Artefacts from ancient Mediterranean civilisation on show for first time in UK

More than 200 artefacts from Sardinia, Cyprus and Crete are to go on display in an exhibition looking at the Mediterranean islands. Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum will

host the loaned items, most of which are in the UK for the first time, including bronze figurines associated with Sardinia’s lost 4,000-year-old Nuragic civilisation. No

written records of this civilisation have been discovered, but its ancient burial grounds have yielded bronze figurines that shed some light on their mythological and religious

identity. Nuragic bronze figurines represented warriors with helmets with long curved horns, animal-headed ships, and imaginary entities belonging to a unique

culture. At the peak of its power, the Nuragic culture was defined by megalithic stone towers called nuraghi. Archaeologists estimate that more than 10,000 nuraghi

once existed across Sardinia, although now only a few thousand survive. The exhibition’s curator, Dr Anastasia Christophilopoulou, said: “This exhibition brings together

three years of research, community engagement, and active archaeological and anthropological practice in the Mediterranean islands. “We must picture ourselves in one of

these islands, to better understand how these unique objects reveal self-perceptions, community identity and the islands’ long histories.” The bronze figurines from Sardinia

are being loaned from the National Archaeological Museum in , in Sardinia’s capital, Cagliari.