinia in the present state of her relations with the Court of Rome. It would consolidate the fabric of the constitutional government; and we may conceive that the cabinet of Turin, and perhaps the king, are enlightened enough to be sensible of its advantages.

But it may well be doubted whether the masses of the population, in either that or any other Catholic country, are ripe for such a revolution. In this age of reason, the dogmas which formed the war-cries of Luther and Calvin have lost their influence on the minds of men, and, except in some sections of the various religious communities, a general apathy on doctrinal subjects has succeeded the excitement with which the Reformation was ushered in. The tendency of the present age is in the direction of more sweeping reforms, and when the time comes, as no thoughtful man can doubt it will with growing intelligence, for the people of Europe to cast off the shackles of superstition and bigotry, it may be feared that things of more serious account than ecclesiastical systems and institutions may be swept away by the overwhelming tide so long pent up.

Meanwhile, there appears little probability of any great change. The territorial distinctions between Catholic and Protestant States remain much the same as when they were shaped out in the time of the Reformation, and the wars succeeding it. Each party holds its own; and there is little probability of a national secession from the Church of Rome, even in the Sardinian dominions, where many circumstances concur to point out its expediency, and even its possibility. Among others, it will not be forgotten, that the standard of Protestantism was raised in the valleys of Savoy, ages before it floated triumphantly in the north of Europe.

In 1841 there were 91 monasteries in Sardinia, containing 1093 regular monks, besides lay brothers, &c., and 16 convents with 260 nuns; the whole number of persons attached to these institutions being calculated at 8000. There are about the same number of secular clergy, including the bishops, dignitaries, and cathedral chapters, with the parochial clergy, the island being divided into 393 parishes. The population of Sardinia, by the last returns I was able to procure[96], was 541,907 in 1850; so that one-ninth were ecclesiastics of one description or another. It should be stated, however, that most, if not all, the monasteries and convents have been lately suppressed, and the religious pensioned off, so that the system is dying out.

The revenues of the bishops' sees, and the cathedral and parochial clergy, were calculated in 1841 at about 66,000_l._, arising from church lands, besides the tithes, estimated at 1,500,000 lire nove, or 60,000_l._, supposed to be a low estimate, the tithes being worth one million of lire more. These revenues are exclusive of voluntary contributions, alms, offerings, and collections. The church lands contributed upwards of 3000_l._ annually as state subsidies, for the national debt, the maintaining roads and bridges, and the conveyance of the post. Mr. Tyndale estimates “the revenue of the see of Cagliari at from 60,000 to 80,000 scudi,—from 11,520_l._ to 15,360_l._ per annum; while that of the priests is about 1000 scudi, or 192_l._” This gives some idea of the incomes of the Sardinian clergy. I imagine that the government has not interfered with any part of the ecclesiastical revenues, except those attached to the monasteries.

The fruit and vegetable markets of large foreign towns must always be attractive to a traveller, especially in the South and East, where the fruit, in great varieties, is so abundant, and he meets with vegetables unknown in the gardens and cookery of his own country. Not only so, but the dresses, and even the gestures and manners, of the country people, to say nothing of the dealings of the buyers, form a never-failing source of interest and amusement; while an additional zest is lent in a warm climate, by the freshness of the early hour at which the visit must be paid to be really enjoyed. The market at Cagliari is held in the suburb of Stampace, and approached by one of those avenues shaded with exotic trees, which make such agreeable promenades in the neighbourhood of the city. The principal supply comes from Pula, Arabus, and other villages at considerable distances from Cagliari; the soil in the vicinity being too arid to be productive. The supply appeared abundant, and of excellent quality. Among the fruits,—it was in the early part of September,—I noted grapes, figs, pears, oranges, lemons, citrons, peaches, melons, and prickly pears. Among the vegetables, the heaps of tomatas, chilis, and other condiments were surprising, and there were gigantic “_torzi_,” a kind of turnip-cabbage, and other varieties, whose names have escaped my memory.

My visit to the Royal Museum was also paid at an early hour, through the kindness of Signor Cara, the Curator, who was so obliging as to show me also his cabinet of antiques at his private residence,—rich in cameos, intaglios, and scarabei of rare beauty. The Royal Museum occupies a suite of small apartments in the University. The collection owes great part of its objects of interest, and their good order and arrangement, to the indefatigable zeal and disinterested devotion of Signor Cara, whose appointments, and the allowance for purchasing objects, are not unworthy of a liberal government.

The collection of Roman antiquities occupying the entrance-wall is very meagre, considering the many stations established in the island during the republic and empire. Besides two colossal consular statues, having an air of dignity, and with the toga well chiselled, there was little to observe but some Roman milestones, sarcophagi, and fragments of various kinds.