Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum
Dark Mother, Dark Others, and a new World
Case of Sardinia
After publication of Dark mother. african origins and
godmothers in 2001, I have been taking students to on-site exploration
of its themes, and have come to realize the importance of cultural
and political phenomena on african migration paths in Europe.
I have also been struck by the significance of return migrations
of semites for understanding world history. My research has
encompassed Sicily, Sardinia, and Tuscany in Italy, Andalucia in Spain,
and the south of France, places where I have found a similar pattern:
*african migration paths marked by menhirs and dolmens; *signs (color
ochre red and pubic V) of the african dark mother;*
stone images of the dark mother after 25,000 BCE; * images
as black madonnas and other dark woman divinities in the
common epoch. *african healing water rituals,, *great
prehistoric art remembered in modern art, and *early heresies which are
remembered in contemporary transformative cultural and political
movements.
This essay, focusing on Sardinia, is part of a book in progress, The
future has an ancient heart. Legacy of african migration paths
in Sicily, Sardinia and Tuscany in Italy, Andalucia in Spain,
and the south of France. The book is intended
to stimulate others to consider my hypothesis of the significance of
african migration paths in other places in the world.
My work on the legacy of african migrations to islands and countries
of Europe is based on the consensus of world scientists that *modern humans,
homo sapiens sapiens, emerged in south and central Africa 100,000
BCE. * L. Luca Cavalli Sforza and other geneticists of the
world have proven in the DNA that africans, after 50-60,000 BCE migrated
to all continents, taking their beliefs with them. This research
converges with the *work of archeologist Emmanuel Anati on the rock
art of the world and on the *scholarship of feminist scholars that
major signs of the african dark mother were the color ochre red
and the pubic V, pointing to women's generation of life. My
work also converges with the scholarship of Marija Gimbutas' confirmation
of many images of women divinities in Europe, and
of world studies of Heide Goettner-Abendroth on matriarchy, referring
to the original meaning of the word – mothers in the beginning. This
essay is particularly indebted to Emmanuel Anati's discovery of the
archeological site at Har Karkom, where africans in 40,000
BCE created the oldest sanctuary we know at Mt. Sinai, origin
place of the world's dominant religions, a sanctuary characterized by dolmens
and menhirs incised to look like humans.
(1)
Sardinia
Geologically, Sardinia is the oldest part of Italy. Africans
in migration probably arrived in Sardinia before 50,000 BCE, moving
inland from the seacoast about 4300-3000 BCE. They engaged in the
obsidian trade (the black gold of antiquity), and sculpted figurines of their
divinity, who may be seen today in the national museums of Cagliari
and Sassari. Early on they developed art depicting
the woman deity and animals such as bulls and rams as sacred.. In
Sardinia we visited some of the 140 collective burial places that
are associated with dolmens. When our study tour visited Pranu Mutteddu
we were hushed into silence viewing the rows of sixty menhirs converging on
underground burial tombs at Goni.
After african migrations to Sardinia, the other significant migrations
were of semites, originally african, in return migrations. After
2300 BCE semites (a language group) from Ur in west Asia called "peoples
of the sea," or the shardana, swept through
Europe carrying images of a nurturant dark mother (offering her breasts),
settling in Sardinia. After 1500 BCE canaanites (called phoenicians
by the greeks) from Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon took icons of the dark
mother all over the "known world," in a peaceful trading empire whose
base was Carthage in Africa, and whose hub was Sardinia.
Although the dark mother was subsequently subordinated, and whitened by
greeks, romans, and the christian church, the memory of the
african dark mother continued to be transmitted in the common epoch
by subaltern classes not only in images of black madonnas and other dark
women divinities of the world, but in other folklore- - crafts, art,
stories, rituals, dance, and song – conveying her values – *justice
with nurturance/compassion/healing, *equality of all her children;*transformation.
