Numerous Iberian ceramics from Villajoyosa show a different style of painted decoration to those already known. This new style, called "Levantine symbolic style", has been detected by Miguel F. Pérez, in his degree dissertation read in 2010 at the University of Alicante on the painted Iberian ceramics from a sector of the old cemetery of Poble Nou. The author suggests that it is very likely that there was an important workshop of this style in the Iberian city of Villajoyosa, given that 37% of all the vases studied in this style in Spain are found in the Vila, and this percentage will be much higher when the rest of the sectors of the necropolis of Casetes and Poble Nou are published.
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Photograph:the Glass of the Threshold of the Beyond, with the seven-step staircase, the door to paradise and the bird that leads the soul to that place (Photograph: Llorenç Pizà).
Their decorations do not usually narrate human or divine episodes or scenes, but contain symbolic images that directly convey a message. Most of these decorations have been found on ceramic vessels from tombs in the cemeteries of Poble Nou and Casetes from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, so their meaning is related to the journey to the afterlife and eternal life. The figure of the dove stands out as a symbol of the Iberian Goddess of fertility and death, who would protect and guide the soul of the deceased during its journey to the afterlife. These paintings, within their funerary context, reflect an Iberian religion impregnated with the Hellenistic language (i.e. Greek culture from the 3rd to 1st centuries BC), which was widespread in the Mediterranean. The exhibition represents the "presentation in society" of this new decorative style of Iberian ceramics recently discovered in the collections of the Museo de la Vila.
One of the most important pieces that will be on display in the exhibition is the so-called "Vessel of the Threshold of the Beyond". (technically, the olpeor jar no. 14924 from tomb 23 at Poble Nou). It is a magnificent reflection of the obsession with guiding the deceased on the journey to the other world, common to all Mediterranean cultures. The images used in this piece serve as a didactic explanation to the deceased on how to reach paradise.
On this piece, in the Iberian manner, a narration of the route and elements that the Iberian soul would need to reach its eternal rest is depicted. The presence of the dove as an animal stands out. psychopomp (conductor of souls), in turn an image-symbol of the Iberian divinity and which at the same time could represent the soul of the deceased. The union of the world of the living and the world of the dead would be symbolised by the seven-step staircase, which gives access to the Beyond, and which is mentioned in texts from different ancient religions, such as in the Bible (the "Jacob's ladder" in the Book of Genesis 28, 11-19, by which the angels ascended and descended from heaven), and which was later taken up by Dante in his "Divine Comedy".
In this ultraterrestrial destination represented in the Glass of the Threshold of the Beyond, lush vegetation grows in the form of vines and ivy, plants closely related to eternal life, which expand without limit to recreate a paradisiacal atmosphere. Next to them emerges a tree that could symbolise the oriental motif of the tree of life or the forests depicted in the Greek-Italic imagination to represent the Elysian Fields or the forests of Persephone mentioned in the Odyssey. In this region, similar to the Christian paradise, is separated from Hades or the underworld (similar to the Christian hell), inhabited by fortunate mortals who could enjoy a happy eternal life.
Finally, the doors to which the staircase leads indicate the destiny of the soul and separate the world of the living from that of the dead, as in Egyptian, Punic, Italic and Greek imagery.
