The open tombs
Rock-cut chambers entered by a stair.
Joan Gené — CC0 · Joan Gené — CC0 · Joan Gené — CC0 · JanManu — CC BY-SA 3.0
**The largest preserved Phoenician-Punic necropolis in the western Mediterranean — thousands of tombs cut into a hill inside the town** — below the walls of Dalt Vila. ⚠ **The scale is the matter**: **an entire hill cut with **more than three thousand rock-hewn tombs**** — ✅ **used from the 7th century BC into the Roman period**, **some eight continuous centuries**. ⚠ **And why here in particular**: **the Phoenicians believed Ibiza free of venomous animals** — ✅ **so it became blessed ground for burial**; **and the dead were brought from off the island**. ✅ **The museum shows what was found**: **figurines, masks, ash urns and jewellery** — ⚠ **most famously a bust of the goddess Tanit**. ✅ **And some tombs can be entered.**
Rock-cut chambers entered by a stair.
The island's most famous object, of the Carthaginian goddess.
A whole slope pierced with tomb openings.
Via Romana 31, 07800 Eivissa, Spain
**A great Carthaginian goddess — and she has become the island's emblem, on shops, signs and names.** ✅ **Who she was**: **Tanit was a principal deity of Carthaginian religion** — ⚠ **goddess of fertility, motherhood and protection**, **and consort of Baal Hammon**; ✅ **and the most important deity in Carthage itself in its later period**. ✅ **Her sign is well known**: **a simple geometric figure** — **a triangle surmounted by a horizontal bar and a disc** — ⚠ **called the «sign of Tanit»**; **and it appears on thousands of stelae at Carthage, Ibiza and Sardinia**. ✅ **Why Ibiza in particular**: ⚠ **the island was Carthaginian for centuries and was a sacred burial ground** — ✅ **so **great numbers of clay Tanit figures** were found in its tombs**; **more than at many other sites**. ⚠ **And at Cova des Culleram** in the island's north **is a cave sanctuary where offerings were made to her**. ✅ **How she became a modern emblem**: ⚠ **in the 1960s and 1970s, with the wave of alternative culture in Ibiza**, **her name and sign were taken up** ✅ **and became the island's identity** — **on shops, clothing, hotels and given names**; ⚠ **with a modern meaning unconnected to the ancient cult**.
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