“The great state of the sea,” wrote Thucydides, emphasizing the maritime aspect of the war. Moreover, the sea itself has been seen as the cause of differences, political and cultural, and in more recent approaches: especially insular environments, part of archeology has treated them as largely isolated cultural systems for decades.

Exhibition “Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean”presented on Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge from today until June 4, it focuses on the opposite reading: the sea united rather than divided the Mediterranean island cultures, constantly supplying them with raw materials, innovations, legends and, of course, people who, in addition to the invaders, more often moved as traders or settlers. This is explained by the co-curator of the exhibition and the head of the museum’s collection of Greeks, Romans and Cypriots, Dr. Anastasia Christofilopoulou: “Communication is an important part of life on the islands,” she says. “The sea can be a connecting rather than dividing factor, motivating and maintaining informal and formal ties with other islands and with the mainland.”

About 200 exhibits come from three major islands: Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia. Among them, a Sardinian bronze vessel (navicella) from 1000-700 BC stands out. BC. It has a central mast and four side posts that support an equal number of birds and are connected by two latticed parapets also decorated with birds. The vessel belongs to a special category of votive figurines depicting everyday scenes of the Nuragic culture of Sardinia (18-3 centuries BC). “The metal of the small boat is Cypriot copper,” says Mrs. Christophilopoulou, and continues: “He arrived in Sardinia in talents – that is, in units of weight – that were melted down and turned into weapons, vows, etc. But important and iconography of the boat. The mast and four columns belong to the megalithic Nuragic towers of Sardinia, and the birds were a means of orientation in ancient navigation. We think the boat depicts merchants who traveled to other islands, to southern Italy and Africa and wanted to be seen from afar, depicting the cultural identity of their homeland, their towers, their most emblematic architecture.”

“The exhibition’s narrative is above all a story of the mobility and connection of the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean,” says archaeologist Anastasia Christofilopoulou.

In the exhibition you will also see a libation bowl decorated with black corals, mollusks and algae on a mesh background, typical of the maritime rhythm of the late Minoan period (1500-1450 BC). It was found in Palekastro in Crete, and as the curator notes, it tells a story opposite to the Sardinian boat: “Instead of an object that reveals external influences, the Minoan rito is something that was exported to places like North Africa, Egypt, Anatolia, southern Peloponnese. This shows the extent of Minoan trade and communications. Rito was a “luxury item” bought by other cultures precisely because it was special.”

Other exhibits reveal various aspects of the island’s complex identity, typified by a series of clay votive figurines (625–500 BC) discovered by the Swedish mission at the sanctuary of Agia Irene in Cyprus in 1929. They depict human figures. , sphinxes, minotaurs, chariots, etc. “It seems that the god worshiped in the sanctuary combined many characteristics, similar to modern saints from the small rural sanctuaries of today’s Cyprus. The finds of Agia Irini are the most representative micrograph of the Cypriot society of the 7th and 6th centuries BC. A single world of human and mythical figures, heroes, animals, chariots, mythological creatures and gods,” notes Anastasia Christophilopoulos.

Migration paths

“The exhibition’s narrative,” he concludes, “is primarily a story about the mobility and connection of the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean, features that appear at different times. We see this in the Bronze and Iron Ages and the Classical as well as the Roman years, for which the general perception is that there was homogeneity due to the Roman conquest. However, even then there were very specific manifestations of island identity. Our second argument is that migration is an ancient and complex phenomenon. We have worked with anthropologists who study modern migration from Syria after 2015. Although it is the result of a war, the routes used by the migrants are very old. We demonstrate this with items that seem to come from Anatolia, Cyprus and the Aegean. They show how interconnected the region has been for about 3,000 years.”