[MUSIC] One of the most amazing monuments of Motyan of the Mediterranean is the Circular Temenos. This circle, 118 meters of diameters around, 300 meters of length, all built with this single wall enclosing a second area. The area of the springs and the area of many idol sacred installation, like this Betial. The store, free-standing stall, within the market place, which we found a female pelvis of a young lady, aged 12, 14 years, and the milk teeth of a child. So these strange finds, point to human sacrifices, which are performed by definitions in this sacred area, but we found also many human teeth that solid all around bottom of the wall hiding at some interior ridges, meaning that we cannot now completely grasp. At the northern side, at the northern tip of the circle was the stela and there was a secondary entrance just for the priest, for example, because it's very narrow. And this stela was exactly indicated in the north, so the reason the circle was used in connection with star watching and interpretation. As we move just west from this installation, another interesting feature is visible in the inner wall of the Temenos, that means of the sacred proceeding to which is a niche with a special stall inside, which is alabaster, and this stall and niche were found filled up with offerings. Some of these offerings were beautiful statuettes and its cub depicting Pegasus, the winged horse. Then as we move farther west, we can notice something, which is interesting from the point of view of the building of this monument, because we have here the narrowest point of the circle which is 0.7 meters wide. This is possibly the place in which the two different groups of workers met and joined their work, completing the circle. So it's a very interesting monument. And it's a quite unusual monument, but very important. At the joint between the Circle Temenos and the Temple of Astarte, another series of offerings of symbolic installations can tell us some more about this extraordinary sacred area. There were of course stones just marking the place where offerings were performed. There was here a circular deposit where a fantastic shell was found during the epithet, that means the name of the goddess in Greek. These gave us really another wonderful hint for understanding the religious world of these goddess, because the name that the Greek used to give to Astarte of Motya was Aglaia. Aglaia means shining, so it records the road that the goddess had has a star. And reminds us that the Phoenicians were seamen, were people crossing the Mediterranean and they needed stars. So the sanctuary, which was connected with fresh waters as you remember, actually connected to the sky and the name of the Astarte, Aglaia shining is a very long lasting epithet. Imagine that in Italy we still have Madonna della Luce, or if you will recall, you will remind, the beautiful paintings of the Renaissance. You surely know that on the mantle of the Virgin Mary, there is a star here. This is the heritage arriving from the ancient that is the goddess, the goddess Astarte. Some meter far away, we had another unexpected find. Aside these stones, there was the pelvis of a young lady, 12 or 14 years old, which was possibly sacrificed together with the teeth of a child. There are no explanation for this find, but the only suggestion is that we have to do the human sacrifice added to the building of the Temenos, nearby the temple of the goddess. It is in fact another repeating retrieval that we could find, all around this wall, human teeth belonging to young people, which were possibly sacrificed and offered to the goddess to protect this sacred area. The springed area, the sacred area of Baal and Astarte, was encircled by this huge Temenos that is a sacred precinct, a circular wall encompassing the whole area of around two hectares with the diameters of 118 meters and the center, which is exactly the same center of the pool. So, an amazing monument with a very distinguished building technique. And you see from the slide on top, that the temple of Astarte actually was drifting out from the circle. And all, in the last phase, in the last building phase of the sacred area, it was kept by an enclosure area with closed this passage. On the other side, you see the entrance to the north and the building technique is amazing, there are pillars, each three meters. On the other side of the wall, which was possibly visible like now a days. While inside, there are traces of the presence of a white plaster. The upper part of the wall was made of mud bricks. And it's possible, reconstruct to about height was around three meters. So actually it was not possible for the people outside in the city to look inside and to see what was going on in the sacred area. And this is the northern stela that we are seeing, the northern passageway or entrance. And this monument is amazing as it was preserved exactly in the same spot where it was erected. And not far away from it, there were many other offerings found all around these Temenos, this precinct. You see are some examples. There are lamps, there are barbed astragali, and they have several precious items such as coins, such as scarabs. They call it scarabs is like these two amazing examples, one showing a lioness attacking a bull and Pegasus, both teams are connected to Poseidon, that is the Greek name of the god Baal worshipped in the sacred area of the column. Then you have a grypho, which is a clay figurine which is imitating some bronze prototypes, which are known in the so-called Orientalizing period that is the 7th and 6th Century BC. So a variety of items, but all of them are connected with the religious use of the Circular Wall. Now, we move to some very strange findings. Here we are just aside the wall and in this area one meters and a half more or less from the inside curtain wall of the wall, we found many of these stones. These are marking stones in the getting on the plate in which an offering has been deposited. And in one case like this, we found a pelvis of a, human pelvis of a female girl aged 12 to 14. Compiled by the milk teeth of a child and of course this finds such as that human sacrifice could be performed in the sacred area. But we don't have definitely proof about this. Then, as we go ahead, we find several human, in this case male, teeth. These teeth were sowed all around the circular wall. And the meaning of this teeth sowing is almost unknown. There are many as you see and some cases there are also mandibola and the possibility is was a way for protecting the wall by using either teeth taken from heroes that, for example, soldiers which are dead in battle for the city of Motya, or the opposite, they were slaves, which had been sacrificed just for the sake of the protection of the sacred area and the gods. So, you see many of these items are also interesting, because now we are constructing the DNA. And we are just mapping this group if they belong actually to the community or they belong to some group else from elsewhere in the Mediterranean. So a very unusual and a very interesting find.
