Pre-Roman water worship in the Iberian Peninsula, with a focus on the colonial world
Qi Qi, editor of Huajue Historical Circle, presents you with in-depth articles.
In this newsletter, I will focus on the pre-Roman cult of water in the Iberian Peninsula, particularly in the colonial and Iberian world. Although there is little documentation for this period, by studying the data from later and ethnography itself, we can apply it to earlier moments where direct testimony was lacking.
On the peninsula, in the commercial and colonial presence of the Mediterranean peoples (Phoenicians, Greeks and Punics), certain rituals associated with the waters were traced, often in coastal areas.
These rituals are closely related to the religious, commercial, and ** functions of water. Whereas water was the primary and vital function of navigators when entering coastal springs to store navigators.
In the early archalist Mediterranean world, researchers can clearly see navigators' attention to odysseys or similar journeys. Through myths and stories, we can learn about real-life freshwater needs and disputes.
In the Iberian Peninsula, coastal protected areas are often associated with freshwater springs and may cite many sources related to freshwater springs**. Thus, the presence of offerings, such as bronze hulls, could have been very important in the rivers of the southern Atlantic Ocean in Andalusia.
02 Heroes such as Menetius and other authors such as Strabo are related to heroes such as Menetius, and researchers believe that they can be corrected. Upon arrival, they drank and consulted in oracles about the legal and political conditions of commercial exchanges.
Even when crossing oceans, it is necessary to find the necessary advice to alleviate the distress. From Schulten, the oral site associated with the name Menetius is located precisely at the mouth of the Guadalet, perhaps the connection to the Holy Land from written sources to the discovery of an early Corinthian helmet already cited.
Cadiz has a close commercial relationship with Athens, and Philostellus will tell researchers elsewhere. Did Cádiz control the Oracle of the Temple of Menesteo on the other side of the bay, in Guadalet – where the ruins of Donna Blanca are today – and all of Greece's ** in the Far West?
This seems more reasonable. The sanctuary and the wonderful springs are also associated with Heraclion in Cádiz: the source of drinking water mentioned by Strabo and Pliny, whose regime changes in the opposite direction of the tides by descending into some steps.
The paradox of antiquity, for which rationalist writers such as Strabo tried to give a natural explanation. This irregular regime may have a prophetic verbal character, as Pliny cites the famous Palencia fontes Tamaric.
But in the Phoenician cult of Heraclion in Cádiz, this double ** must fulfill the functions of the divine and protive, as Sidon is known to researchers.
The aqueduct with the Throne Pool of Astarte in the Temple of Ashmon, studied in depth by Dunand, or the Sanctuary of Tyre, perhaps a structural model of Haraklihunga, which was recently mentioned in her Melqart study.
Water and refuge were repeatedly linked in the Phoenician-Punic world of the West. In the Punic Sanctuary of the caves on the island of Ibiza there are remains of water, which must be related to the cult of female divinity fertility, Tanit, proposed by M.
In turn, in the Sanctuary of Iraplana, on the islet at the entrance to the old port of Ibiza, the Roman cistern recorded by Mania in excavations in 1953 can answer that it is also related to earlier sacred structures related to water.
In ancient times, the sanctuary of Asclepius originated with the Phoenicians, and although archaeological documentation is scarce, it may be related to the incubation ritual, as suggested by some terracotta typologies.
Models of these small individual beds, low and isolated, are unclear to researchers as corresponding to the cult of Ashmon, whose priesthood of Ebusitano would be proven many centuries later in the epithet of one of the black holes of Fortuna in Murcia.
In Ampurias, water will acquire a similar ** function, possibly through the incubators around the sanctuary of Asclepius. Around the Asklepieion, Empuritan developed a kind of passage of guas, similar to that recorded in other Greco-Roman sanctuaries of the Mediterranean.
But the ultimate fate of the ** division of Asclepius of Emprian Hellenism doomed the purification and ** water of those cisterns that had been healthy and remarkable for centuries, and the gods could have protected.
Nevertheless, the statues were eventually stored in the cistern of Neapolis, suggesting that whoever deposited the statues there continued to believe in the divine power of water, the same gods that the statues were ultimately commissioned or condemned.
Among the Roman sculptures related to the Alhama de Alhama Springs in Almeria, Lorenzo Cara Barrionuevo and Juana María Rodríguez López propose to talk.
In the sculptures of the Roman villa of El Ruedo, in Almedinilla, Córdoba, some of the sculptures are thrown into the water, which can be ambiguous. A magical relationship is established between the water and the statue, as it is considered a living thing that can be submerged or condemned to the cold and dampness of the former.
Some of the characteristics of these rituals are still recorded among the Spanish people today.
Research shows that some church saints such as San Pedro Apostol, San Blas, San Marcos and San Bernabe, have been paid by the community by ending the rain.
It has been suggested that this is a pagan remnant, especially in relation to La Rioja. But the researchers say it's just a mechanical transfer and doesn't necessarily mean an adaptation of the content.
These images may have symbolized the image of a river, fertilizing the Sagunting land and supplying water to the community. In addition, some of the sculptures may be related to funerary cults related to the fecundity of water.
The theological vocabulary of the Roman era is unusually diverse, possibly related to the abundance of demons and local deities in the pre-Roman period. Thus, the functional and utilitarian nature of the deities is closely associated with this place.