For almost a hundred years, a water basin excavated in Motya, Sicily, has been considered a relic of a Phoenician inland port, a so-called kothon. But now new excavations suggest that the pool was in the middle of a temple complex dedicated to the god Baal and had no connection to the sea. Instead, a statue of Baal probably stood at its center. The 2,500-year-old building could thus have been one of the largest sacred pools in the pre-classical Mediterranean region.
On the west coast of Sicily lies the small island of San Pantaleo, formerly Motya, in the middle of a sheltered lagoon. Because of its strategically favorable location, people have settled here since the Bronze Age and used the rich fish stocks for food and the lagoon as a sheltered harbour. Beginning in the eighth century BC, Phoenician settlers arrived on the island and developed Motya into an important port city with trading links throughout the central and western Mediterranean. This brought Motya into conflict with Carthage and culminated in a war in which Motya was temporarily destroyed in the 6th century, but then rebuilt larger and more fortified.
Water basin is a mystery
Already at the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists came across the remains of the Phoenician city and excavated a city wall, relics of temples and a port, among other things. The remains of a rectangular basin some 52 meters long and 37 meters wide were also found in the south of Motya. Because a canal appeared to extend to the sea at one end of this basin, archaeologists at the time interpreted it as the so-called Kothon. “The term kothon was used by Greek and Latin sources to describe the military port of Carthage,” explains Lorenzo Nigro of Rome’s Sapienza University. It was an artificial inland port in the Phoenician city.
Due to the similarity to the Carthaginian Kothon, the Motya basin was also considered such an inland port according to previous interpretations. In the last 20 years, however, archaeologists from Sapienza University around Nigro have continued to explore and excavate the area around the supposed dock and have made numerous finds that do not fit this earlier interpretation. Dating shows that the supposed connecting canal to the sea was only built by the Romans and thus long after the Phoenician era. Previously, the pool was only fed by three freshwater springs, the team reports.
Center of a Phoenician cult complex
Even more crucial is the environment of the Motya Basin: the new excavations revealed that it was surrounded by three large temple structures: a large temple of Baal, which was on the eastern long side of the basin, a temple of Astarte on the north side and the temple of holy water on the north long side. “Excavations from 2009 to 2021 also revealed the Temenos Wall, a 0.70 to 1.50 thick and three meter high wall that encloses the ‘Kothon’ and the temples in a circular area of 118 meters in diameter,” reports Nigro. According to the archaeologist, the position of the three temples around the basin, save of altars, steles and votive offerings suggest that this was a separate Phoenician temple complex – “a place of religious activity dedicated to the sacred waters, heaven and dedicated to the gods associated with it,” says Nigro.
According to the researcher, the setting and layout of the pool suggest that this was not a kothon, but instead a sacred pool built for ritual purposes. “The pool was at the center of one of the largest cult complexes of the preclassic Mediterranean region and probably also served cult purposes,” says Nigro. Remains of a statue and a stone pedestal indicate that a large statue of Baal once stood in the center of the pool. With the temples and basin partly oriented towards astronomy, the site may have helped the Phoenicians observe the movement and positions of constellations and stars important to them, the archaeologist explains.
“The reinterpretation of the Kothon from the Motya makes it one of the largest and best-studied sacred basins of the Preclassic Mediterranean,” states Nigro. “Together with the ‘Maabed’ in Syriac Marit, it illustrates the diverse functions and eclectic symbolism of cult installations in the Phoenician world.”
Source: Antique, doi: 10.15184/aqy.2022.8