In Sardinia in the Barbagia, oldest and unvanquished interior
of the island, the memory of the dark african mother
has been kept .in figurines of the dark mother , and in rituals,
notably in dances (the lestru, dillu, passu torrau, ballu thoppu, boche
seria, boche notte), and in songs transmitting lyrics of poets as
well as improvised lyrics with non-words that end in "ma," the
oldest sound in the world. Music of the Barbagia is very similar
to the rap music of contemporary african/americans . The typical
canto a tenore of the Barbagia imitates sounds of animals and nature:-
- e.g., :sounds of bellowing of an ox, bleating of a sheep, whistling
and hissing of the wind-- sounds that hark back to primordial singing
of Africa as well as everywhere africans, and their descendants, migrated;
for example, in Oceania. (2)
Semitic shardana, "peoples of the sea"
The people who created the thousands of nuraghi, cone shaped structures
that have become the symbol of Sardinia, have been the subject
of a good deal of speculation. A book recommended to me by sardinian
scholars, Lawrence Melis, Shardana. I Popoli del Mare, has
been helpful because of its extensive documentation. The
people known as "peoples of the sea", according
to Melis, are the shardana,, who gave Sardinia its name. The
shardana were semites, whom Melis identifies as the lost
tribe of Dan, a semitic tribe who venerated a dark mother.
Fleeing a three hundred year famine in Ur (Mesopotamia) the shardana
expanded after 2300-2000 BCE into the anatolian peninsula, then into
central and northern Europe, leaving clues to their presence in names;
e.g., along the Danube (Dan) and the Dnieper (Dn) rivers, into the Baltic
and Scandinavia, and into Ireland ("Danny Boy"). Another
group of these semitic shardana went south to Syria and the Dead
Sea, then into Greece, Crete, Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia (where they
settled). and thence, in a reprise of early african migrations , to
the northern coast of Africa.
According to Melis, the shardana arrived in Sardinia 2300 – 2000
BCE, about the same time they arrived in Tuscany
and Latium on the mainland of Italy,as well as on the Balearic islands
off Spain, and on Crete and Cyprus. For this essay, it is sufficient
to note that these semites, like everyone else, were african in
origin, and revered a woman divinity. The woman divinity of the shardana
is glimpsed in bronze age cruciform figurines of a female and
in many statuettes offering her nurturing breasts- - figurines very
similar to those on other african migration paths in Europe.
The "peoples of the sea"/shardana have been described
as violent; but this is unclear because the 7000 bee-hive shaped
megalithic structures (nuraghi) associated with shardana settlements have
no evidence of weapons. The shardana are enigmatic; their warrior
shields resemble women's breasts, with nipples. Icons
of shardana warriors feature four eyes; Dianne Jenett pointed
out to me that four eyes are characteristic of the earlier eye
goddess of Tell Brak of Iraq (ca. 3000 BCE)(3)
The point at hand for mediterranean, sardinian, sicilian, italian
, and world history, is that the shardana, in Sardinia, an
island which archeologists regard as a museum of the prehistory of
Europe, venerated a dark mother, whom Melis calls Mater Mediterranea. The
connection with african beliefs is suggested in that menhirs and
dolmens were central icons of nuragic communities. Figurines
of women in nuragic communities hold the solar disk, symbol of african
veneration of the sun; hold their breasts in an african nurturant
gesture, and there is evidence that they engaged in african
water rituals. . Nuraghi of Sardinia resemble sanctuaries
in Zimbabwe in Africa.
In Sardinia, the belief in the dark mother and her values appears to be
continuous from prehistory to the present. Ancient caves where early
african migrants lived were later called domus de Janus by the romans;
today these caves are popularly considered dwellings of women with
supernatural powers. In Sardinia the early christian church at Saccargia
was originally megalith in form . Inside the church at
Saccargia (rebuilt in the middle ages),we saw two black madonnas.
Semitic canaanites
Canaanites in Sardinia (whom the greeks called phoenicians) arrived after
the shardana, mixed with them, and shared the belief in the dark
mother that characterizes sardinian history. Sardinia during the presence
of the canaanites was the hub of a peaceful trading empire based
at Carthage in Africa. Reaching the Spanish Levant in the west, Cyprus
in the east, and Tuscany and Sicily in Italy, the mediterranean
network was characterized by a shared belief in the dark mother.(4)
Who were the canaanites once millennia of slurs(5) are
cast aside? Semites, they came (after the expansion
of the shardana) to Sardinia from Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon., founding
coastal settlements where they enjoyed good relations with the ancient
originally african peoples of the interior as well with the semitic shardana.(6) Semitic
canaanites offer a dramatic case of how defeated peoples are treated by
chroniclers who write history for the winners. Defeated earlier by the
israelites, vanquished later by the romans, maligned in judeo/christian
scriptures, canaanites have been disparaged ever since by historians who
mindlessly repeat spurious libels.(7) What
happened to the canaanite belief in the dark mother after canaanites were
vanquished by the israelites? My research in submerged beliefs
suggests that the memory of the dark mother remained in suppressed
beliefs of Palestine and Israel, as well as in beliefs of subaltern
classes of Europe whose genetic and/or cultural inheritance held
a memory of early african migrations and later semitic migrations, beliefs
that are suggested in the values associated with early
icons of the dark mother and with the folklore of black madonnas- - *justice
with nurturance/healing, *equality, and *transformation..
