Page 424 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

former Capuchin monastery on Largo Torres Trupia – it’s signposted, right at the top

of the village. It makes an indispensable adjunct to seeing the Morgantina
archeological site, since it’s here that you’ll find everything that was removed from
the ancient city – from ceramics, statuettes and busts to coins, candle-holders and
domestic artefacts. Aerial photos and plans also provide a useful idea of the layout of
the site. The highlights, however, are the objects recently returned to Sicily from

America, after years of legal battles: the exquisite Morgantina Venus (now known as
the Dea di Morgantina, as it’s thought she is, in fact, Demeter); the so-called
Eupolemo Silver, fifteen pieces of tableware dating from the third century BC; and the
acroliths of Demeter and Persephone, the heads, hands and feet of sixth-century BC
statues of the Goddess Demeter, and her daughter Persephone, or Kore.

THE RETURN OF THE GODDESSES

When Greeks began to arrive in Sicily during the eighth century BC, attracted by the
island’s legendary fertility, their cults of gods and goddesses found fecund ground

among the local inhabitants, who lived side by side with the Greeks in provincial
towns such as Morgantina. Over time, indigenous fertility cults of death and rebirth
centred on the annual cycle of harvests became intertwined with the Greek fertility
cult focusing on the goddess Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, abducted by
Hades and taken to the underworld. According to the myth, the summer months
(when nothing grows in Sicily) occur when Persephone is in the underworld; then, at
the beginning of autumn, when the seeds of the old crop are scattered, she returns to

earth to be reunited with Demeter. (Interestingly, when the myth is retold in English,
Persephone is absent from the earth in winter, and returns in spring, the myth having
to be adapted to the exigencies of climate.) That Morgantina, in the agricultural
interior of Sicily, where survival depended on the vagaries of the weather, should
have been home to an immense temple to Demeter and Persephone, is thus no

surprise.
In the summer of 1979, rumours began to circulate in Aidone about the secret

discovery of several marble sculptures. They had been found, the story went, by
illegal excavators, sponsored by the Mafia and working close to the site of
Morgantina, a few kilometres away. A short while later, legal excavations revealed
the foundations of a vast sanctuary at Morgantina dedicated to fertility goddess,
Demeter. But there was no sign of any statues. A few years later, word spread

among the New York art world of the acquisition, by an anonymous collector, of
several elements of ancient Greek statuary. Then in 1986, hitherto unknown
fragments of ancient Greek statues were exhibited at the Paul Getty Museum in
Malibu, on loan from a private and still anonymous collector; American archeologist
Malcolm Bell, director of the legal excavations at Morgantina, was able to establish