Maimone is a divinity of nuragic mythology linked to waters and rain.
Index
Origin and cult
According to some researchers Maimone corresponds to the ancient Phoenician deity of the rain [1]. The linguist Max Leopold Wagner in his Sardinian etymological dictionary translates Maimone with a boot giving the end of Semitic origins and explaining that it originally indicated a monkey and subsequently defined an imaginary beast.
Other scholars such as Mario Ligia say instead that Maimone corresponds to a divinity of the rain of protosard origin, then reinterpreted by the Phoenicians. The root Maim'o, in fact, could be traced back to the Phoenician Mem (), water [2], while the Jewish misery 'ממון (mmôn) means money, possession [3], as well as the personification of the lust of money, represented Like a demon, mammon.
Always Mario Ligia identifies him with the Amaon Libyan-Berber god, with the difference that the root of the Sardinian word Maimone, due to the presence of vowel I, would be older and would prove directly from Asia Minor and not from Africa [4 ].
The father of Sardinian archeology Giovanni Lilliu in his work The Civilization of the Sardinians writes that Maimone was a demonic being invoked as a rain facing in Cagliari and Ghilarza while in Iglesias was the spirit of a still existing city well, called on Maimoni.
Maimone's cult is still present in Ogliastra and in some Barbagia centers. Until the last century, the Sardinian farmers and shepherds invoked:
(SC)
«Maimone Maimone
Cheret abbur on Laòre
Cheret abbur on siccau
Maimone Laudau! "
(IT)
«Maimone, Maimone
The cereal (sown) requires water
It requires water annoyed (field)
Maimone Laudato "
(Sardinian invocation)
The name varied and varied often: Mamuthone in Mamoiada, Maimone and Hune in Orgosolo, on Maimulu in Ulassai. Traditional Sardinian masks refer to this divinity of nature (on Maimulu).
It was identified, with the advent of Christianity, as a demon, if not even with the devil itself.