Italians, in an 1988 exhibit under the direction of Sabatino Moscati,
took the lead in revisiting the canaanites, displaying a stunning collection
of sarcophaghi, jewelry, scarabs, amulets, ivory and bone articles,
bronzes, metallic cups, glassware, ceramics, and many figurines of
a nurturant woman divinity offering her breasts .(8) The
historic exhibit and catalog edited by Moscati support my hypothesis
that belief in the dark african mother is accompanied by great art. The
exhibit did not address the issue of african origins, the shared
canaanite ancestry of both palestinians and israeli, and their shared
suppressed belief in the dark mother.
Recent research has uncovered the pervasive presence of icons of
a woman divinity in early Syria and Palestine.(9) The
University of Pennsylvania Museum has produced a postcard book, Facing
Antiquity.Canaan and Ancient Israel, illustrating canaanite
artefacts found in Israel- - notably figurines of women offering their
breasts, the pubic V, and mother and child figurines. These
artifacts are very like african and canaanite art found in Sardinia,
Sicily, Spain, and elsewhere in the ancient canaanite network. Western
historians, perhaps blinkered by the unscientific notion of a white race,(10) try
to differentiate characteristics and cultures of west asian canaanites from
those of african carthaginians. For Moscati (and for me)
this is an impossible task- - the artefacts are alike. (11)
Canaanite Astarte, whose west asian antecedents were Cybele, Inanna,
and Anat, easily melded with african Isis and Tanit. Semites worshiped
these icons of the dark mother along with her male consort.. In the case
of Isis this was a trinity of Isis, her husband Osiris, and
their son Horus, a trinity that differs from the father/son/holy ghost
of christian doctrine. It is the african version of the trinity -
- mother, father, son- - that has persisted in vernacular christian
beliefs of italians, the french, the irish, and others, a popular
trinity of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.
Semitic influence in Sardinia dates from the nuragic (shardana)
culture after 2300 BCE followed by canaanites in the millennium before
Mary and Jesus. In the common epoch, semitic moors from west Asia and Africa
returned to the islands and countries embraced by the Mediterranean. In Dark
mother, I discussed the basque enclave in Spain that
resisted aryan incursions; earlier the basque area of Spain
extended east in Spain and into France. The basque influence
came with the catalans to Sardinia, (in Spain there is a major
sanctuary of a black madonna at Montserrat outside Barcelona.), re-enforcing earlier
beliefs in the african dark mother (Barcelona was founded by african
carthaginians) . In the 20th century the dark mother's legacy
of justice and equality was re-enforced by sardinians Antonio Gramsci and
Enrico Berlinguer who brought her values to italian, and world,
politics.
Intuitions of D. H. Lawrence on his trip to Sardinia in 1921 have
helped me trust my own, e.g., the attraction (from prehistory to
the present) of men to women which led not to violent conquest in
some cases, e.g., sardinians, , but to imitation, and to the political
legacy of the dark mother. At a carnival Lawrence noted a man
dressed in a woman's peasant costume with a "ribboned
whip" and "frilled drawers." He came across male
sardinians wearing phrygian stocking caps, reminding me that french revolutionaries
wore this same cap that remembers devotees of the anatolian mother
divinity. "(12)
In sardinian women he found "something shy and defiant and un-get-at-able," reminding
me of my sense of the ancient wisdom and forza of sardinian and sicilian
women when I was researching italian feminists in the 1970s and 80s. (13)Italy,
and Sicily and Sardinia in particular, reminded Lawrence of something
old, "so primitive, so pagan, so strangely heathen and half-savage.
