We have seen that Astarte was in some ways the passport to
Venetians to being touched with local population.
And we found very interesting monument in
that is a very small shrine which has a very great importance,
because this shrine is surely devoted to this goddess, and this is very old one.
So this is the Temple of Astarte as we could escalate it in
the last seasons in 2012 to 2016.
And you see it is a very simple cellar with a single room,
a niche and an entrance which is a porch.
So its shape actually is Taken from a very common
typology of traditional religious architecture of
the Lavant which has been again replicated in Murcia.
They are very nice furbishing.
So, you'll see here the plan of the building.
The small blocks of sand stones were used in the passages, in the porch, and
especially in the protruding niche which is on the rear side of the building.
This is very interesting because the building is oriented exactly north-south,
and to the south there is the planets of Venus,
which was connected to this goddess.
While to the north, there was the mount of the city of the local population,
the where there was one of the most famous sacred temples of this goddess,
the temple dedicated to Venus, Astarte, Aphrodite.
And you see here the temple in it's second configuration in the 5th century BC.
You see it was transformed when the circle, the sacred compound was closed,
and the belief was in some ways restricted because of this.
And you see that we found a very nice lamp and they deposit foundation
in this pot which was exactly reduced so this is very interesting.
So we see the temple, its orientation and
the magnificent top hill Temple of Venus in Eryx
that is also known from a statement of Cicero
mentioning it during his work against.
The governors of Sicily,
who had robbed this temple which was very rich already in antiquity.
And we go now to the finds, because the finds are in some ways again
connected with all the count, we are dealing with in the secular of Motza.
That you see that there was a deposit that means the pit that was filled with
offerings with two signals, which are actually two round stones.
One is a basal stone, so it is black, and the other is white.
And these two signals possibly hint at the gods Baal and Astarte.
Then we found in the deposit some very interesting items.
One is a bronze symbol.
Everything was broken in half, and this is very interesting because
it means that there was a ritual which is called obliteration.
It means objects are broken into halves,
one is deposited in the deposit, the other is thrown away.
And this is a way for meaning that everything is dedicated to the goddess,
and no one can use it again as it was used for air.
So again, we found the the flute, but not a traditional flute,
a flute made of a goat metacarpal, that is an old-fashioned flute.
As it was done in the Near East by the Canaanites and
other people already in the third and second millenium B.C. so it was a way
of giving to the goddess special items which are this old fashioned style.
Then of course, there were some inscriptions,
some inscribed vaulted object.
Unfortunately they are not very well preserved, but
there was a tortoise shell, with the name.
That means to the great goddess,
which is the epitaph of Astarte.
And there is another find which is very interesting,
is a antique cup with the ring base and in the ring base there was
a cross in the middle meaning that it was dedicated to the goddess.
And an inscription mentioning the Greek epithet of this goddess
which was [INAUDIBLE] a very nice name that means shining.
So you see how powerful was this ideology started.
It was able to connect together Greeks, local populations, and Phoenicians,
three parts of the Mediterranean, which were meeting together.
And they were mixing up by melting together by means
of this goddess, this very important one.
You see, some moments during the recovery of items,
again, the mound for bread a`nd again is a knife and these vessels.
Actually, there were foot of Greek vessel of important vessel which
had been cut to be reused as funnels to pour offering liquids for libations.
So it's a very special right that we trust them and document it by these finds.
You see that also there's small weight had been cutting off.
So everything was cut into two pieces to be dedicated to the goddess.
And there is also a very nice paint of the.
In the same area, an ivory miniature door was found.
This actually was possible was on top of the lid of a,
cap or a small vessel, like a to conceal,
to contain perfumes or an oil, which an ointment,
which was offered to the goddess.
And this ivory miniature dove is suggests us
that this was the sacred animal of Astarte.
And that was very common in temples of Astarte to have these white doves.