En busca del misterio
Sunday, May the 5th, 2013
TOLEDO. Hill of the Bu
The Hill of the Bú is the place where the ancient goods sleep.
The Hill of the Bú, “Devil's hill”, erects on the left shore of the Tajo river, or Tagos, which involves the ancient Toletum by its right shore.
It is between the Stream of the Rock of the Moor King (Peña del Rey Moro), beside the hermitage of the Valley (built in the XVII century) and in front of the House of the Diamond Cutter.
By one side it has easy acces from the Valley's road, but from the other side it is cliff over the Tajo.
The Bú has very good defensive conditions. It is scarcely visible, as it is inserted in a landscape of rocky hill; however, almost the whole Toledan rock can be viewd therefrom, as well as the castello of San Servando and the Huerta del Rey (King's Greenhouse). Its strategical characteristics made the Bú a defensive example for millenia.
On the crest the rest of some constructions can be seen and on one of the hillsides, cuttings opened during some archaeological excavations.
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The legend says that in the origin of times, before the Romans and the Iberians, a corageous people, which enjoyed the protection of an infernal god, Baal-cebú, lived on the Hill of the Bú, and this god was offered a young virgin in sacrifice at nights of full moon. The tribe's priest fell in love with one of the girls to be sacrificed, he didn't want to perform his duties and take the life of the young girl and he kidnapped her in the night of the sacrifice and fleed with her. The offering couldn't be done that night. The deity, infuriated, ordered the hill to be opened. A demoniacal legion went out of the cracked earth to look for the fugitives, but the legion couldn't find them. Then, the god put a spell of the mountin. The earth closed again and swallowed all its inhabitants. Only ruins remaind of that was once a village.
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The researcher Manuel Castaños y Montijano, secretary of the local Monuments Commission, did the first excavations on the hill in 1905, found bones of animals, pieces of ceramic and a half discus of stone and concluded that the wall enclosure was an Iberian hillfort. The municipal architect, Ezequiel Martín, drew the first plans of the place up. The information was sent to the Royal Academy of History and fell by the wayside for decades. Subsequently, other excavations were made, more fragments of ceramic were found, as well as laboured stones, carved bones, prehistorical axes, a mace of slate, rests of gold and a dagger with rivets of silver, discoveries which are located in the Museum of Santa Cruz.
These initial discoveries, which were transferred to the Royal Academy of San Fernando, were just rough excavations for the verification of the antiquity of the population.
In the 1980s new campaigns were carried out which allowed the discovery of ancient defensive muslim structures and could identify, on the peak, a disappeared construction "The Tower of the Devils", whose existence was reflected by old Mozarabic testimonies. They found the rectangular foundations of stone, the compartmentalization in three rooms and the rest of a rendering of gypsum used to impermeabilize the construction.
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The Hill of the Bú was one of the first human settlements of the city of Toledo, a walled hillfort where the Carpetani lived. It is a cradle where a city was born at the end of the Copper Age.
There are two hypothesis to this regard: One says that the Carpetani, founders of Toledo, were located on the left shore of Toledo, over the aforesaid hill, and put their encampment in the current Toledo when the Romans came, at the end the hill's population was absorved and the hill was abandoned. And the second one says there were various populations on the sorrounding areas, the most important the current Toledo; therefore, the Hill of the Bú would have been a sort of district, bastion, outpost or bridge head, a settlement depending on the population situated in the current Toledo. Maybe this suggestion is more logical, because, if the Carpetania were Toledo, the enclave would be larger than the surface of the Hill of the Bú, without considering that the strategical framework of the current Toledo would be more atractive for its founders.
Rests of the Copper and Iron Ages have been found. It is possible that the primitive settlers of the Bú abandoned the enclosure due to the population growth and moved to the current Historical Casque. O r maybe it wasn't abandoned in the Roman times, as it was believed, because rests of the Arabic times were found, tentatively suggesting a continuation of the settlement till the Middle Age.
In Prehistory it was a small defensive population. Pieces of walls in double ring were found.
Other rests, pens and small rooms, suggest the existence of domestic animals. Instruments of common use (gravers, bowls and pans, teeth of sickle of silex and mill stones) confirm the existence of a group of country houses where a primitive tribe would have dwelled.
Inspite of the disappearance of the majority of the constructive rests of the Copper Age archaeologists have enough data so as to affirm the primitive inhabitants of the Tajo's shore would live in oval or circle-shaped cottages, with baseboards of stone and walls and ceilings made of branches hardened with clay.
The Bú is communicated with the Casque through a rudimentary bridge of rowboats. In the last decades appeared rests corresponding to this primitive period on the other side of the river, up to the Corralillo de San Miguel, as frontal part of the hill and the Barca Pasaje (Passage Rowboat).
But there are still many things to excave in order to answer all the unsolved misteries. A big part of the findings is decontextualized and hasn't been in depth studied.
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The legend tells that the foundations of a tower are between the rests of the hill, the "Tower of the Devils", which concealed a door which was the entry to hell. In the nights of full moon, a crak opens between the rocks and reddish shining emerge therefrom.
The existence of a fortified tower called "Tower of the Devils" is true: a fortification of surveillance in the slamic period, which the crossing of the river till the way of Calatrava was controlled from.
The rests of a wall are conserved from said period, erected over the ruins of the Copper Age. The "Tower of the Devils" was inside of it.
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The extension of the aforesaid walled Islamic perimeter cannot yet be accurately determined.
Today the hill is a private property, eventhough the Municipality of Toledo tries to acquire it in order that the Consortium can continue the archaeological interventions.
The archaeologists' intention is to protect the site, which is nowadays completeley abandoned, deteriorating and exposed to acts of vandalism, in addition to continuing the study of the prehistorical and the Islamic periods and determining which elements correspond to each of the historical periods of the Bú.
SOURCE: Buscando Montsalvatge
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