Is Mamutzones di Samugheo, Sardegna
Is Mamutzones who, moving and hopping like a herd of goats, cause a cadence marked by the dark tinkling of bells and cowbells. They are covered in goat skins, large horns on high cork hats, a multitude of cowbells on their bodies, their faces black with soot, they intersperse their disorderly gait with the imitation of the fight of goats in love.
It can also happen that is mamutzones remove their headdresses, called casiddu, and place them next to each other, forming a dancing circle around them.
S’urtzu, half man and half goat, limps along, dances awkwardly and often lunges at onlookers. He rolls over in puddles, gets up, shakes himself and throws himself back on the ground, bellowing. Harassed by su ‘omadore, s’urtzu falls to mime death, while the earth turns red – it is only a stage trick caused by a bladder of blood and water hidden under his clothes, ready to give in to the blow. S’urtzu, resurrected by the goad of su ‘omadore, falls again surrounded by the flock of mamutzones that dance around him enthusiastically, in the etymological sense of possessed by the god.
Su ‘omadore who has the task of limiting the excesses of s’urzu, beating him until he bleeds and prodding him to make him wake up.
It is impossible not to perceive in this extremely bloody and wild, but also very lively, rite the echo of the archaic mysteries of Minoan and Anatolian tradition such as the Eleusinian, Orphic and Dionysian ones – but also the cult of Mithras – probably borrowed through Roman syncretism and grafted onto the autochthonous substratum of protohistoric Sardinia. Nor can one ignore its salvific value, of death and rebirth, which if you look closely is not even foreign to Christianity.
