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One day Umberto Eco was asked about the meaning of the Medieval Latin verse at the end of his novel “The name of the Rose”: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.
After an erudite dissertation on a verse from the De contemptu mundi by 12th-century monk Bernardo Cluniacense, he said: “the idea of The name of the Rose came up almost by chance and I liked it because the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in literary meaning it hardly has any meaning left at all (…) the title rightly disorientated the reader, who was unable to choose just one interpretation (…). A title must muddle the reader’s ideas, not regiment them (…). The author should die once he has finished writing. Not to trouble the path of the text”.

 

Pyrgos kai polis, the city and the tower, might be the title of a novel, but it is an archaeological exhibition in the Museum ANTIQVARIVM ARBORENSE of Oristano.
The reader-user of the exhibition will be immediately bewildered by the Baroque engraving of the Tower of Babel kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, and also by the artistic installation of a ziqquarat, wrapped in a sheet with Hebrew, Greek, Arab, Cyrillic, English words and a third Tower of Babel, the renowned tower by Pieter Bruegel kept in the Kunthistoriches Museum of Vienna.
 

At this point the visitor, confused by a babel of senses, enters a museum that refers to Creation, just like children during a catechism lesson, on the basis of Genesis: at the beginning…..but Creation is specified by an eighteenth- century map of the territory of Oristano and archaeological finds dating from different ages related to the world of plants (olive-tree, palm), of animals (oxen, panther, swan, baboon), and the world of men: the praying clay men from Neapolis, the stone men (2nd century BC stele from Riola and San Vero Milis), and bronze heroes (valuable Nuragic bronze figurines from Terralba and Mogoro).
 

Beside men, the signs of men’s work, biblically seen as “sweat of the brow”: Prehistoric weaving and woodworking tools, Nuragic bronze objects, shears dating from the Roman period, miner’s picks and an iron plough from the Montiferru and Terralba.
 

Then you find yourself in front of a mysterious door: the door of Hades that gives access to the invisible cities by Italo Calvino…here you see the cities of the dead, the cities of sons and daughters who passed through the fire and the cities of gods.
 

We do not reveal this involved processional route among stone pinnacles, sarcophagi, stele, horrid masks, cinerary urns and a leonine goddess from Tharros crowned with gold and silver, the marbles of Aphrodite from Neapolis and Saturnus engraved on a stone from Santulussurgiu.
 

Then you enter a corridor where the archaeological finds (from the sea and the territories of Oristano and Sulcis) are imagined as if they were submerged by the Flood with all the works of an evil mankind, in order to represent in a metaphorical sense the different cultures brought to light by archaeologists.
Through the pictures of Zeus’ flood you reach the upper floor with the new route of men from the village to the city. In fact, as the Bible attests, Polis kai pyrgos is the attempt of men to “make a name by building a city and a tower” in the plain of Senaar (Babylon).
 

During the ninth century, it was believed that nuraghi were the towers built by men escaped from the East when God, angered by the arrogance of the Tower of Babel’s builders, confused their languages. A very high nuraghe, the nuraghe Longu of Samugheo, recalls the xylography of the Tower, symbol of this exhibition: the people of the territory of Oristano began their difficult route through the villages 8000 years ago. The nuraghi were built around 3500 years ago. Sardinian people took part in the first Phoenician settlements in Tharros, Othoca and Bosa just 2650 years ago.
A panel shows an Egyptian scribe squatted near a ziqqurat of Babel from which different writings come out: Semitic, Greek, Latin, Hebrew words from the territory of Oristano, sign of multiculturalism in the cities enriched by Mediterranean people.
There are jewels from Tharros and scarab seals from Tharros and Neapolis, but also Punic, Etruscan, Latin, Greek and Hebrew inscriptions. Worth mentioning is the first Etruscan inscription from Tharros (end of the 4th century BC), found in 1886 in the south area of the necropolis and unknown until now.
 

Then Roman cities with the august gods, represented by emperors’ statues from Cornus, Forum Traiani and Tharros, and stories of gladiators in the amphitheatres of Tharros and Forum Traiani, bronze tables of the patrons of Vselis (Usellus) and Neapolis, signs of war as Nuragic weapons, Phoenician lances, Roman catapults, slingers’ projectiles, the helmet of a legionary of the battle of Cornus (215 BC), the dedication to August from Sardinian people of Barbagia and the indecent writing (50 BC) on a military fortress in Meana, in the heart of the Barbagia region.
 

We walk on a paved road with milestones from Forum Traiani and Tharros towards the mezzanine floor where, on a Nuragic bronze ship, we see the ports of the Mediterranean Sea and their valuable and attractive goods from Argolis (Greece), from Palestine with Philistines, from Cyprus, Egypt, Corinth, Samos, Carthage, Etruria, Rome, Campania, Baetica and Gaul, just like the poem by Kostantinos Kavafis:
As you set out for Ithaca hope your road is a long one full of adventure, full of discovery. (…) Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbours you are seeing for the first time: may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind; as many sensual perfumes as you can and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars*.
 

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