. . .Man has lived there and brought forth his consciousness there and
in some way brought that place to consciousness. . . . Strange and wonderful
chords awake in us and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete
forgetfulness."(14)
The chords, ultimately african, can still be heard in Sardinia,
resonating in carnival black masks of the mamuthone (whose smiles,
after centuries of foreign domination) are contorted into twisted mouths) and
in the carnival ritual that sardinians share with basques of Spain-
- men wearing black masks and sheep fleeces climbing hill and dale
clanging huge bells on their backs. In Sardinia, as elsewhere, the
veil covering the pagan substratum of christian festivals is
very thin; May lst, day of the mother, was turned by
the church into a celebration of sant'Efiso. Yet in Cagliari
on May lst, the ancient music of shepherd flutes, the
launeddas, remember the dark mother
Sardinians are at once ancient and look to a better world. They put signs
of the ancient civilization of the african dark mother into their
handicrafts, producing beautiful rugs, tapestries, costumes, stunning
jewelry, and arresting shapes of breads and pastas. They paint murals to
convey outrage at social injustice while images, rituals, handicrafts,
and politics remember the dark mother and her values: justice
with nurturance/compassion/healing, equality, and transformation.
Lawrence helps us see these values of the dark mother before patriarchy
tried to allocate different characteristics to men and women
and separated humans from animals. Nurturance, for example. Lawrence
noted a "black-gowned St. Anthony nursing a boy child. . . he looked
a sort of male Madonna." He realized that sardinians
held non-patriarchal views of sexuality. . . men in close breeches
dancing together. . . men dressed like women during carnival, when
scarlet [color of the dark mother] cloth is everywhere. He
observed that in Sardinia, as late as 1921, pigs had to have
tickets to travel on a bus, "as if Christian." At the same
time, Lawrence helps us understand male anxiety in patriarchal cultures
about women. . He admired sardinian women in scarlet and rose-pink
striding along., yet, the britisher added, "I would not like to tackle
one of them." (15)
Sardinia helps us understand the influence that Africa held in mediterranean
regions, an african influence that lived on in descendants of africans
- - in the shardana who created the high civilization of the bronze age
in Sardinia, then in the canaanites, who created a high civilization and
trading empire "without any of the characteristics of conquest." Until
very recently, historians have repeated, and repeated, lurid and untrue
tales about canaanites sacrificing infants to the nurturant goddess Tanit.
Peaceful traders, canaanites sailed with their west asian divinity
Astarte and african divinities, Isis and Tanit, established entrepots and
settlements, yet left other people to their own beliefs, and left them
alone to govern themselves in democratic assemblies.
Network rather than empire, canaanites coming out of Syria, Palestine,
and Lebanon reached Cadiz in Spain in 1110 BCE, Utica in Africa
in 110l BCE, and about the same time, Lixus on the atlantic coast
of Morocco. They established their base at Carthage in Africa. in
811 BCE, the same year they founded Palermo, my ancestral maternal place
in Sicily. Later, in 654 BCE, canaanites founded Ibiza off eastern Spain, island
with a treasure of icons and artefacts of the african dark mother. that
has become the festive gay capitol of the world. Looking for silver in
Spain, tin in Cornwall in Britain, and amber in the Baltic, canaanites
are said to have circumnavigated Africa in their journeys taking images,
as well as the just and egalitarian values, of the dark mother, everywhere
in the ancient world.
Although greeks never came to Sardinia, their mother/daughter divinities
Demeter and Core reached the island via north Africa. The romans
brought the aryan legacy of hierarchy, violence, and subordination of the
dark mother to Sardinia as well as elsewhere. . Christianity brought
a mixed legacy where the new religion was interpreted differently
by dominant and subordinated classes. The subaltern culture
put its own gloss on christianity with a continuing memory
of the pagan dark mother manifested in residues of african belief, notably
in black madonnas, and in stories and rituals transmitting pagan values
of justice with nurturance/compassion/ healing, equality, and transformation At
Monastir today, sardinians live as primitive christians with these
pagan values.
A random sampling of canaanite artefacts in museums of Sardinia
includes the sign of Tanit at Nora and many figurines of women
offering their breasts at Sulcis, Monte Sirai, Tharros, Castagnino, and
Nora. Canaanite jewelry celebrated african Isis, as well as her
husband Osiris and their child Horus. Other african themes are evident
in a figurine of a woman encircled with serpents; earrings with a falcon
as Horus, pendant with eye of Horus, amulet with Horus, lions, ankh at
Sulcis, figurine of a woman holding a solar disk to her breast at Monte
Sirai, enthroned divinity at Cagliari, winged sphinx, scarab of Isis
enthroned, scarab with seated lions, scarab with ankh, many
scarabs with Isis and Osiris, amulets of cats, amulets of falcons, eyes
of Horus, amulet of a cow nursing a calf, amulet of Sekhmet, winged sphinx, razor
of Isis and Osiris, pitcher whose spouts are hands offering breasts (16).
