PÈRDAS FÌTTAS

(standing stones or menhirs)

It is possible to give back the original name to every tipical monument of the wide archeologic world in Sardinia. For instance, I can unearth the archaic name of perda fitta ('driven stone', standing stone), named bétilus in the Middle Orient, < Hebr. bet-El 'God's home'. The menhir (that is similar to betilus) is the more ancient shape with which the Semite could express the divinity: an uniconic sculpture, as we deduct from biblic texts where is told of betilus shaped as a pillar that Jacob got from a stone used as a bolster.

In Sardinia we have the toponym Betìlli (countryside of Sàdali).

Pope Gregorius Magnus got upset hearing that in Sardinia, at the end of VI cent., ligna et lapides were still adored. Of lapides 'stones' in Barbagia we had the medieval name (it was exactly bétilu or betíllu: see Betìlli). The name of ligna 'piece of wood' was iliannu, and mùdulu too, representing the goddess Astarte (Ishtar). Iliannu < Akkad. 'tree': from this word has the name Sa Pèrda Iliàna, a spindle-shaped rock, straight like a sacred tree, showing the Bull-God's phallus, the phallus of Ilu, supreme Ugaritian god, who in Akkad. gives ilānu 'god, deity'.

The other word mùdulu (Akkad. = 'pole') is kept in the village named Mòdolo. In the Middle Ages in Sardinia the "sacred pole" was by then named like Lat. palus 'pole, phallus', and from it derives the name of the place Su Palu (Urzulei countryside) as well as the name of the country sanctuaryNostra Sennòra de Palu Irde (Dorgali) and the name of the country sanctuary Madonna di Val Verde (Alghero), an evident medieval corruption of Sennòra de Palu Irde 'Our Lady of the green pole'.

The betilus was very common in the Middle Orient. In the ancient Phoenician town of Byblos the main temple had a lot of bétilus. There were bétilus in the Canaanite town of Hazor (Galilea, Israel), summoned several times among the cities conquered by Pharaons of the New Reign as Tutmosis III (XV cent.), Amenhotep IV (XIV cent.) and Seti I (XIII cent.). The most exaustive citations referring to Canaanite Hazor are in Tell-Amarna letters (Egypt), in those Hazor begs the Pharaon for aid against the Khabiru, who were the refugees who was making serious riots and attempts on freedom of several towns in Canaan. Hazor reached the maximum development in the Medium Bronze, keeping a stable physiognomy till XII cent. before Volgar Age. In the city there is the Orthostatus Temple, with a inside covering made of square stones. But Hazor has mainly a little Pillar Temple, built on the Tarde-Final Bronze (1300 before Volgar Age), where the cultic statue is preserved together with 17 votive steles (height 27 to 65 cm) which look like the Phoenician votive steles, as the ones of Carthago.

At Gezer too (in Israel) there are several little steles in the "high place", a site without roof.

We know that at Palmyra were adored, besides the other gods, betilus too, that's stones considered as sites of divinities, that were carried in procession.

It is well-known that Sardinia had thousands of betilus, iconic or uniconic betilus. Their distruction and oblivion, from Middle Ages till now, are an irreparable fact, but the passion of the local scholars is always allowing new findings, as those of Isili.

The most famous betilus (better: menhirs) are those of Pranu Mutteddu (*) (Goni countryside), a flat side covered by a wood of Quercus suber, where is a pre-nuragic graveyard, maybe the most beautiful and interesting in Sardinia. It has a full-relief big cista, got from a rock, interely emptyed out troughout the original hole, the little doorway. The cista stays in the centre of a big solar circus delimited by orthostatus, and near it wind up a long row of uniconic menhirs.

People has always interpreted the toponym Pranu Mutteddu as 'the mirtle wood plain' < Campidanian mutta 'mirtle'. But apart from that it's impossible to track down the mirtle in the land, this place is the unic where the originary forest has preserved itself. It should rather have the name Pranu Suergiu 'the Quercus suber plain'.

Mutteddu has the etymological basis in Bab. mu(t)tellum 'princely, noble', and Pranu Mutteddu therefore means 'The plain of the princes, of the nobles'.

