{"id":41994,"date":"2026-08-24T10:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/41994\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T10:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:36:10","slug":"120-roman-era-inscriptions-found-deep-in-a-spanish-cave-point-to-a-mysterious-goddess-named-domina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/41994\/","title":{"rendered":"120 Roman-Era Inscriptions Found Deep in a Spanish Cave Point to a Mysterious Goddess Named ‘Domina’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archaeologists were used to thinking of western Spain\u2019s Cova de les Dones (the \u201cCave of the Women\u201d)\u2014up a cliffside where the water of the Tambuc switches<\/a> over into the Zapatero ravine\u2014as primarily a site of Paleolithic rock art: a cow-like auroch painted on one wall, a prehistoric horse\u2019s head etched into another, etc. But, last year, a team co-led by archaeologists Aitor Ruiz-Redondo and Virginia Barciela found a chamber hidden deep within the cave that has forever changed how scholars now think of the site and its role in the ancient world.<\/p>\n

Their team called it a \u201cRoman sanctuary,\u201d initially identified<\/a> by about 15 Latin inscriptions along its cave walls and a first century CE Roman coin from the reign of the Emperor Claudius. Now, according to the team\u2019s latest announcement, this remote cave holds the record for the highest known number of confirmed Latin inscriptions of any place of its kind across the entire reach of what was once the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n

The site\u2019s 120 inscriptions, as Ruiz-Redondo and his colleagues explain, appear to be a clear indication that the cave-sanctuary had once been a place of worship for an obscure Roman goddess, reverentially known as Domina, Latin for \u201cthe Lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that the texts are concentrated in a specific and delimited area of \u200b\u200bthe cave, away from the entrance, confirms that it is an organized cult,\u201d Sergio Garc\u00eda-Dils, one of Ruiz-Redondo\u2019s archaeologist and speleologist collaborators, said in a Spanish-language statement<\/a> (via Google Translate).<\/p>\n

\"InscriptionMembers of the research team document some of the Roman sanctuary\u2019s record-setting 120 inscriptions. \u00a9 University of Alicante The cult of MALACI <\/p>\n

At least three inscriptions now identified in the cave reference the Lady and also bear the name \u201cMALACI,\u201d which the researchers believe is not a previously known name for any known goddess, Roman or otherwise. Given the cave\u2019s structure, however, and the sanctuary\u2019s naturally occurring small pools known as rimstone dams or gours<\/a>, Ruiz-Redondo\u2019s team suspects that the Lady was worshipped for this site\u2019s reliable water resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach new discovery suggests that Cova Dones has been a landmark for the human groups that inhabited this territory for millennia, perhaps due to the permanent presence of water, the characteristics of the underground landscape or its easy access,\u201d the team said.<\/p>\n

\"ArtifactTwo Roman-era bronze rings located inside the cave-sanctuary, under the Latin inscriptions. Credit: University of Alicante <\/p>\n

Archaeologist and project co-lead Virginia Barciela of the University of Alicante noted that its first century visitors appear to have deposited offerings within the sanctuary\u2019s gours. These \u201cnumerous spindle whorls,\u201d as she described them, \u201clikely indicates the offering of spindles, a textile-working tool that, in antiquity, was associated with the female sphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spindles, as her colleague Garc\u00eda-Dils noted, resonate with the fact that the cave has been colloquially known as the \u201cCave of the Women\u201d in the local Valencian language ever since it had a name on record at all.<\/p>\n

Millennia of cultural significance <\/p>\n

The Roman sanctuary\u2019s inscribed Latin texts reside in a chamber over 656 feet (200 meters) deep, discovered over half a century after the first Iron Age artifacts emerged from archaeological work at the cave around 1960. Ruiz-Redondo, Barciela, and their team suspect that the site might have maintained its local cultural significance all the way from the old Stone Age into the Roman era\u2014an impressive feat given the site\u2019s still elusive significance.<\/p>\n

In between the discovery of the cave\u2019s paleolithic art and these latest finds, archaeologists investigating the cave in 2025 found over a hundred speleofacts: human-modified cave rock formations, like carved stalactites and stalagmites. These speleofacts, they said, are indicative of a long-term prehistoric interest in Cova de les Dones, leaving open some fairly intriguing questions about just how far in the past the cave\u2019s Roman-era MALACI cult could actually date back to.<\/p>\n

Ongoing research at the cave has been supported financially by the Millares City Council in partnership with \u201cPla Restaura,\u201d a cultural restoration program funded<\/a> by Generalitat Valenciana, the autonomous government of the region\u2019s local Valencian community in Spain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Archaeologists were used to thinking of western Spain\u2019s Cova de les Dones (the \u201cCave of the Women\u201d)\u2014up a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1344,12999,1100,27,27557],"class_list":["post-41994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rome","tag-ancient-rome","tag-caves","tag-religion","tag-rome","tag-stone-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}