THE "TAULAS"



DESCRIPTION
Taula of Torretrencada

The "taula" is the most characteristic protohistoric monument in the island of Minorca, the only place where one knows it.

It is a group of two enormous flagstones placed forming a T of great height (until 4 m sometimes) that seems to have constituted the most important element in the sacred area of the Talayotic villages, maybe in connection with a taurolatrous worship (it remembers, in certain way, the head of a bull and at the foot of the one of "Torralba d'en Salort" a small brass bull was found), a cult to the fertility (it would represent the feminine sex -because, in fact, some of them present the pilaster markedly triangular or trapezoidal-), an astral cult (some stellar orientations of its elements or the elements of its precinct seem demonstrated) or with a possible functionality of allowing to flesh the cadavers before burying them.

The vertical flagstone, or "stone-support", accustoms to present the front face and the lateral ones very worked, while the rear one sometimes presents a prominence by way of nerve that maybe should serve to help to sustain the superior flagstone (the "taulas" that have not this "nerve" usually have the "stone-support" broken or cracked).

The supported flagstone, or "stone-capital", accustoms to have its inferior edges of more reduced dimensions that the superior ones, giving place to a kind of overturned pyramid frustum, and often presents a "rabbet" with a rectangular form in the inferior face, which would be to assure it over the "stone-support".

Around any "taula", we always find a precinct with apsidal form, and facade approximately concave, with pilasters or columns, crowned with capitals and with much more reduced dimensions that those of the "stone-support" (often with the exception of the one that is immediately to the west of this, which can to be as big as the taula itself), engaged in the walls. The door habitually presents a step and some square or rectangular holes in the walls make think about small altars, niches for images or places to deposit offerings. The remains of blazes, probably ceremonial, some cistern and, often, a pillar of quadrangular section near the "taula" and united to it by means of semiburied flagstones (a masculine sex?) complete the ensemble.

The discovery of small brass figures, some of them imported (such as that of the Egyptian god Imhotep of "Torre d'en Galmés"), seems to confirm the functionality of the ensemble for a worship precinct, without discarding a more "practical" utility, for example the related one with the burial. Someone, however, believes that the "taula" is not more than a central pilaster that supports the roof of the building, without denying the religious character of this one.


© Ferran Lagarda i Mata, 1996-2012 (text and pictures). All rights reserved.