In the last period of occupation of the sanctuary of La Malladeta, approximately between 25 BC and 75 AD, in the Roman Empire, on the eastern slope (the one facing Villajoyosa), only the ruins of the Iberian sanctuary remained, and over them the priests and the Roman faithful still thrown their garbage for a century. Among that rubbish there was a piece of flat and rolled pottery, like those we can find on any beach. It was not a fragment of a vessel: at first glance, it looked like a modern brick with ridges rounded by waves.

 

When washing it, we distinguished a graffiti drawn with a punch. They had drawn it before cooking the piece of clay in the oven to turn it into ceramics. That was not an unimportant detail: it means that it was a piece of ceramic plate made for that drawing, that is to say, that the graffiti had not been engraved on it by chance, but intentionally.

 

The most interesting think was the drawing. It did not seem difficult to interpret: a roof could clearly be seen on a kind of house; and, within it, a circumference that almost touched the 'walls'.

 

Probably the piece was an offering to the goddess of the sanctuary, who which we believe was the Punic Tanit or its Iberian equivalent, the Mother Goddess, mistress of life and death. Archaeologists call these offerings ex-vots. People used them to ask or thank the divinity for something, like the wax figurines of our modern hermitages and sanctuaries.

It probably represents an aedicule, that is, a chapel. It could be the only representation we have of the old sacred building of La Malladeta, inside which there would be the image of the goddess.

 

But the most curious thing is the story of the piece. When some time passes, in all the sanctuaries (those ancient and also those modern) the old votive offerings are withdrawn, to make room for new ones. Ours ended up broken on Malladeta beach; and this fragment remained enough time on the shore to be rounded by the waves.

 

We do not know exactly when, but sometime after the year 25 BC someone walked by the beach and found it. Maybe he thouhgt of throwing it on the surface of the water, as we all do; but he did not. The same drawing that today calls our attention also seemed to call his, and he kept it. Whoever he was, he went to the sanctuary or lived in it, because he climbed to the top, where there would still be a little temple, with the piece of pottery in his hand.

 

Maybe he showed it to someone, maybe he gave it a practical use that we do not know. What we do know is that, at the end, he thrown the piece back down the hill (it was the second time someone threw it away), where we found it in 2006. Since it was taken by an archaeologist, this piece began its third life, in the Vilamuseu warehouses, waiting patiently. In July 2018 we exhibited it for the first time, incorporating it into the exhibition Treasures of Villajoyosa.

Height: 51 mm; Length: 53 mm
Nº inv. Vilamuseu 011066