The pagan Phoenicians were sun and moon worshippers. Their goddess was Tanit (partner of Baal), and her energy is still said to guard but endlessly challenge the fiercely independent women who have always been drawn to live on the island. Tanit represents dance, fertility and death. Archaeological findings seem to suggest that both Bes and Tanit were being worshipped on the island by 700 BC. Their legacies certainly live on today, not just on the dance floors of the clubs, but through the island’s full moon and beach parties, and in places like Moon Beach in the north and the Sunset Ashram at Platges de Comte, or anywhere people stop to observe the sun come down on the horizon of the Mediterranean, a moment which in Ibiza heralds the coming excitements of the evening.
“An island of barbarians” is the now famous description of Ibiza cast circa 60 BC by Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. Some would say nothing has changed. He also described the men of the Balearic islands as, “of all men the most fond of women, and value them so highly above everything else that, when any of their women are seized by visiting pirates and carried off, they will give as ransom for a single woman three and even four men.” Throughout Ibiza’s eventful history, pirates and barbarians of various origin are a common thread in the narrative. But however violent the pillaging and destruction, either on land or sea, it has always come in human form, since another of the island’s great charms is that, due to the specifics of the soil and an awful lot of good luck, there have never been any poisonous reptiles in Ibiza. Or at least not until recently…for since early 2003 snakes have suddenly been reported as creeping in at various countryside locations, and this recent and quite anti-Ibicencan phenomenon is blamed on the importation of non-indigenous olive trees.
In The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 1830-31, Volume 1 it was reported that “the peculiar boast of the natives is, that no venomous reptile can live in Formentera, whether from the presence of the semper-virens, one of the snake-roots of antiquity, or that their earth has the quality of destroying serpents, as Pliny records that of Ebusus [Ibiza’s Roman name] to have done.” Pliny the Elder had indeed earlier stated, “There are various other kinds of earth, endowed with peculiar properties of their own…The earth of the Balearic Islands and of Ebusus kills serpents.” This has led historians to all basically concur that the presence of snakes today is absolutely recent.
The licentious dwarf god Bes was claimed by believers to be the defender of the land against snakes. Just to the south of today’s Ibiza Town there still lies the ancient Phoenician necropolis of Puig des Molins, which is said to have contained over 3,000 tombs. Some journalists have tried to assert that the Phoenicians would never have buried their dead in a place which had poisonous serpents, and that this is the reason for the existence of the renowned burial site, but the fact that millions of burials took place all over the Mediterranean – including Phoenicia itself, would disprove this. Some also claim that it was believed that burial in Ibiza’s earth would speed the journey on to the afterlife, and that rich people often paid well in advance to ensure a place for themselves or their relatives in the necropolis.
In his fascinating counter-cultural memoir, Bore Hole, the English author Joe Mellen recalled of his time on Ibiza in the 1960s that, “access to the tombs was only by one hole in the mountain where the caretaker sat in front of the gate. I went down once and remember the total darkness when the caretaker switched off the electric light, pitch black darkness. With the lights on I could see a few skeletons in open tombs, carved like chests out of the rock, and a maze of passages that extended far beyond the light’s penetration. It was an eerie experience.”
For anyone interested in taking a close look at some of the archaeological remains and other ancient heritage sites available to see in Ibiza, there are many well-preserved locations dotted all over the island, indicated by clearly marked pink signposts along the main roads. Apart from the fabulous museum up behind the medieval walls in Dalt Vila (the old ‘high town’, which in 1999 became a UNESCO protected site) and the necropolis of Puig des Molins in Ibiza Town, there are remains of the Phoenician settlements at Sa Caleta, sites at Ses Païsses near Cala d’Hort and Es Pouàs near Santa Agnès, the remains of Roman aqueducts at S’Argamassa on the east coast, and the goddess Tanit’s sacred sanctuary at Cova des Culleram in the north of the island. High up on a steep and winding hill path a long drive from the village of Sant Vicent, Cova des Culleram is still treated as a shrine, and is adorned with all sorts of trinkets and hope-filled messages to the goddess.
The Roman general Scipio came by in 217 BC, and he looted the island for three days, before sailing off with the spoils. When Carthage fell in 146 BC, Ibiza had a period of independence, before falling under full Roman suzerainty, and for roughly the next two hundred years, the island had a shared Roman/Carthaginian identity, which included a growing bilingualism. The island’s currency now bore Roman figures on one side, and Carthaginian gods Bes and Eshmum remained on the other side. The Romans, who introduced slave labour as well as setting up olive presses and fish farms, eventually came to accept the island’s love of Bes, and talismans bearing his likeness were soon being created.
Gradually though, all other traces of the Punic era were wiped out: Ybšm was renamed Ebusus, and Eshmun’s temple in Dalt Vila was now to be dedicated to Mercury, the great god of commerce. It was Ibiza’s first temple of Mammon. As if on cue, things now took a turn for the worse. The Romans distractedly slipped away to concentrate on developing North Africa, taking the slaves with them. For the next half millennium not much evolved on the island, although the disruptive Vandals arrived for an 80 year stay in 455 AD. Then the Byzantines conquered Carthage in 533, before also taking control of the Balearics in 535.
Other tribes who have come, seen, conquered…and danced include the Moors, the Catalans, and large gangs of North African pirates. The Moors resuscitated island life when they took calm control in the 10th century. Renaming Ebusus Yebisah, they brought in the Arabic language, and Islam.
It is probable that the greatest influences on traditional Ibicenco music come from the Moors. The vocal style is haunting and often melancholic. Despite centuries of Christianity and multiple outside influences it is still possible to witness traditional performances out in the countryside on village fiesta days, sometimes with a female balladeer whose back will be turned to the audience as she incants some tragic tale. Men create and perform on wind and percussion instruments, including drums, flutes and castanets, and the traditional costumes usually worn are elaborate and beautifully crafted, a skill that is still lovingly passed down from one generation to the next.
And here Bes comes back into the picture again. Bes is strikingly similar to the Greek goat-god Pan or his North African equivalent, the Moroccan Bou Jeloud, and has even been linked by historians to the Christian Satan. It’s worth taking a short diversion here, simply to illustrate some close similarities between traditional music rituals in North Africa and the latter day outdoor trance party scene in rural locations in Ibiza.
To this day Sufi trance rites are still performed annually in the village of Joujouka in Morocco’s Rif mountains, in a celebration that resembles the Roman Lupercalia or Pan Rites. For centuries these traditions had disappeared into obscurity until interest in the rites was regenerated in the West by British artist, writer and sometime Moroccan resident Brion Gysin. In the Moroccan rites, villagers gather to put on elaborate trance rituals in an attempt to summon Bou Jeloud (the Pan/Bes figure), accompanied by the Master Musicians of Joujouka. This is a group of Berber Sufi trance musicians who, despite performing centuries-old traditional rhythms, have famously collaborated with latter-day western artists such as Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, free jazz composer Ornette Coleman and singer Robert Plant.
According to legend, Bou Jeloud had