The legacy for Europe of african migrations in Sardinia is vividly seen
in feminist precursors Eleonora de'Arborea and Grazia De Ledda .
The political heresy that continues to unsettle the sleep of the dominant
classes of the world to the present is the communism grounded on sardinian
beliefs in the values of the dark mother of Antonio Gramsci, major
marxist theorist, and of Enrico Berlinguer, communist premier of Italy
in the 1970s.
Eleonora d'Arborea in the 14th century refused to acknowledge the
rule of the aragonese and united sardinians in resistance to the
spanish invaders. Eleonora's name, Sa Judikessa, points
to the value of justice. Considered mother of Sardinia, she promulgated
the Carta du Logu in 1392. Written in the sardinian language, the charter
affirmed equal rights and equal legal status of all women and men. Grazia
De Ledda at the age of 15 began to write down ancient customs
of the Barbagia and won the Nobel Prize in 1926, first woman writer to
have done so.
Antonio Gramsci, perhaps the major marxist theorist of our time, was born
at Ales in Sardinia near an obsidian mountain (ancients associated
the prehistoric obsidian trade with the dark mother). Founder
of the italian communist party, Gramsci ‘s prison writings stress
the significance of subaltern folk beliefs in justice and equality
for the cultural revolution that neessarily precedes, or accompanies, authentic
political revolution. Enrico Berlinguer, italian communist
prime minister of the 1970s and l980s, also born in Sardinia at Sassari,
offered a model of uncorrupted communism. He proposed an "historic
compromise" between communism and religion, and "eurocommunism."
When our study tour viewed Santa Cristina's well in Sardinia,
Trish exclaimed "Totally Tanit!." The early christian
well, remembering african water rituals, is formed precisely in the
shape of african/semitic woman divinity Tanit of Carthage. In
the 1970s, in one of those curious upwellings of ancient beliefs, the
ankh, or figure of Tanit, became the symbol of international feminism.
1. For an extensive
bibliography of this scholarship see first chapter of my Dark
mother. African
origins and godmothers. (New York, Chicago, Lincoln, and Shanghai,
iUniverse, .2001).
2. A singing group has brought this ancient form to Europe and the
United States. We heard Tenores de Oniferi at Freight and Salvage
Coffee House in Berkeley, California on October 26, 2003.
3. In her christian version, the eye goddess became santa Lucia. (see
chapter 5, dark mother. Loc.Cit.).
4.
See Salvatore Moscati, Italia Punica. Con la collaborazione
di Sandro Filippo Bondi (Milano, Rusconi, 1995).
5. The slurs, or libels, of the canaanites, are similar to those cast historically
on the jews until these were dispersed in the 20th century, after the holocaust
and world war two.
6. See Sabatino Moscati, Il Tramonto di Cartagine.Scoperte
archeologiche in Sardegna e nell'areamediterranea (Torino,
Societa' Internazionale, 1993). .
7. The major libel, that canaanites sacrificed infants to their woman divinity,
Tanit, has been refuted by contemporary archeologists. When I visited a
tophet in Mozia, it was an infant cemetery alongside an adult burial ground. See
Sabatino Moscati, Italia Punica. Loc. Cit., for revised view
of tophets, see p. 19.
8. See I Fenici. Direzione scientifica di Sabatino Moscati,
catalog of the 1988 exhibit at Venice.
9. Ebla to Damascus.. Art
and Archeology of Ancient Syria, ed., Harvey Weiss (Seattle
and London, Smithsonian Institution in association with University of
Washington Press, 1985)
10. See works of L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who, with other world geneticists,
documented in the DNA that we are one human race; that skin color differences
are due to climate. See Dark mother, Loc. Cit. for a discussion
of this scholarship.
11. I Fenici , Loc. Cit., has ca. 1200 photographs of canaanite
artefacts from Spain, Sardinia, Sicily, Cyprus, and Carthage.
12. Ibidem. See also p. 63.
13. See Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Liberazione della donna. Feminism
in Italy (Wesleyan University Press, 1986, American Book Award of
the Before Columbus Foundation ,1987, paperback 1988).
14. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia (Penguin Books, 1997, Introduction,
p. xix., pp 116-7.
15. Ibid., p 130, pp. 144-5.
16. See I Fenici, Loc. Cit.
