Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of these peaks would have been at once familiar and unique to sailors - not only
as practical landmarks for navigation, but also as cultural landmarks often associ-
ated with specific divinities. In Byzantine times, many of the eastern Mediterranean
peaks underwent resignification and became privileged abodes of monks and her-
mits. Under the Ottomans, some of them were reinscribed with mosques and stories
of brigands, adding further layers to the pre-existing ones. Today most of these
summits are unique biogeographical observatories, as the previous chapter showed.
They are also privileged destinations for skiers, hikers and other seekers of nature
who, perhaps without their realizing it, are after a spiritual experience somehow
akin to that of early pilgrims venturing to the same summits.
Stories of cultural resignification and overlayering repeat themselves on all
shores of the Mediterranean, leaving both visible and imaginative marks on the
landscapes of its high places: pagan temples, Christian chapels, mosques, winter
resorts, variously rooted placenames and, not least, a plethora of stories. This chap-
ter provides a brief introduction to some of these overlayerings. While mountains
possess great metaphorical potential, they remain insistently material objects. Cul-
tural geographers are interested in materiality as it impacts geographical imagina-
tion and embodied practices (see, e.g., Cosgrove and della Dora, 2009; Debarbieux,
1998, 2004). 'Moralized', 'politicized', even 'sanctified', to be sure, but also 'lived
from within', Mediterranean mountains offer a unique opportunity for examining
substantive examples of the active intertwining of natural objects with human sub-
jectivity and cultural specificities. Accordingly, the chapter is articulated through
four different 'narrative layers'. Following a broadly chronological order, these en-
gage respectively with myth, religion, tradition and commodification. The chapter
opens with mountain myths and pagan sanctuaries in the ancient Mediterranean
world. The following section explores mountain theophanies in the great monothe-
istic traditions of the Mediterranean: Judaeo-Christianity and Islam. It shows how
Biblical mountain imageries migrated from Sinai and Palestine to other Mediter-
ranean shores, creating new networked mountain geographies. The following two
sections explore more contemporary narratives of Mediterranean high places, as
they evolve out of age-old ways of life, adjusted to difficult geographies, but draw-
ing out of their material particularities, natural resources and deep symbolism to
create new, viable forms of livelihood. While by no means comprehensive, together
the four sections aim at reflecting the complex overlayering and transformation of
the cultural significance of Mediterranean mountains through the centuries and at
opening up questions about their future.
7.2 Mythical mountains
Mountains have an extraordinary power to evoke the sacred. The ethereal rise of
a ridge in the mist, the glint of moonlight on an icy face, a flare of gold from
a distant peak - such glimpses of transcendent beauty can reveal our world as a
place of unimaginable mystery and splendour.
Bernbaum (1997, p. xiii)
