SICILY’S SACRED WATERS

HE SMALL ISLAND OF MOTYA, off the western coast of Sicily, lies at the heart of an ancient sea route across the Mediterranean. Owing to Motya’s central position between trading outposts in Cyprus, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, and Sardinia, in the early eighth century b.c., the Phoenicians, a merchant seafaring people from the Levant, settled on the island. Within a century of their arrival, they had transformed their settlement into an important multicultural port and hub for trans-Mediterranean trade. They brought with them a religious culture inextricably entwined with their everyday lives that would change and flourish as a result of their far-flung trading connections and their interactions with the Elymians, the native population of western Sicily. Among the first structures the Phoenicians built on Motya were temples to their principal deities, the divine couple Baal and Astarte. The city was destroyed in the mid-sixth century b.c., likely by forces from the rival Phoenician power of Carthage who were threatened by Motya’s rapid rise. The Motyan Phoenicians, however, quickly rebuilt—and constructed a defensive wall around the