Carmona and the talking urn

We took a day trip to Carmona, a perfect town built before the Romans, before even the Carthaginians, on a hill rising from the fertile plain where farmers cultivated olives. The white-painted town boasted baroque  churches and tall palaces, and at the Seville and Cordoba gates, massive ancient fortresses. 

In the narrow cobbled streets we spotted the double trail of candle wax droplets and the balconies draped in red, evidence that Carmona had been having its own Holy Week processions. 

But the thing I enjoyed the most was the trip to the old Roman burial ground just outside. There were grand tombs flanked by columns and water features, and modest columbaria - niches for pots holding the cremation ashes of the dead.

 But my very favourite thing was in the small site museum and the way it catered for children. At the bottom of each information board there was a cartoon character with a speech bubble giving a shortened version of the caption. 

I stood scratching my head wondering just what this cartoon character was supposed to represent. And then, I spotted in a display case, the thing it had been modelled on. There were several terracotta boxes like simple houses with roof-lids.

 They were made to hold the bones and ash of the cremated dead. 

The museum had chosen to enhance kiddies' visits with a picture of a talking cremation urn!