The prehistoric altar of Monte d’Accoddi is known to be a “unicum” in the Sardinian archaeological landscape, located 11 km from Sassari near the S.S. 131 to Porto Torres.
In 1952, a young Ercole Contu began a campaign of excavations that lasted until 1958 and were then resumed from 1979 to 1989 by Santo Tinè. Over time, various interesting theories regarding the dating and significance of the monument have emerged, and it would be too extensive to dwell on them. We found particularly interesting and concise an article published by archaeologist Emanuela Katia Pilloni on her blog in April 2015. This article, preceded by a citation from Exodus, is reproduced in its entirety below:
“You shall make an altar of earth for me, and you shall offer your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.” Exodus XX, 24.
In Sardinia, every hillock easily rises to the dignity of a mountain, and there is no distinction between the results of anthropization and those of orogenesis. At Barumini, the imposing nuragic palace appeared as a gentle hillock before Lilliu’s excavations revealed it in its majestic artificiality. The same was true for Monte d’Accoddi: the pseudo-hillock, located 11 km from Sassari and about 5.5 km from the pond and beach of Platamona, hid for millennia, under the false guise of a natural relief, an invaluable treasure in terms of antiquity and uniqueness.
The name: The more or less recent variants of the name – Monti d’Aggodi, Monti d’Agoddi, Monte d’Acode, or Monte La Corra – correspond to different etymological interpretations that have alternated over time: a grass, the kòdoro; the place of collection, accoddi; or the horn, corra. However, it is Professor Virgilio Tetti who offers the most likely reconstruction of the origin of the name, which in the oldest cadastral records is indicated as Monte de Code, meaning Hill of Stones (from coda = stone), and in the medieval condaghe of San Michele di Salvennor, the Spanish rendering of the toponym sounds as Monton de la Piedra.
The structure and excavations: The mirage of the nuraghe hidden from view by stones and earth led the first investigators to search – both desperately and uselessly – for the presence of an inner chamber in Monton de la Piedra. But what emerged from the excavations did not disappoint expectations: a truncated-pyramidal earthwork, circumscribed by a masonry interspace supporting a terrace functioning as a ritual altar, and a long access ramp to the south. From subsequent campaigns, an older altar on a reduced scale emerged, upon which the more recent one rested: it was the original sacello, named the red temple due to the ochre color used for the plaster and floor. The sanctuary was also equipped with offering tables located near the access ramp, one of which – trapezoidal in shape, supported by three bases with seven holes and a natural sinkhole – seems to invoke ritual actions in honor of the Mother Goddess or other chthonic deities. Completing the architectural ensemble is a squared limestone stone – a menhir 4.44 meters high – and a worked spheroidal boulder, variously interpreted as an altar for the sacrifice of lambs – like a Delphic omphalos – or as a solar symbol.
Chronology: The examination of the archaeological material, supported by radiocarbon analyses, has allowed the dating of the oldest structure of Monte d’Accoddi, the so-called red temple, to the Ozieri culture, in the Late Neolithic, between approximately 3,200 and 2,700 BC: one thousand six hundred years before the oldest nuraghi! The site’s occupation continued for a long time – as evidenced by the finds attributable to the Monte Claro, Bell Beaker, and Bonnanaro cultures – until the protohistoric and historic age. A bronze ring bearing the symbol of Christ in the Apocalypse (the alpha and the omega) seems to indicate the probable continuation of the site’s sacred function even in the medieval period, in a context of religious syncretism repeatedly found in island contexts.
Ziggurat and Mastaba: If the formal architectural data refer to some famous Egyptian funerary models – that of the truncated-conical mastaba even more than the pyramid – the religious function and the presence of the ceremonial access ramp seem to relate Monte d’Accoddi more closely to the funerary temples of Montuohtep and Hatshepsut at Deir-el-Bahari, where the metaphorical ascent to the deity is expressed precisely in the stairless ramp.
At the top of the Ziggurat was the small temple where the god resided…
However, the closest comparisons come from Mesopotamia. Today, the ziggurats of the solar god Belo (Baal or Marduk) are looked at with greater interest.
But while the biblical Tower of Babel, or the ziggurat of Babylon, as well as those of Assur and Korsabad, are complex and dateable to the third millennium, the ziggurat of Anu at Uruk appears closer, for simplicity of structure and chronology, where according to the Greek historian Herodotus, among fertility rituals celebrated at the beginning of the agricultural year, there was also the divine hierogamy of heaven with earth, in which the ziggurat served as a nuptial bed.
The altar of Javeh: The reference to the Sacred Scriptures is not out of place. In Exodus, indeed, the manner of constructing the sacred building that God himself indicates to Moses bears strong similarities to the temple of Monte d’Accoddi, both in the use of raw stones and earth (“..you shall not build it with cut stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you profane it”) and in the presence of a ramp without steps (“You shall not go up to my altar by steps, lest your nakedness be exposed”).
Looking to the Near East for models should not mislead. At least for the first discoverer of the temple, Ercole Contu, who summarizes the long-standing question as follows:
“…with similar intentions, means, and needs, in different times and places, men may have created similar and at the same time extraordinary and marvelous things without them having any true relationship with each other. Therefore, it is not wrong to speak of a “miracle” for the monument of Monte d’Accoddi!”
A miracle that reaches to the heavens, speaking to the world of Sardegna.
The photos of the altar of Monte d’Accoddi are by: Gianni Sirigu, Nicola Castangia, Diversamente Sardi, Bibi Pinna, and ArcheoUri Vagando.