As far as betilus or iconic menhirs, they are present only in the centre of the island, in Sarcidano (in the triangle Isili-Nurallao-Laconi). In Laconi countryside there's a quite flat place named Perda Iddocca (*), well-known for several iconic prenuragic menhirs. For 4,000 years this toponym hasn't suffered any change, except the only normal adaptation of the originary -ll- to Sardian -dd- (*) and the usual change of Akk. nominative -u to Akk. accus. suff. -am. The toponym has in fact the etymological basis in Bab. illukku (a precious stone): precious being a translate, an adjective of value, of respect.

The archaeologist who has studied the site (Enrico Atzeni) mantains that «the mysterious toponym Perda 'e Iddocca (by him translate as 'the stone of Iddocca') have no comparison in Sardinia, but is binded together a legend handed down by the aged men of the village: "Iddocca, a nuragic queen, become shocked, angry and afflicted by the daughters' death, killed by enemies, and throwed the boulders that was carrying to build a nuraghe: upon the stones driven into the ground remained her handprints"...» (SSM 86). This, obviously, is a childish behaviour, a clear example of the rising of a myth, when the historic memory is lost. The Sardian archaeologists, in their imperishable quarrel with the advanced research, take shelter in the fairy-tales, in order to not face (or in order to hamper the linguits face) any problem which could have resolution with a chair of Semitic language in Sardinia.

But it should be too much summoning Enrico Atzeni for this childlike myth; the reasons to summon him are different. In his book La scoperta delle statue-menhir, CUEC, Cagliari, 2004, he presents and describes "the Overturned" that's a strange symbol, a bas relief similar to a candelabra or better to a overturned octopus, sculpted in many steles of Laconi Museum. His lucubrations, repetitions of analogous lucubrations of eminent predecessors, as Giovanni Lillìu, aim at confirming - even though amongst the anguishes of the interpretative effort - that the image, opposite to the "Nose" descending from the tip of the ogival sculpture and that "humanizes" the statue, is a "overturned man", a grapheme nearly the same of the "anthropomorphic overturned" petroglyphs of domus de janas of Oniferi (Sas Concas), in their turn similar to "schematic anthropomorphic" petroglyphs in the dromos of domus de janas of Grave-Branca (Cherémule), still similar to "anthropomorphic schematic" pictures of Written-Grotto in Olmeta (Corsica), as well as of "anthropomorphic schematic" petroglyphs of Marine-Ox Grotto (Dorgali).

For the graphemes of these Laconi Museum statues, Atzeni doubts whether the "Overturned" to be warriors or death symbols. And he don't make up his mind because, in putting into a sequential order all the European steles which are comparable with the Laconi Museum ones, he realizes the mysterious graphemes "evolve" becoming a human face (in the Corsica menhirs).

I let the archaeologists believe such an "evolution" to be connected and conscious, rather than a sheer artist's interpretation among a restricted symbolic net aimed to celebrate the Bull-God with his complex attributes of Warrior-God (Corsica), Fertility-God, Androgynous-God melted with his Partner. In this sphere it's useless or rather harmful archaeologists to speak of menhirs exclusively "masculine or "feminine", even when the menhir has the breasts. Even the uncertain interpretation of the horizontal "dagger" of the Laconi Museum steles is gone astray, if in any moment we don't consider the complex nature of polymorphe universal God, indissolubly melted with his partner (the Dea Mater), as He was at the beginning of the religious thought of man.

The Laconi Museum graphemes confirm specifically, in my opinion, the co-presence and fusion of masculine and feminine symbols. Therefore the menhir has the global nature of the Phallus fertilizer of Nature, and the bas reliefs in the phallus are the supreme God's attributes: in this sphere, the very mysterious "Overturned" isn't falling to Underworld, it isn't a man, ever, but simply it's the Dea Mater's Vagina, overturned because it is receiving the semen by the divine Penis that is descending to penetrate it. The penis is what archaeologists are determined to interpret as a "nose"; the vagina is the whole "Overturned", with the clitoris represented by his lower knob, the lips represented by the two outer arms, the vulvar fissure representend by the central arm. And when the "candelabra" or "Overturned" or "Octopus" has five arms, the four not-central arms represent both the little and bid vulvar lips.